A New Dawn Arrives At Stanford

Anticipating that it would turn windy by mid morning, we arrived at 0500 hrs to clear skies, with little or no breeze, to operate our standard net runs whilst based on the disused railtrack. With very little bird movement we managed a creditable 11 new birds, (which included 3 Garden Warblers, 2 Whitethroat and a Lesser Whitethroat) and 27 retraps in four hours before the wind curtailed the mist net operation. Making his first visit (hopefully of many) to the ringing group was Mike Alibone, the Northamptonshire Recorder and his account of the morning can be found here: link

With the taking down of the mist nets left to a chosen few, a round of the nest boxes was undertaken by the remainder of the group which resulted in a  total of 135 pulli being ringed - one Tawny Owl, 74 Blue Tit, 55 Great Tit and 5 Tree Sparrow

As well as Mike joining us for the morning we also met Dawn, our latest recruit, who seems to have enjoyed the experience:

Tawny Owl Chick snuggles up to Dawn