Another day with few birds, despite our best efforts. I think word may have gotten around the bird community that we’ve got nets out and they are avoiding the garden. Either that or all the strong westerly winds we’ve been having this autumn have pushed them all into taking an alternative migration path.

It’s all good though, Ramón and I keep ourselves busy between rounds, being creative, doing yoga, running etc. The temperature has risen again and it’s a beautiful still night, so we have the nets open and are playing tengmalm’s owl calls. Fingers crossed!

Not too much more to say about today – it’s been very quiet on the bird front as you can see below.

Cheers!

Gail

When we went to bed last night the weather forecast for today looked not good for ringing. When we woke up to double check it still looked bad for ringing. After checking the radar we decided that we could open the nets for two hours, so 265 meters of nets were open at 10:00 am. By 12:00 they were closed again, and in these two hours we only ringed a single bird and captured five more birds that were already ringed.

Sadly, there is not much more to say about today. We were studying birds a bit, went for a run and after that, we did some yoga.

For the second consecutive day we are not going to try for owls, it´s a bit windy and we want to be fresh for tomorrow´s ringing.

Find the data of today below.

Best,

Ramón.

In theory today was slightly warmer, but the wind chill meant that it certainly felt a lot colder. The first few rounds were spookily quiet. As we were only finding four or five birds each round, I took over responsibility for the rounds while Ramón stayed cozy and warm to do some work on the computer. I was reaching the end of a particularly empty round - only one robin - and approaching the high net I heard some chirping. I rounded the corner to find the net absolutely heaving with long-tailed tits. A blue tit and great tit had also joined the party. Luckily Ramón was on-call with the walkie talkie! I quickly nipped around the last few nets of the round to check there wasn’t anything else waiting and discovered another net chock-full of long-tailed tits! Needless to say we were very happy with so many birds, especially such lovely birds as these. In total we caught 37, all of the subspecies Aegithalos caudatus caudatus, which has a completely white (fluffy) head. We released them all together which was fun!

This excitment aside, Ramón saw a fieldfare hopping around the garden, but it managed to evade the nets. We are now having an evening off of owl hunting as icy wind and rain is whipping around the house. We’re very cozy inside with the wood burner going!

Data below.

Cheers!

Gail