Large, medium and small

Here are three birds I met recently.

Woodpigeon (600g)

I caught this Woodpigeon by accident. I decided to try putting up my recently purchased nets to break them in a bit (they are always a bit weird when you use them for the first time), so put one up in the garden in a really obvious position. But it seems this bird wasn't paying attention to where it was going...

Nightingale (21g)

Here's a Nightingale we caught during Constant Effort Site ringing at Paxton Pits.

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (21g)

And here's a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (a juvenile female) caught in Sussex. I didn't get to handle it, but what a remarkable bird!

photos taken with iPhone 4S

Constant Effort baking and ringing

Nightingale!

This morning saw the year's first Constant Effort Site ringing visit to Paxton Pits. And it was a good one - 65 birds of 18 species caught in total, including 13 retraps (birds we'd ringed earlier).

The first bird out of the first net we put up was this Nightingale (probably a female), and we had another later (a male which sang as he flew off when we released him). We also caught Lesser Whitethroat, Whitethroat, Garden Warbler, Blackcap, Sedge Warbler, Reed Warbler, Willow Warbler - but no Chiffchaff. We'll get them later in the season.

It's nice to have a sit down and something to eat during CES ringing (we start pre-dawn and finish around lunchtime). Last year I made a lot of flapjack but this year I'm going to try to produce 12 different baked delicacies.

Today's recipe was pineapple and carrot muffins. They went down well.

photos taken with iPhone

Speckled

Juvenile Green Woodpecker ringed today at Beeston

and a juvenile Nightingale at Paxton Pits

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D or Canon Powershot A640

Rings and tings

Two species newly added to my birds-I've-ringed list: Nightingale and Swift. Special birds.

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640 and iPhone 3GS

Feathery things

I've been doing a bit of ringing lately...

Female Swallow we caught in a mist-net at Beeston, right next to the bird feeders! Don't think she was after sunflower hearts, somehow...

Juvenile Long-tailed Tit

and juvenile Chaffinch, both from Beeston. You can see the primaries are still growing out of their 'pins' (sheaths)

Adult female Starling, whoosh-netted in a Biggleswade garden

She was growing new tail feathers. For Starlings, it's autumn already

Cetti's Warbler at Paxton Pits - the first-ever to be trapped and ringed there

A male Nightingale originally caught at Paxton a couple of years ago

Why does it never rain when you want it to?

Since it was a showery day, I decided to go to Orton Brick Pit to try for Arctic/Black Terns. Of course, there were none (not even any Common Terns). The best and most fascinating bird there by far was a Nightingale.

The strange thing about it was the noise it was making. At first, there seemed to be a Chaffinch calling (the Greenfinchy, wheezy kind of call) and something that sounded like a frog going 'frrrrrrrrrrp!', coming from the same area of vegetation. Then, the Nightingale revealed itself for a few seconds, and it was clearly producing both the sounds, almost simultaneously! Very odd indeed.



We waited in vain for a rain shower to bring down some migrants, but, of course, this failed to materialise. So the next stop was Ferry Meadows, where Mike Weedon had reported a first-summer Little Gull. That was still there, and there were plenty of Common Terns around, a passage of House Martins, Swallows and Swifts, and the usual evening Starling flights from north to south (birds which had been feeding on the Milton estate returning to their nest sites in Orton, or vice-versa?). But no Arctic or marsh terns. And no rain.

Ended up at Eldernell, where it also did not rain. Nice evening for it, though.