Outrageous October

Masai Mick reflects on the last month

A ‘scintillating’ September has been followed by an ‘outrageous’ October, a month in which we’ve ringed 933 birds of 31 species. 

Warblers continued to move through Stanford at the start of the month in reasonable numbers.  They then stopped for a week or two, before a few more Blackcaps appeared.  We’d like to think these later birds are of German origin.  Wouldn’t it be wunderbar if someone would recover one to confirm the theory!

During early October, Blue and Great Tits started to build up again at the feeding station.  We suspected that this was due to post juvenile dispersal and, on cue, we got a control Blue Tit (L263891) on the 5th followed by another (L263932) on the 14th.  Both birds were from the same series of rings and with a bit of detective work determined they had been ringed at Geddington near Northampton.

We’ve also had an impressive passage of finches, notably Greenfinch (149 ringed), Goldfinch (85) and Lesser Redpoll (94).  None of the ringed birds were subsequently retrapped.  On the 29^th, we controlled a Lesser Redpoll (P545435), which we have discovered was probably ringed in Telford.  We also controlled a Chaffinch (Y184175) on the same day (our sleuthing skills deserting us on this ring, so we’ll just have to wait for the BTO to tell us who’s it is – unless you know?!) 

We must also mention the good old Tree Sparrow - this month we have ringed 128 of these birds and also controlled a colour ringed one (TR27180).  It’s a record year for this species at Stanford – we should soon comfortably reach 500 birds ringed.

But what has happened to the thrushes?  We saw a flock of 1500 Redwing mid month but very little since.  Blackbird and Song Thrush are non-existent whilst we have only had the occasional 50-100 Fieldfare overhead.

Our October ringing totals can be viewed here October Stats