Today dawned chilly, the northerly winds bringing more cold air from Sweden and Norway. The first round of the day seemed relatively quiet - a good number of fuglekonge (goldcrests), a couple of solsort (blackbirds) and a beautiful vindrossel (redwing) - until we got to the second high net near the end of the round and found it full of grønsisken (siskin) once more. We rapidly set about de-birding the net layer by layer, our hands gradually losing sensation due to the damp cold, and then rushed to the lab to get started. Ramón left me ringing while he went around the nets again so as to not leave any birds too long in the cold. I am very happy and proud to have just been upgraded to a C-licence, which is largely due to the excellent tuition I’ve received from Ramón. He is a very patient and generous teacher. So I can now be happily left in charge of ringing on my own in the lab if needs be. Useful when there are just the two of you!

The day settled down after that and we got very few new birds each round from 11am onwards, despite playing a variety of songs to attract them. Around midday we ran to the tip with the scope because we heard that there was a king eider (neither of us have seen one before) in amongst a flock of eiders sitting in the water. Unfortunately we were unable to relocate it as the flock was so far out to sea, but it was nice to have a brief trip up there nonetheless.

Other than that we caught several dompap (bullfinches), which we reckon are some of the most beautiful birds in the garden, and an elegant pair of female stillits (goldfinches). They look very angry in this photo!

As always we are now trying for owls… And as always the data from today are shown below.

Cheers!

Gail