Foggy Finches

This morning Dave and I were at one of the ringing sites within the obs and during the morning the fog rolled in, rolled out, rolled in and rolled out again! At first light the temperature was a cool 2 degrees and it was calm with clear skies. As I took the poles off my roof rack in the darkness a Barn Owl flew over.

The erratic nature of the fog/mist acted like a tap in turning the vis on and off! However, from a ringing perspective we were quite busy and processed 42 new birds as follows (recaptures in brackets):

Blackbird - 2
Sparrowhawk - 1 male
Greenfinch - 27
Meadow Pipit - 10
Blue Tit - 2
Great Tit - (1)
Robin - (1)

 Sparrowhawk

As is usual for this site we pulled all the Greenfinch down with an MP3 lure and without that I doubt we would have recorded any on vis. Talking of vis it included three Reed Buntings, 191 Meadow Pipits, two Redpoll sp., 12 Alba Wags, a Song Thrush, 106 Greenfinch, six Chaffinch, four Grey Wagtails, 508 Pink-footed Geese, two Siskins, three Skylarks and eight Swallows. These totals were very much an absolute minimum as for large periods of time we were busy ringing and it was hard to record vis at the same time.

 Greenfinch

There were no grounded migrants this morning other than perhaps the two Blue Tits ringed and a party of at least six Long-tailed Tits that moved through.

From Monday to Thursday next week the wind is going to be from the east so it will be interesting to see what arrives in terms of finches and thrushes.