Skiving Work

As we hadn't managed to get out with Adam on Tuesday Mick and myself decided to go out ringing today. We both gave our excuses to work colleagues and customers as to why we couldn't work today and met at the railtrack as normal at 5.30.
We decided to put a decent number of nets up in an attempt to catch Redwing and Fieldfare. By the time we had erected all the nets it was dawn. We did manage to get a quick coffee in before starting the first round. Mick went one way I went the other. All MP3 players were warbler-ling out the Latvian lovesong in an attempt to attract the Redwing. My first net only 2 Redwing, disappointing. However by the time I had visited all my nets I had about 15 Redwing a Fieldfare several Reed Buntings and Blackbirds about 25 birds in total. On return to the vehicles Mick was already processing the birds from his nets, also about 25 birds.
With all the birds processed we were off again round the nets. No time for coffee. Again I caught several Redwing, but not as many birds in total as the last round. MP3's were changed from Redwing to calls of Redpoll, Goldfinch and Greenfinch. In the last net before the vehicles I extracted a retrap female Green Woodpecker which was very nice as I hadn't processed a Green Woodpecker before. Dawn always beats me to the good birds. Mind you if she had been there today I would have let her deal with this bird as it decided to claw my hands to pieces!
So after a couple more rounds we took the nets down about 1pm and had a tally up.
112 birds of which 73 were new and 39 retraps. Excellent mornings ringing. The highlights were 26 Redwing, 14 Tree Sparrows, 11 Reed Bunting, a Coal Tit (which is unusual for our site), the Fieldfare and of course the retrap Green Woodpecker.