Having the day off work meant that I hadn't bothered with trying to dodge the rain over the weekend although depressingly the weather forecast was for temperatures at -2° with thick fog all day. As this ringing site is the lowest point for some miles around and is generally a fog magnet this sort of forecast usually means nets that freeze hard enough to bounce a brick off. Thankfully the few mist patches in the distance came to nothing and we enjoyed a sunny bright day.
With the 30mm large mesh nets set for Redwing's and the Latvia lure playing the first net round produced 28 and the next couple of rounds got another 16. Then with the sun shining on the nets the Redwing's dried up.
It was also quite a good day for finches with Greenfinch and Chaffinch both in decent numbers. Interestingly there were again no Lesser Redpoll's despite this being the peak time to catch them here and not only haven't we caught any this Autumn, we've not even heard any flying over.
As the morning was the first heavy frost it was no suprise that Chiffchaff's were on the move and we managed to catch 3 in the reedbed although we couldn't turn them in to anything more interesting than normal colybitta.
I decided to stay on to do a thrush roost so spent a few hours in the afternoon processing the odd few birds until it got dark. The roost itself produced another 12 Redwing and a Song Thrush but despite playing a Fieldfare lure none were caught and very few were around. Todays catch of 58 Redwing's now takes me to over 200 for the year.
A decent day with 118 new, 33 retraps. GD/PD
Great Spotted Woodpecker 1, Wren 1, Dunnock 1(1), Robin (1), Blackbird 1(1), Song Thrush 2, Redwing 58, Chiffchaff 3, Goldcrest 1, Long Tailed Tit 5(4), Blue Tit 4(6), Great Tit 5(11), Chaffinch 14(3), Greenfinch 16(4), Goldfinch 4(1), Bullfinch 1(1), Reed Bunting 1
