21 October 2012

A pleasant Sunday afternoon.

After the heavy rain of Friday night/Saturday morning today turned out to be rather pleasant. The morning was spent doing outdoor jobs around the garden and after lunch I managed to finish strimming the lawn. Just as I had finished the strimming Colin rang to say he was going to go over to a ringing site on Deerness to see if there were any Autumn migrants still about.

I met up with him just after half three and we put two nets up. Just as last time as soon as we put on the Goldcrest soundtrack we got an immediate response and there were Goldcrests popping out of the bushes to see what was going on but only one ended up in the net.

It wasn't long before they lost interest in the soundtrack and just carried on flitting through the bushes feeding, the same as the last time we were at this site.

In between net checks we had a wander down the lane to see what else was about. There were good numbers of Goldcrests flitting through the vegetation along the side of the lane and Redwings flying around between the fields. A stop at one of the nearby gardens revealed a couple of female Blackcaps, three Brambling, a couple of Chaffinch, half a dozen House Sparrows, a Robin and a Wren was heard calling.

Back at the ringing site we decided to put a third net up along one of the outer edges of the site as there was a lot of Blackbird activity on that side of the site.

The net checks produced another Goldcrest, a Robin and a couple of Blackbirds. Then as it started to go dark another net check produced a female Chaffinch, two female Blackcaps (could they have been the two we saw earlier in the nearby garden?), three more Blackbirds and the Robin we caught earlier came back for another go!

By now it was dark and a final net check didn't produce anything else so it was time to pack up and head for home. Still no Redwings in the nets.

Final catch for the day was 14 new birds:

Blackbird     8
Blackcap     2
Chaffinch     1
Goldcrest     2
Robin           1

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