It is that time of the year where the winter feeding flocks of resident birds have broken up, some of the winter flocks are still around and summer migrants are on their way in. To put it another way: it can be pretty quiet. The Firs this morning lived up to that expectation. We had a team of four: Jonny, Ellie and Annie joined me.
There has been a lot of work done in the Firs, continuing on from the opening up of the central glade and the digging of the wildlife ponds three years ago, opening up new rides and glades, and the plan for ringing there over the summer is to start testing to see if these changes have had any impact on what is using the wood. As (previously blogged) we caught two juvenile Spotted Flycatchers there in August last year, I will be interested to see if that was just an on passage drop in, or if there is something more exciting going on.
The list for today was; Treecreeper 1(1); Blue Tit 2(2); Great Tit 5(3); Marsh Tit (2); Wren 1(2); Robin (1); Chiffchaff 8; Chaffinch 1; Goldfinch 1. Totals: 19 birds ringed from seven species; 11 retrapped from six species, making a total of 30 birds processed from nine species. Highlights from the catch were: the recapture of two Marsh Tits ringed last autumn; a nice early group of Chiffchaffs and an aged Treecreeper.
The Treecreeper was one of the first ringed by me at the Firs, on the 10th March 2013. It was ringed as an adult, which means that it has survived for four years since ringing (it has not been retrapped in between times) but was at least eighteen months old at the time of ringing. Not bad for a bird with a normal lifespan of two years, but a way to go before it reaches the record of eight years and eighteen days. It still looks pretty smart to me:
Of the eight Chiffchaffs caught, four of them had what we call pollen horns:
Jonny has a hankering to collect these and try to identify which plants the pollen comes from. If anybody happens to catch any Chiffchaffs with the aforesaid pollen horns and can separate the pollen from the bird without damaging it, Jonny would be very grateful. ST/JC/EJ/AH