Wednesday 9 March 2011

More Redpolls!!

Yesterday's ringing session over at Rindle Road, catching Yellowhammers was a great start to the week's ringing. On Sunday morning, the 4 of us {Kane, Ciaran, myself and Zac} had a leisurely morning's mist-netting over at Michael and Mary's Garden in Worsley - Greater Manchester.

We have visited this garden twice before as this is where we have caught large numbers of Redpolls that are feeding on the Niger feeders.

Take a look at these 2 posts at the large number of Redpolls caught in the garden amongst other species:- http://traineebirdringing.blogspot.com/2011/01/raining-redpolls.html and
http://traineebirdringing.blogspot.com/2011/01/mealy-steals-show.html.

Throughout the morning we caught 21 birds of which 14 were new and 7 re-traps. A Sparrowhawk unfortunately managed to avoid capture..

New birds - 6 Lesser Redpoll , 4 Goldfinch, 1 House Sparrow, 1 Starling, 1 Great-Spotted Woodpecker and 1 Siskin.
Re-traps - 6 Lesser Redpoll and 1 Mealy Redpoll.

We were lucky enough to re-trap the Mealy {Common} Redpoll from previous visits, which was nice to find that it had stuck around for the winter. A male Siskin also brightened up the morning as it was a new species to be ringed in the garden. This mist-netting session was also a good opportunity for Zac to practise extracting birds, as he has recently started to train to ring birds with my trainer, Steve Dodd. Huge thanks as always to Michael and Mary for allowing us to ring in their garden again and for the lovely cups of tea and coffee provided throughout the morning.

Great-Spotted Woodpecker, Siskin and Lesser Redpoll and Group shot all photographed by Zac Hinchcliffe..

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