brewood ringers

Had a session at our woodland feeder on Thursday which turned up a modest number of birds, but did include yet another Great Spotted Woodpecker, and 3 Redpoll.

Bit of a head cold for me, and lack of enthusiasm from other members of the group--all except Lee--meant that we didn't ensure a large presence at the mixed finch flock session near Worcester on Saturday morning. We missed out big time! They caught 120 Redpoll plus a few other birds. There were 4 birds already ringed elsewhere--and such are the meanderings of this species that it's highly likely that some of the newly ringed birds will turn up in mist nets around the country.

Finally this week, we revisited the small roost where 2 weeks ago we caught over 70 Chaffinches. Our expectation was that we would catch a large number of retraps--given the number we caught last time. Just shows what we know! We caught 63 Chaffinches--not one of which was a retrap from 2 weeks ago. So what is happening? It seems that there is a passage of birds through the site which feels a bit strange since one would think that when birds find a safe roost site, they would stick to it. Early days, so it will be very interesting to monitor how this site develops over the years.