brewood ringers

We tried a netting session at Belvide yesterday--to see if we could catch any returning migrants in order to see how many birds we ringed in previous years get back to breed, and how many new/passage birds there are. In truth the session was not 'full-on' because we spent most of the time re-establishing the net sites/guys/poles etc with a fairly relaxed start to the day. However, we did manage a reasonable catch with 3 Chiffchaffs--all of which were ringed last year as birds of the year--they clearly managed to migrate to and from southern Europe and back and are now busy becoming parents themselves we hope. There were lots of singing Blackcaps around and one we caught was ringed as an adult male on 23 July last year so presumably it has returned to breed at Belvide. We also caught another 6 unringed Blackcaps, a couple of unringed Dunnocks ( amazing!) and a new Robin. We are planning a series of sessions over the coming weeks to see which other old favourites have come back.