Great Morning at the Reservoir

We usually ring on a Saturday, weather permitting. We have recently had a number of excellent sessions, and been moving around the site, starting to ring lots of juvenile birds; our resident birds seem to be having a really good season. These sessions are augmented by midweek ringing, usually with Mick or Adam, both retired, both keen.

Tuesday 12 July was designated as a mid week excursion, and as if by magic, suddenly a big chunk of the team were available! So... Mick and Adam set up in the Paddock, Stuart and Kate ambled over to Blower's Bay, and Dave and I, plus Jade our new trainee, donned waders and staggered into the Leics reedbed.

Everyone had a good morning, M&A ringed 87 new and retrapped 18, S&K ringed 45 new and retrapped 18. These were a good representative bunch of pretty much what we would expect at this time of the year, good numbers of Blackcap, Robin, Chiffchaff, Sedge, Reed and Garden Warblers and sundry others. Very nice.

Over in the reedbed, much to everyone's surprise, things were afoot! Firstly, we ringed a slightly drab 3J female Nuthatch, which was a ringing tick for Jade, as well as being a bird that we don't necessarily catch every year. This was in fact the first for the year! 

At Mick's suggestion, Dave and I put up a 40' two shelfed net out to a patch of shingle, exposed as the water level has dropped. At 0900 I went out and found a large brown bird next to the shore! I promptly extracted it and brought it back:

Wow! the first Moorhen since 2009, and a full adult to boot! I don't think that Jade could believe her luck as Dave helped her put an F ring on, jammy is perhaps the term that springs to mind:

That made it a brilliant session, two new species for the year and loads of Reed and Sedge Warblers. Come 1100 it was time to take down the nets as it was getting warm, and Dave was in need of beer. The final net to come down was a 60' in the scrub leading up to the ringing station. As I trundled over, Jade appeared in a state of agitation- there was a possible bird of prey in the net, let's get a move on! Cripes, what was it? Most likely it would be a Sparrowhawk (we get 2/3 per year), which would be good. Less likely it would be a Kestrel which we get every couple of years, which would be brilliant!

But no, it was something else...

Triple cripes, it was a Hobby, the only one ringed at Stanford ever! Ever! These catch dragonflies and hirundines in mid air for a living and are amazing birds, so quite what it was doing in the lower shelves of a mist net tucked into scrub is a bit of a mystery. Anyway, after some mild exclamations of surprise, I extracted it, which was fun and a bit pecky. Back at the ringing station I asked Dave if he fancied putting a ring on it. He thought about it a bit and decided that on balance he probably did. What a bird! Quite small, but very solid and muscular. We aged it as a five (hatched last year) male:

So that was the third new species for the day. We ringed a total of 80 plus 32 retraps. So the group en masse ringed a grand total of 212 new and 68 retrapped. What a day!

Peter N