Better!

Huw and I returned to the feeding station this morning and today the weather was better with a light southeasterly wind and 6 oktas cloud cover. With this wind direction the hedge offered some shelter and increased our chances of a reasonable catch.

Even though the weather was better from a mist netting perspective there wasn't the same amount of birds around. An early calling Siskin could only be put down in the notebook as a single bird because we couldn't see it, there may well have been a few. A party of 45 Lapwings were flying round for some minutes before they decided on a flooded field to land on and preen and feed.

As always when ringing it was difficult to assess how many Tree Sparrows were around but there were at least 80. On top of the trees of the wood were 25 Fieldfares and 12 Corn Buntings, and driving off the site later I had a further small flock of four 'fat birds of the barley'.

 Tree Sparrow

We ringed 15 birds as follows (recaptures in brackets):

Blue Tit - 2 (6)
Tree Sparrow - 7
Robin - 1 (1)
Goldfinch - 1
Great Tit - 1
Reed Bunting - 2 (1)
Blackbird - 1
Chaffinch - (1)

 Blue Tit

Reed Bunting

No ringing tomorrow, but some birding at the obs for me.