Easter Eggs

The weather looked ok for mist netting at Winterton on Sunday morning, so the team arrived at 6am and erected 10 x 60' nets to give them an airing if nothing else !
The wind was light first thing, however with the sun coming up the wind freshened to a moderate NW and stopped anything moving.
  The first round produced mostly retraps from last year, so it was time to see if we could tally today's retraps with the original ringing data ! This was done with the usual debates.

The consultations begin!

We ended up with 27 new birds and 22 retraps, with the first Willow Warbler and Chiff's of the year being caught. The surprise was catching some Goldfinch,  a species we rarely catch here.

Two ends of the spectrum, Adult (6) Male and First Summer (5) Female

Species list for the session as follows, retraps in brackets ;

WREN  (2)  with one from 2008 

DUNNOCK  4 (4)

ROBIN  1 (3) one from 2006

BLACKBIRD  1 (2) one originally ringed in 2007 and also retrapped in 2008 and 09
CHIFFCHAFF 2 (1) ringed September 2009

WILLOW WARBLER 1

LONG TAILED TIT 2 (3)

BLUE TIT 1 (4)  one ringed as a chick in a nest box 23/05/2006

GREAT TIT 1 (2)

TREECREEPER 1

CHAFFINCH 5 (1)

GOLDFINCH 8

5 Male Chiffchaff

The retrap  Chiffchaff was originally ringed in September 2009 as a bird of the year (3).

 It poses an interesting question, is it a bird that has wintered here or has it  migrated south and already returned ? Answer's on a postcard please.

Willow Warbler

The only other interesting sighting was of a Treecreeper nest building  in a dead tree neaby.

On the subject of nests .........

Later on in the afternoon, at home, the annual Easter Egg Hunt was started.

A new species for the garden !

2 Blackbirds were found both with 4 eggs , so the first Nest records for 2010 have been started.

Lets hope for a good breeding season.

Blackbird