Ringing Roadshow

The arrival of this recent cold weather would usually be enough to deter anyone from venturing outside, but I am not one for being put off by the weather.. Throughout most of last week, I was up in Manchester, helping Kane with some ringing at his feeding stations as I had a few days off from university. From Wednesday onwards, along with Ciaran, we netted two of his feeding stations which resulted in quite a few birds being caught..

Blue, Great and Coal tits were the most abundant species during both sessions, with Bullfinch, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Goldcrest and singles of Redwing and Willow tit making it all worth while. More so was a Goldcrest which was already wearing a ring. A control and the first for Atherton woods feeding station! This bird was later found to have been ringed by the Merseyside Ringing Group, an interesting movement.

Netting the other feeding station proved rather successfull as waiting for us in the net was a Redwing and a Willow tit. The latter, a new handling species for myself. So it was good to get to grips with the ageing criteria for this bird.

During last week, both myself and Ciaran gave Kane a help in hand with his coot project at Pennington Flash, where we met up with Pete Alker resulting in another 5 Coot colour-ringed. The weekend saw us catching Coot, Canada goose, Black-Headed gull and Mute swan up at Westport Lake in Stoke-On-Trent, including several other sites in the surrounding area. A total of 16 new Coot were colour-ringed bringing Kane's 2010 total to a staggering 300 birds.

Congratulations Kane and thankyou for letting me help out throughout the project. Check out:- http://birdringing.blogspot.com/ for more info.

Pictured below: Kane fitting bright pink colour-rings to a Coot - lets hope we have a recovery from somewere far a field!