Who Turned the Tap Off?

Conditions were marginal this morning at the obs for operating mist nets and in fact the wind strength almost certainly adversely affected the catch. At first light I had virtually clear skies with a stiff, perhaps 10 - 15 mph, southeasterly wind. From the 'off'  birds were on the move, but quite suddenly at about 1000 the 'vis' tap was turned off. My vis totals included 188 Meadow Pipits, Reed Bunting, 14 Chaffinch, 10 Alba Wags, 7 Siskins, 8 Greenfinch, 2 Grey Wags, 2 Collared Doves, 2 Swallows, 7 Goldfinch and the best of the lot 10 Tree Sparrows! These totals are based on what I recorded, and for some species, particularly Mipits the total was probably twice that.

Meadow Pipit

Reed Bunting

Greenfinch

As I was busy ringing all morning it was difficult to gauge what was grounded other than what I ringed. I ringed 26 birds as follows (recaptures in brackets):

Dunnock - 4 (1)
Reed Bunting - 1
Chaffinch - 2
Meadow Pipit - 7
Greenfinch - 8
Blue Tit - 1 (1)
Chiffchaff - 1
Great Tit - 2

 Look at those tertials - adult male Chaffinch

Dunnock

So to go back to the subject of grounded birds I would say that the Dunnocks and the Chiffie were all that was grounded.

 Chiffchaff

We recieved details of a few recoveries from the BTO today and two stand out from the others. The first is Greenfinch TK94482 that was ringed ar the obs on 17th October 2010 and 'controlled' by Peter Fearon 49 km to the south on 20th November 2010 at Brookvale, Liverpool.

The second bird was a Swallow ringed on Rawcliffe Moss on 8th August 2009 by Craig and it was controlled on 27th April 2010, 1198 km to the southeast in Verbania in the Alpine region of Italy.

The weather is remaining southeasterly all week and it looks like it will be too breezy for ringing until Saturday, but then it looks like we might get three consecutive days! Of course I will  be out birding between now and then and I will let you know what I do or don't see!