Monday 8 December 2014

Any News From The Feeding Station?

The answer to that question is not a lot really. I have been visiting every other day over the past week and it has been fairly steady with counts of ten Yellowhammers, 62 Tree Sparrows and seven Chaffinches. There's been up to two Buzzards regularly, but these have been the only raptors. I've been putting some apples down and this past week they've started going and when I called the other day two Fieldfares were feeding on them, so it would be nice to hold a few of them at the feeding station. Another couple of visitors on the same morning were two Grey Partridges and a Great Spotted Woodpecker called from the woodland.

Talking of feeding stations, or in this case potential feeding stations, Ian and I carried out a recce of a secure site within the Obs recording area this afternoon, with a view to a first ringing session this coming weekend. We located some potential net rides for general ringing and also an area to operate a feeding station. The beauty of this site is that there is so much cover we will be able to operate mist nets in virtually any wind direction or strength! Another plus is that the site has a decent Greenfinch roost and this afternoon we located the roost and there were at least 300 Greenfinches, 30 - 40 Goldfinches and perhaps a dozen or more Linnets coming in, so I might have some more news on that at weekend.

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