Gripping Groppers!

Saturday 23^rd     

With cool temperatures, no wind and heavy rain overnight the morning drive to Stanford at 0400 hrs was predominantly through fog and augured well for a reasonable morning’s ringing as I met up with Mick, Mike, Dawn and Ed. We got the nets erected within the hour and on the first round, as I approached a line of three 60’s, I was pleased to see that the first bird to be extracted was a Grasshopper Warbler – excellent, a juvenile on the opposite side of the bay from where we had caught three breeding adults and a juvenile earlier in the year and, what’s more, an adult’s reeling call was coming from only a few yards away.  I moved on to the next bird, another juvenile “Gropper”, and then an adult... By the time I had extracted all the birds in the line I had 5 Groppers and an assortment of other warblers.  Back at the ringing base I was amazed to find that Mick & Mike had brought back two more.  After the next round of nets a further two were brought back such that we had an unprecedented nine Grasshopper Warblers to be ringed in a single morning.  With this year’s total now standing at 13 we need to go back thirty years for comparable figures – 1980 (15), 1981 (17) and 1983 (13)

Grasshopper Warbler

We ended the day with 92 new birds and 48 retraps:

 And a Buzzard overhead

Buzzard