Mainly Yellow With A Sprinkling Of Box Brown

Amazingly it was calm enough to do some ringing at my feeding station yesterday morning and for perhaps only the second time this winter I had to clear some frost from my car before setting off to the Moss. The day dawned with a ground frost, virtual clear skies and most important of all no wind!

It turned out to be quite a good ringing session particularly for Yellowhammers and also because 62% of the birds ringed were red-listed.

 Yellowhammer

I ringed 27 and recaptured (brackets) 12 birds as follows:

Tree Sparrow - 5 (1)
Chaffinch - 2
Blue Tit - 4 (6)
Great Tit - 2 (1)
Blackbird - 1 (1)
Dunnock - 1
Yellowhammer - 12 (2)

 Tree Sparrow

Blackbird

You can't have enough Yellowhammers

I hadn't seen any Grey Partridges for a while until this morning when I had a pair as I walked down the track on one of my net rounds. It was difficult to say exactly how many birds were using the feeding station as I was busy ringing but I would say there were 60-70 Tree Sparrows, 10-15 Chaffinches and 20-25 Yellowhammers.

Lapwings were making their presence felt by their exuberant display and I had seven displaying males plus an additional 146 birds, which I guess are continental birds on their way back east. It certainly makes the local birds work overtime with their display!

Over to the west were a number of Pink-footed Geese and I estimated there to be at least 2,100. They kept on getting flushed but I couldn't tell what by and at one time when they were flushed 21 Corn Buntings got up too.

Raptors were represented by two Buzzards and a Great Spotted Woodpecker was drumming from one of the woodlands the Buzzards were in. Talking of calling birds I had both Skylark and Siskin go over high and I could see the Skylark, but not the Siskin.

With all the Yellowhammers around that's the yellow taken care of and the 'box brown' refers to Gail and I spending a day checking and maintaining a nest box scheme for Pied Flycatchers in Bowland and some Tree Sparrow boxes at the feeding station. The boxes were in good order and out of 56 boxes we only had to replace three.

Pied Flycatcher country in winter!