Warblerless

With the weather forecast looking good I decided to go to Stanford for a ringing session on Wednesday morning. On arrival at 6:30 the conditions seemed perfect with no wind and overcast sky so I erected 6 nets to see what was about. This was my first ringing session since returning from holiday in Mexico two weeks ago, and may be my last for a while as next week I'm going to Canada to ring for 6 weeks.

I was hoping for some long awaited migrant warblers at Stanford but, alas, there are none yet about. This year will probably go down as our latest spring ever, as by now we have usually a range of warbler species present.

To say todays ringing was 'a bit slow with a limited range of species' is putting it mildly. I managed a total catch of 42 with just 11 of these being new birds. This was over a 6 hour period and 3 of the nets were at the feeding station - not great!!

On returning home I decided to have a look at last years efforts, and, as it happens, we were out ringing on the 11th April 2012 in much warmer conditions. Then we caught fewer birds (only 31) but we did catch 3 species of  warbler - singles of Blackcap and Chiffchaff, and 7 Willow Warbler.

With the weather forecast for the weekend promising warmer conditions lets hope I can get to grips with some warblers before I leave for Canada (and the wonderfully colourful birds over there).

Mick