Saturday, 19 January 2013

Frozen Moss

I got to my feeding station at first light this morning and it was a touch chilly! It was a bit of a miserable morning with leaden skies, a keen easterly wind and snow flurries later in the morning. I dumped a load of seed on the ground, topped up the niger and peanut feeders, put some apples out and then headed off for a walk. At the feeding station were 30 Chaffinches, three Fieldfares, 151 Tree Sparrows and five Blackbirds.

It was quiet as I headed up the '97 hedge' other than 800 Jackdaws heading east to feed after exiting a roost somewhere and odd groups of Pink-footed Geese totalling 76 as they too headed east in search of feeding areas.

 Pink-footed Geese

Up on to the top fields and through the spoiled crops I put up 11 Skylarks, two Song Thrushes and 14 Corn Buntings. I headed off to the plantation that was quiet other than a small flock of six Bramblings associating with some Goldfinches. Amongst the ' Bramble Finches' were at least two stonking males. The picture below doesn't do them justice and you can just make out that there is the odd Brambling in the shot.

 Bramblings and Goldfinches - honest!

At this point the snow started coming down and all I could add were three Lapwings heading east and a couple of Yellowhammers back at the car.

It's going to be cold again tomorrow and just a tadd breezy for ringing so I think I will have a look at the estuary in the morning as I haven't been for a while and then I'll feed the Turnstones and hopefully re-sight a number of our leg-flagged birds.

2 comments:

barry said...

what do you feed to your Turnstones?

The Hairy Birder said...

Hello Barry,

I feed them with a standard wildbird seed mix with some dried meal worms and fat balls mixed in. When my mate Ian feeds them he feeds them with chicken pellets that he uses to feed his chickens with. They seem to like both. I have known other ringers feed them with chips! They will eat pretty much anything. They are also feeding on scraps that are left over by people feeding the Swans on the lake. So what tends to happen is at high tides when they are puched off the beach they come to the grassed area around the car park and lake, where we can set up a whoosh net and catch them.

Cheers, Seumus