A few months ago Nigel Goodgame who ringed with me for years, told me that he would be back on 21st and would like to go ringing on the downs for old times sake. Eleven of us enjoyed a chinese meal with Nige and Sissel the night before. The forecast for today was pretty dodgy with a strong breeze predicted but the site I had lined up for us was again a site well protected from the westerly wind and just happened to be one of Nigels favourite sites. We managed to persuade Graham to come out and help which was great.
So, come Sunday morning we met up with it raining and blowing too strong to put up nets so we sat in the car and put the world to rights and we were joined by Paul W. Just before dawn the rain and wind both subsided enough for us to quickly put up nets, when you have three trainers this is very efficient though Paul did well to hold his own.
Birds immediately started to to appear from everywhere with the catch being dominated by Yellowhammers and Chaffinches. This also became our biggest Greenfinch catch for some time with ten but most interestingly was a leucistic Greenfinch that we were able to age as a first year male.
We were joined by the farmers sister who came to watch us ringing, it is always good for the landowners to be so interested in the birds on their land. We only caught one Corn Bunting out of the 50 that were present but it was great for Nige to be able to ring it as he doesn’t get them in Norway. We ended the morning with a superb 102 new Yellowhammers but we only ringed two Tree Sparrows which is pretty rubbish considering that there were 30 present.
187 ringed with 19 retrapped was a fantastic start to our farmland bird ringing on the Marlborough Downs this winter and it we had a great morning and it was an absolute pleasure to have Nige back out ringing with us. MP, NG, GD, PW
Yellowhammer 102 (10), Tree Sparrow 2, Greenfinch 10, Chaffinch 51 (7), Dunnock 6, Blackbird 1, Song Thrush 2, Robin 5, Blue Tit 6, Great Tit 3 (1), Collard Dove
After ringing it was a pleasure to show Nige around the downs and feed three of our Tree Sparrow sites and one in particular looks incredible with 250 Tree Sparrows, hundreds of Yellowhammers, 100+ Linnets, 50 Corn Buntings and 100 Skylarks.