St Olaf's Wood

There's been a good flow of thrush species arriving here in Orkney over the last few days and there were certainly 40-50 Redwings in the garden and the field surrounding the house this morning along with three Fieldfares. Other local birders were reporting several hundred in the fields around them so when Colin rang late morning to say he was thinking of going to St Olaf's Wood on South Ronaldsay to see if there was  chance of catching some coming into roost I had to do a quick reschedule with some expected visitors so that I would be able to join him.

On arrival on site there were certainly some good numbers of both Redwings and Fieldfares in the area.

We set five nets in total and by the time we had the first two setup we were already getting Goldcrests.

It was a steady afternoon's ringing and after about four and a half hours we had caught and ringed 37 birds and had two retraps of ten species.

Totals were five Blackbird (including one retrap), one Chiffchaff, two Fieldfare, 12 Golcrests (including one retrap), nine Redwing, four Robin, one Song Thrush, three Wren, one Yellow-browed and the highlight of the day one adult male Sparrowhawk. The latter being my second mist net extraction of that species.

Yellow-browed Warbler

As dusk apporached rather than flooding in to roost the Redwings and Fieldfares seemed to disappear although we did get two or three Redwing.

All in all a good ringing session with a good mixture of species to help towards obtaining my permit.

Thanks to my friends for rescheduling at short notice.