brewoodringers

The winds have calmed down and still cold conditions are gradually settling in--which means a return to some ringing activity. We have recently established a feeding station in a nearby woodland area and birds are beginning to find it. Over the last couple of weeks we have caught the usual large number of tits--including around 30 Coal Tits, but other species are building. We've had a Chaffinch bearing a German ring, and numbers of Siskin, Redpoll and one or two Brambling are gathering although we have only caught small numbers of these. 3 different Great Spotted Woodpeckers have increased the excitement--and caused significant damage to the fingers of our trainee ringers!

We have tried a couple of times for the Reed Buntings in the Gazebo Bay reedbed roost at Belvide, but numbers are rather small and we caught only 9 new birds on Friday evening. Unfortunately there is no Starling roost this year.

Garden feeding stations are very variable--with most people reporting very small numbers feeding. However at a garden in Brewood, we are feeding large numbers of Greenfinch and Goldfinch--tomorrow is our first catching attempt so we should get an idea of how many are coming to the sunflower hearts--more news of this later.