A trip down to the Solent saw us with the Farlington RG team at Weston Shore at the reasonable hour of 7.45 to set up to two nets for hopeful, Brent Goose catch. After setting the cannons, all we had to do was too find the Brents that were nowhere to be seen as the tide was quickly rising. Fortunately 40 odd were by the sailing club and after encouraging them to move a little closer, a small group decided that the area in front of the nets was a suitable area to fed thankfully as time was running out quickly. A catch was taken with both nets resulting a decent catch which could have been easily a lot worse. The catch was 20 Brent Geese (12 new), 5 Oystercatchers (4 new) and two new Black-headed Gulls. The Oystercatchers were all colour ringed as part of an on-going project in the Solent and all the Brents were also colour ringed as part of a Dutch study (see http://www.geese.org/Ganzen/index.jsp).
Processing the Oystercatchers (all 6s) and colour-ringing.
Brent Goose processing and colour ringing. Because they carry two colour
rings on each leg they are not fitted with a BTO ring.
The release as a group
Putting the equipment away