All Northerly

Craig, Ian and I were at Rossall again this morning for another ringing and migration monitoring session at the obs. As yesterday we had clear skies with a steady force 2 northerly wind. The wind wasn't any stronger than yesterday, but it was constant, meaning that a couple of nets struggled to catch anything. Yesterday 4 out of the 34 birds ringed were caught via playback calls and today 14 out of the 22 were caught in this manner. From that you can perhaps deduce that there were some grounded birds around yesterday, but very few today.

We trapped 22 new and 3 retraps as follows:

Wren - 2/1
Greenfinch - 5/0
Chaffinch - 9/0
Great Tit - 1/0
Robin - 1/0
Blue Tit - 1/1
Blackbird - 2/0
Starling - 1/0 (new ringing record for the obs)
Dunnock - 0/1

 Greenfinch

 Starling

 Blackbird

 Chaffinch

There was a little more vis than yesterday and also like yesterday it was all north except for the Swallows and Pink-footed Geese. We had (very approximately) 50 Chaffinch, 15 Meadow Pipits, Reed Bunting, 75 Greenfinch, 25 Collared Doves, 4 Grey Wagtails (we still haven't been able to catch and colour ring any of these for Heysham BO) Goldfinch, Linnet, 14 Tree Sparrows (mega!), 4 Swallows, 340 Pink-footed Geese and 80 Jackdaws (oh, these went south as well).

Other birds included 6 Mistle Thrushes, Great Spotted Woodpecker and Kestrel. No warblers ringed today, although a Whitethroat was in the 'middle' hedgerow. The forecast is looking okay for tomorrow so I'll give it a try again. There were a few arrivals of Redwings further east last night so I will be keeping my ears open tonight.