One of the great things about ringing is that you can experience something new, no matter how long since you trained and got your permit. This session is a good example, a site where we've done similar sessions before over the last few years, but this time it was different.
Chris went of lamping after we'd got a 12m and 15m owl net combination up and I settled down to wait. I didn't hold out much hope of a capture as the thermal imager wasn't picking up any owl activity at all. After 25 minutes I went to the net and as expected found no owls. On rechecking the net with the thermal, once getting back to the car I could see a heat signature, but it wasn't an owl and didn't look right for a bat either. It turned out to be a Starling. The extraction was difficult from the 60mm mesh net, but 15 minutes later it had been extracted, ringed and released southwards away from the sea wall.
I couldn't believe it when just a few minutes later there was a similar heat signature from the net. Another Starling that had entered from the seaward side. Thankfully, this extraction was easier and as my headlight was apparently attracting incoming migrating Starlings the nets were pushed up before processing the bird. I had no wish to get more Starlings, singles were bad enough and there are large numbers of Starlings that we usually see around this site at this time of year, so arriving birds could be in quite sizable flocks.
Once the bird had been processed and released I got the nets in to avoid catching anymore.
Chris returned and was surprised to see the nets in and the equipment all by the car. He had returned with a couple of Skylarks, a Snipe and a Woodcock. Not a bad result for his first lamping sortie of this winter, but I'll have to wait for my first owl.
Total:
Skylark -2
Snipe - 1
Starling - 2
Woodcock - 1