Damp Start

The weather forecast for yesterday (Saturday) wasn't conclusive as to what it would actually do, so we took the decision to try and ring today rather than yesterday. 

So, I gave the England game a dodge and got up at 4.30am to light 'mizzle', I went back to bed with the alarm set for five. It was much brighter at 5am so I set off to put some nets up. No sooner where the first two nets up when the mizzly, drizzly, rain set in again.

Nets furled, we headed to the Budge screen and met up with James 'Tintin' Common who had walked down to ring with us. A single immature spoonbill mostly slept on the Budge fields was all of note. We headed up to the Oddie hide and ringed a brood of two swallows.

It brightened up by 8am so we un-furled the nets and put some more up. We didn't ring a lot of birds, but were kept going, catching 12 new birds, six retraps and the 'control' dunnock we have caught in previous weeks.

reed warbler

This reed warbler was probably today's highlight. We re-trapped another willow warbler that was ringed as fledgling last July, re-trapping warblers is always good. Four new sedge warblers was notable, it is a good year for this species at Druridge

Ringing totals (re-traps in brackets) were:

swallow 2 pullus

robin 3 (all fledglings)

sedge warbler 4 (2)

chaffinch 3

reed warbler 1

dunnock 1 (1 control)

willow warbler (1)

wren (1)

reed bunting (1)

After we packed up the ringing site, I had a half-hour seawatch, but recorded little of note. On Saturday afternoon I had half-an-hour seawatching and saw my first arctic skua and roseate terns of the year.

Butterflies today and yesterday included painted lady, speckled wood, large slipper, small tortoiseshell and wall.

large skipper on vipers bugloss

This interesting spider was my car wheel this morning

interesting spider

134 arctic skua

135 roseate tern