Three visits to the patch over the weekend...
STILL NO COWS!!!!!
I did my WeBS count on Saturday morning because I was expecting to be ringing somewhere this morning. Three common sandpipers where a highlight and a year tick and two drake scaups were nice too. Despite there being very little to see, it was standing room only in the Oddie hide, even some visiting birders from Norfolk. Christ knows what they must've thought of Druridge given the quality of reserve management they are used to down there.
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| common sandpiper - welcome year-tick |
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| two drake scaup |
On the silage field, two whimbrel were amongst the curlews and a look offshore produced sod all.
Later in the day we returned to do some net-ride maintenance, the coppiced alders can be watched visibly growing at this time of year, some morons were setting up camp at the north end, we didn't take much notice of them....
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| me...hard at work |
This morning, despite a strongish SW wind, we decided to ring at Druridge, we've not had much of chance lately so it would be good to try and catch some juvenile birds - which we did - not many though....
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| juvenile willow warbler |
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| juvenile blue tit - evilness must be with them from hatching |
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| This juvenile blue tit had deformed lower-mandible - one of two. |
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| juvenile robin |
We caught 15 birds in total, not much for our efforts, but we were a few nets short, remember the camping morons.... when Janet went to put up the top nets she couldn't find the poles so they didn't go up and the campers were still hanging about, later investigation, after the they had packed up one tent and left the other behind revealed the truth - the bastards had burnt four of our bamboo poles, about £20-£30 worth. It's a shame the smoke wasn't highly poisonous.
The scruffy shit-heads left behind all of their crap when they went too. Impalement on a sharpened bamboo pole is too good for these idiots!
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| the remains of four bamboo canes |
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| crap |
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| more crap |
There were good numbers of butterflies about today, mostly browns and small skippers with a few blues and my best ever count of dark-green fritillarys - 3!
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| dark-green fritillary - record shot |
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| meadow brown |
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| swallowtail moth |
128 common sandpiper
Ringing totals:
dunnock 3
blackcap 4
robin 2
great tit 2
willow warbler 1
blackbird 1
blue tit 2
I help out a ringer ipin. Our site has much in common with yours. IE we have to hide our poles away as the local yoofs do exactly as yours do - get pissed and burn everything!
ReplyDeleteInteresting Blue Tit :-)