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