A Few Hours At The Water Treatment Works

Yesterday afternoon Ian and I continued with our work of setting up a ringing station in the scrub and plantation woodland at the Water Treatment Works. We established a feeding station last week, and when we went today under full cloud cover with a 10 mph southeasterly wind we noted that the first birds are staring to use it. We put a couple of nets up at the feeding station and located a further three net rides that will need some work carrying out on them over the next couple of weeks.

As usual a number of finches were coming in to roost this afternoon and from our vantage point, with restricted vision, we had five Linnets, 154 Greenfinches, ten Goldfinches and a few Chaffinches. The site seems to be a good spot for roosting Woodcock and we flushed two as we walked about, but I'm sure there are a good deal more than that here.

As usual Magpies and Woodpigeons came in to roost but I could only count 20 and 49 of each, although a lot more than that are using the site as a roost site. On the roosting theme 290 Pink-footed Geese flew over towards the estuary to roost as the afternoon drew to a close and a Goldcrest called as it was getting dark.

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

Great Tit - 1 (3)
Blue Tit - 1 (1)
Chaffinch - 1
Greenfinch - 3
Song Thrush - 1
Blackbird - 1

 Greenfinch

The forecast is looking a bit grim for the coming week with a spell of wet and windy weather coming in from the Atlantic. However, I'm sure I'll manage to get out somewhere.