Who needs Prince Charles when we've got MARTY!!

Mighty Marty to the rescue.... As Prince Charles and Camilla didn't visit Dru on Friday to see the dead and dying sticklebacks - the forgotten victims, nay, heroes of last weekends floods, it was left to a superhero to save the day...Mighty Marty. On seeing the poor creatures plight, mighty marty scoured the beach for a plastic bottle which he then fashioned into a nifty fish-rescuing device to extract the survivors from the quickly diminishing pool. The world needs more Marty's!

As for the birds, well the highlight of the day, surpassing yesterdays rb shrike and for me equally as thrilling as last weeks greenish was a wryneck ITN (in the net). We found it on the third net round, in the most northerly net.....geddin. Wrynecks are just fantastic birds in the hand, I've seen them before in Malta in the hand but never in Britain and as JF had already done them, I got to ring it too!






Wryneck's not a patch tick, BB found one a few years ago in the entrance willows, I think it was the last year of the patch comp. Check out this vid of it wrynecking.

Ringing was steady otherwise, we caught 33 birds of 14 species with 2 retraps...not bad considering we didn't have all the nets up. Jf got a sprawk when I was away taxiing my folks about...grrr...There wa slots of viz-migging going on this morning, I'm not very good at this as I am tone-deaf (too much heavy metal music), there were hundreds of mippits first thing, a constant movment of groups of 20-50 birds. Pied and yellow wags also moved south. The latter part of the day was spent creating a new net ride at the north end.

Sprawk

Dru was very busy today, at 10ish, some people turned up in a 4X4 with the worlds biggest BBQ, Blakey managed to get this pic. Unlike last weeks quad-bikers, the BBQ pushers failed to get there kit through the gap in the fence, so left in stranded with one of those cheap'n'nasty gazebo's over it - classy! Whoever they were, they were popular, there were at least 40-50 cars there...maybe it was Mike Ashley? Anyhoo it created parking chaos, along with most of the county's birders and photographers turning up at some time to see yesterdays shrike, all of who no doubt got better piccies than me.

MASSIVE BBQ

Anyhoo that's it from me for a week or so, I'm off to Fife tomorrow for work then Tenerife for a week (if Jet2 haven't gone bust by then) to catch up with some endems, sunshine and topless tottie!

T'ra for now!

Ringing totals:

goldcrest 6
linnet 1
wren 3
willow warbler 5
robin 3
redstart 2
wryneck 1
goldfinch 4
song thrush 2
chiffchaff 1
sparrowhawk 1
whitethroat 1
spotfly 1
blue tit 2

wryneck 146