It’s a good thing that Ramón and I love wrens, because today they far outnumbered robins in the nets. They are these amazing little pellets of energy, zooming around the garden on tiny wings, and we get a lot of joy out of their jizz! It was a very good day in general – the wind finally dropped enough for us to open more nets, and is no longer coming from such an unhelpful direction – meaning that we got a lot of birds (138 new rings), and a very good diversity of species (18 in total). A definite highlight for me was a juvenile female yellowhammer, a species that I have never seen up close and personal, and thus was a new species for me to ring!

We also found a family of long-tailed tits in one of the high nets, and carefully collected up the whole group and then released them together after ringing them. It’s important to release them together as they may not find one another again otherwise.

We managed to catch a couple more sparrowhawks, both male, one first year and the other second year. Two more escaped from the nets before we could get to them, including a very large female who had been carrying her lunch and left it behind in the net – a decapitated redwing. Gruesome!

It has been a very enjoyable day, and exciting to be getting more than just the usual species. We are still holding out for a rarity though!

You can find our species list for today below.

Cheers! Gail