16/07 - Fleet Pond CES

We had a few extra hands this morning so we were able to set up a couple of additional nets on top of the CES nets. It was a fairly steady morning but never busy finishing with 31 new birds and 11 retraps.

It was good to see most of the birds today were juveniles including 9 more 3J reed warblers.

               This adult female green

               woodpecker provided

               a bit of interest too

11/07 Fleet Pond

A brief visit to the pond on Thursday after work to ring the term and gull chicks out on the recently created islands.

To minimise disturbance we will only have one ringing visit to the colony and we tried to time this to get the majority of the common tern chicks. We had seen a maximum of 8 adults sitting and we managed to ring 10 chicks (likely around half the possible number of young).

                      Common tern

In addition we also managed to find and ring 6 black headed gull chicks. All birds were also colour ringed (apart from the odd one which was too small) so we hope people will keep an eye out for them. 

                    Black headed gull

This is the first time these birds on the islands have been ringed so we are keen to see how this new colony develops. 

Finally, many thanks to Tim Ball for joining us and adding these birds to his colour ringing project.

06/07 - Fleet Pond

I arrived at 4am on site to set up after a bit of an eventful drive in. A car being chased by the police decided to hit mine while trying to get by. Luckily nobody was hurt at all and the damage was minimal considering.

It seemed that was where the excitement stopped today though as the final tally for the CES visit was 5 new birds and 10 retraps. With only 4 juveniles for the session.

              Misty start over the pond

I did have to watch my step though as there were hundreds of young frogs hopping about all the net rides.

29th June - Puffin Island

No ringing at any of our regular sites this weekend as we travelled up to North Wales to join the ringing group heading over to Puffin Island for a day of seabird ringing as part of their ongoing studies on the island. 

We had superb weather and a good team so by the end of the afternoon we had processed a little under 700 birds (dominated by cormorants, shags and razorbills).

Many thanks again to Steve and Rachel for hosting us.

       Louise with one of the few puffins 

       of the day

On the Sunday we took the chance to have a day in Snowdonia and had a short walk up Y Garn before heading back just in time to hit all the Grand Prix traffic.

     View from halfway up Y Garn. The 

     view from the top was distinctly

     cloudy.