frustrating day

It's been a frustrating day! Took the day off work and got to Dru for first light to set the nets up, it was dry, overcast with a light easterly after overnight rain - perfect. We hadn't even got the nets all up when a light mizzle started, it got worse, turning light rain, the nets were furled and we only caught a few birds. What made things more annoying was that there were birds coming in off the sea all morning, mainly blackbirds, redwings, fieldfare and a lot of dunnocks as well as wrens, robins, song thrush etc.

As we couldn't ring we birded the whole patch, I flushed a woodcock out of the trees which was the first of the Autumn, there were lots of thrushes, dunnocks and wrens in the bushes.

We walked through the south paddock NT have put in where we are baiting for twite along to the new NWT access, checking the willows. There was a work team in from NWT, the chap in charge (maybe the new head of PR) told us we couldn't walk through there as it was " a demarcated area for the bay...the coonty cooncil are ganna plant trees in there". Hmmmm

What was also disappointing was the amount of firework debris left behind after bonfire night last night. I can understand people wanting to go to coast, nice and dark and no pets to disturb, but they could clear away after them, they even left all of the packaging and their McDonalds wrappers -scum!

By midday we were totally soaked so packed in and headed home.....it's still raining now! I'll go down again at first light tomorrow and check the patch before work.

Highlights

blackbird 50+
redwing 15
dunnock 25-30
woodcock 1
fieldfare 25
wren 22