Visitors and a Busy Day

Sunday, August 20th 2017

Foxglove welcomed members of the Army Ornithological Society for the weekend.  Plans were laid to carry out CES 11 on Saturday and then ring at another site on Sunday, but as usual the weather had not read the plans.  Yesterday they visited the coast as it was far too windy to ring.  Today they helped complete CES 11.

As I have said many times before I am not good at taking photos of people, so apologies for this one, showing some of the ringers working today.

It was certainly a day of juvenile birds.  Over 130 new birds were ringed, most being juveniles.  There were very few adults, which is understandable, as the adults are moulting and so hiding away.  Some adults that did arrive in the ringing room, looked a little worse for wear, having lost feathers and new ones still in pin.  Young Bullfinches are beginning their post juvenile moult and their heads are beginning to show new black feathers.

For some weeks, few Blackbirds have been processed but three arrived today.  Even as youngsters you can tell if they are going to be male, a black tail, or female, a brown tail, but this one had everyone puzzled, as it was ginger!

Chiffchaffs are still on the reserve but no Willow Warblers were caught.  Our first juvenile Redpoll was ringed.

We also had another vistor.  John photographed a Cormorant flying over the lake.

It was a busy day and many thanks go to all the bird ringers and helpers who worked hard throughout the day.

Bird wings work in unison, but dragonfly wings do not.  This photo shows all four wings, pointing in four different directions.

PS - The ringing team have arrived home from Dividal in Norway and we are looking forward to hearing of their visit.  They ringed over 1000 birds of a variety of species.

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