Another windy month. The feeders seem to be getting a lot of returning birds, hence retraps outnumbered the new birds. Most interesting capture was a female Blackcap.
Totals: 40 (42)
Woodpigeon - 1
Great-Spotted Woodpecker - 1
Robin - 3 (3)
Dunnock - 3 (7)
Blackbird - 4 (1)
Blackcap - 1
Blue Tit - 13 (24)
Great Tit - 1 (6)
Long-tailed Tit - 5
Chaffinch -1
Goldfinch - 1
Greenfinch - 6 (1)
A session at the feeder site with DKH & FB. An opportunity for experience of new species and plenty of extraction. Amongst the many Blue Tits were some Bullfinch, Greenfinch, Long-tailed Tit, Robin and singles of Goldcrest and Marsh Tit.
A rare return to one of our old stomping grounds for Mute Swan and Black-headed Gull resightings. The number of swan darvics was way down on what it used to be, but we were able to read some metal rings and even connected with a bird that we've been seeing in Windsor since 2018.
The Black-headed Gulls were numerous, thanks to recent cold conditions and this resulted in a darvic marked Polish bird at Truss's Island, three metal ringed birds from three different schemes at Datchet of which we got two complete codes and one minus the last digit. Thankfully the complete reads were both the foreign birds, one from Finland and the other the Netherlands. It took many photos to get the whole numbers.
Ending up at Windsor as rain started and the light began to fail, only one BTO marked gull was seen, but thankfully, fully recorded as the EX prefix seemed to indicate quite an old bird, confirmed by DemOn as ringed 19/03/2011 when adult and seen again almost two years later. That will make a very nice record for the ringer.
Full details on all gulls awaited.
A very chilly morning with the flooded areas remaining frozen throughout our session. The feeders were obviously extremely attractive to the birdlife in these conditions and for our five hours of fieldwork there were only 10 birds from the 5 nets in the beavers' enclosure.
Best part of our day was an impromptu ringing demonstration for some visiting students.
Total: 7 (3)
Blackbird - 1 (1)
Redwing - 1
Wren - 1
Dunnock - 1
Blue Tit - 0 (1)
Marsh Tit - 0 (1)
Lesser Redpoll - 2
Treecreeper - 1
We missed the last CES session due to bad weather so were very glad to manage an outing during CES6, even if it was a particularly cold and frosty morning.
We took a catch of 54 birds, over 20 of these being retraps. Obviously birds that find a good food source keep coming back. Leading species was Blackbird followed by Dunnock. A first for captures at this site was a Moorhen. We do have colour rings for these, however after breaking two (presoaked in hot water) this one departed with just the metal ring.
The cold weather was also bringing Reed Buntings to the site and one of these found a mist net.
#The BTO forwarded details of where and when this bird was ringed today. It is clearly a movement in response to the cold snap we were experiencing at the time. It was ringed just 8 days before on 8th December on Havsoy, Eigersund, Rogaland, Norway.
Captures were down this month, more to do with a sustained spell of extremely windy weather sometimes teamed with rain, than a reduction in birds visiting the feeders. As a consequence of the weather, captures were from the beginning and last few days of the month.
An unexpected visitor was a Marsh Tit, having never even seen one in the garden the capture was a real surprise. There have been a few other reports of Marsh Tits turning up unexpected during the winter period so perhaps they are less tied to their usual habitats , during winter, than generally accepted.
