Some bird ringers, and watchers, will find the following sentence to be quite incredible, even incredulous.  Today's highlight birds were a wryneck and a blue tit; yes equal status and in the same sentence too.  People ring at bird observatories with various motives.  A common motive is to encounter totally new birds.

Stav, an Israeli ringer assures us that blue tits are not found in her homeland and that it was a wish of hers to at least see one and hopefully ring one.  Today that wish came true!  A juvenile blue tit, still exhibiting part of its yellowish facial wash, was a a cause of much delight to her.  And her delight pleased us all.  Her delight became double delight when in the next round she extracted, and then got to ring a wryneck, a bird that she had also wished to encounter here.  This bird delighted us all with its amazing patterns and its "snake charm" neck movements.

We were all pleased with the number of warblers in the first couple of rounds particularly the number of willow warblers.  It is suspected that the thunderstorm and heavy rain during the night may have driven them down into the garden.  

Again there was a notable movement of raptors, particularly sparrowhawks.  Twice sparrowhawks managed to escape from the nets before the running ringer could get to them.  Frustrating?  Yes!  But we know that we will catch some, eventually.

Tonight the team are going to try for tawny owl and nightjars.  Expectations are high, of course.

People at the station: Henrik Jørgensen, Chris sharp, Daniel Bloche, Esben Hansen and Stav Shay.