Saturday 21 January 2012

Purple Sandpiper!

This weekend I joined up with Steve, Rachel and other ringing enthusiasts for the January session at SCAN. January represents the start of the 2012 SCAN cannon netting season and we kicked it off with a great start.

An early rise on Saturday morning ready for a catch at Rhos point near Colwyn Bay. Our intentions were to try and catch Turnstone during the morning and our efforts were certainly rewarded. Throughout the morning 2 catches were made at Rhos point on different sections of beach. Good numbers of Turnstone, Oystercatcher, Dunlin and Redshank were caught as well as 1 Purple Sandpiper. An absolutely gorgeous bird to ring and as always, it was great to get to grips with the ageing criteria for this species.

Ringing and processing took place underneath the wall at Rhos point and with a nice large team, everything ran quickly and smoothly during the morning.

Sunday morning I decided to take a day off and catch up with some work, but a catch was made in Bangor harbour where good numbers of Redshank were caught, along with several Oystercatcher and 2 welcome Grey Heron.

Huge thanks to Steve and Rachel and the rest of the team for a very enjoyable weekend. It was also great to meet Charlie Sargent (a follower of the blog), on Saturday and I will hopefully see you again soon. Best of luck with your training Charlie!

2 comments:

  1. Great blog Chris even for those not present. It was good experience for me from knowledgeable people including you. Looking forward to February

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  2. Thank you very much for the kind comments Charlie! I am very glad you enjoyed the weekend :-) See you in February! Cheers Chris

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