Rewarded with Ridibundus

Photographed by Zac Hinchcliffe

Seeing as though we had entered the start of a new month, the night before we made a decision to head up to the Lake District to do some ringing at Bowness-on-Windermere.. Getting a good night's sleep the night before was essential as we were up rather early on Tuesday morning and on the train to Preston before 8am..

Photographed by Zac Hinchcliffe

Meeting up with Ciaran and Chris Piner at Preston train station shortly after, the 5 of us headed up to the Lake District to try and catch some gulls and geese.. On arrival, it seemed quite quiet with very few birds around, but throughout the day, things began to liven up.

The main aim of this trip was to try and catch a Black-headed Gull to kick-start the new colour-ringing project - more on this tomorrow! Ciaran successfully hand-caught an adult and seeing as though this was the first bird of the project, we were all exceptionally happy, especially Ciaran and Kane.. This bird was metal ringed and then had a darvic added to it's left leg, biometric data collected and the bird was released - go far my friend!

There was also a very confiding 1st-winter Common gull which was again hand-caught by Ciaran. Also caught during the day were 1 Mallard, 1 Greylag goose and 4 Canada geese. When we are ringing at Windermere, all of our birds that we catch are caught by hand and as we were introducing Zac to this method, he was keen to give it a go and successfully caught a male Mallard!

We also gave the Mute swans here a thorough check, in which we checked that all metal rings were in good condition and that the Darvics were not damaged - resulting in 53 birds being caught and processed.

Arriving back in Preston late afternoon, we said our goodbyes to Ciaran and Chris, whilst Kane and Zaz headed back to Atherton and I headed back to Ormskirk, to visit the parents and to catch up with some washing..

On the Wednesday, myself, Zac, Kane and Ciaran went for a meal in Manchester and a drink, mainly because Ciaran will be leaving us shortly. Ciaran is starting a new job on the Farne Islands in Northumberland as an Assistant Warden for 6 months, so when we will see him again who knows..?

I wish you the best of luck with your new job mate and hope everything goes to plan, I shall be up to see you sometime during the spring and autumn for a light spot of birding!!

After ringing constantly since Friday 25th February, it was finally time to depart and head back to North Wales on the Thursday morning accompanied with Zac.. Huge thanks to Kane for inviting us along for the week, Janine for her kind hospitality, Chris Piner for doing all the driving to the Lake District. See you all soon lads!!!