Saturday 18th June

Mick writes:

Knowing that ex Stanford Ringing Group member, Kester Wilson was coming up from Cornwall to visit his parents for the weekend and intended to drop in to see us at Stanford on Saturday we were hoping for fair weather for his visit.  Kester was a trainee with us from 1991 to 1994 and had not been to Stanford for many years.

Mick & Kester share a joke

 

With a poor weather forecast of heavy rain for most of Saturday morning the prospects for a good session were not good and certainly at 0300 hrs the rain was lashing down but an hour later it had stopped so much so that I set off for the planned meeting at 0430hrs with the other Group members.  On arrival at Stanford, although not raining, it was clear that the windy conditions would restrict us as to the number of nets that we would be able to erect. With the reduced netting, we still managed to ring 60 new birds with 44 retraps.  

A juvenile Sedge Warbler with a deformed bill was of interest and the best retrap of the day was a Garden Warbler ringed by us as a juvenile in 2004 - as such, it is our second oldest of this species to be retrapped at the site.

Juvenile Sedge Warbler with deformed bill

We also had an adult Whitethroat with an extra growth to the upper mandible:

"Tubenose"  Whitethroat

So far this month, with relatively poor weather, we have already exceeded last year’s June total of 317 birds ringed with 549 new birds.

June totals for some species of interest, with June 2010 figures, in brackets are

Sedge Warbler 49 (25)

Reed Warbler 90 (9)

Whitethroat 92 (71)

Blackcap 84 (11)

Tree Sparrow 117 (89)

Linnet 48 (28)

Monday morning John and I made our second visit to a local farm to ring two broods of Swallow that were too young on our previous visit last week.  We also managed to net some of the adult birds as they flew in and out of the building but they soon became wise to what we were up to and managed to find ways round the net.  In total we have ringed 26 pulli and 7 adults there – thanks to Bob and Lisa for allowing us access and for their assistance.