Monday, October 18, 2021
On the way home from Will’s I stopped off at a Little Owl box to look for activity in the locality. Wonderful, the owl sat close to the box which it often does recently. But it has done the same in previous years without continuing on to actually use the box for nesting. At least I got a few shots in the sunshine and made a mental note to check the box contents in a month or two. It was something of a consolation prize for a slow morning’s ringing. Close to there was also a Yellowhammer in full voice, not at all surprising given the events in the earlier part of the morning.
Little Owl
Little Owl
After the catch of over 30 Siskins 10 days ago coupled with Will’s count of 70/80 in the garden 5 days previously we hoped for a good catch today. But even in that short period things changed so much that it was not only the numbers of Siskin that declined, but also the other finches and Blackbirds. In the last week lots of species have begun to sing as they moved from wintering localities, things pointing to the real beginning of spring.
A three hour session saw us catch 12 birds only:
1 Dunnock
1 Robin
2 Goldfinch
3 Chaffinch
1 Siskin
1 Coal Tit
2 Blackbirds
1 Blue Tit
The finches now sport brighter spring colours, particularly the 3 adult male Chaffinch that we caught with blueing heads and the bright as a button female Goldfinch.
Chaffinch
Siskin
Goldfinch
Will showed me his new Siskin feeder recycled from an old biro and the HP bottle featured on this blog recently, and whilst the Siskin like it, I personally favour the brown liquid on my butties rather than nyger seed.
HPSauce?
Other birds seen this morning included about 8 Siskin in total, 25 Woodpigeons, 2 Nuthatch, 2 Treecreeper, Sparrowhawk, 12 Jackdaw and 2 Grey Heron.
Grey Heron
Will lives close to the Claughton heronry where an estate worker said recently he counted a dozen Grey Heron rather than the normal 40 or so at this time of year. I found a dead Grey Heron just last week which didn’t surprise me given the severity of our winter, so the news from Claughton could prove ominous for recent Grey Heron survival rates.
After the catch of over 30 Siskins 10 days ago coupled with Will’s count of 70/80 in the garden 5 days previously we hoped for a good catch today. But even in that short period things changed so much that it was not only the numbers of Siskin that declined, but also the other finches and Blackbirds. In the last week lots of species have begun to sing as they moved from wintering localities, things pointing to the real beginning of spring.
A three hour session saw us catch 12 birds only:
1 Dunnock
1 Robin
2 Goldfinch
1 Siskin
1 Coal Tit
2 Blackbirds
1 Blue Tit
The finches now sport brighter spring colours, particularly the 3 adult male Chaffinch that we caught with blueing heads and the bright as a button female Goldfinch.
Will showed me his new Siskin feeder recycled from an old biro and the HP bottle featured on this blog recently, and whilst the Siskin like it, I personally favour the brown liquid on my butties rather than nyger seed.
Other birds seen this morning included about 8 Siskin in total, 25 Woodpigeons, 2 Nuthatch, 2 Treecreeper, Sparrowhawk, 12 Jackdaw and 2 Grey Heron.
Will lives close to the Claughton heronry where an estate worker said recently he counted a dozen Grey Heron rather than the normal 40 or so at this time of year. I found a dead Grey Heron just last week which didn’t surprise me given the severity of our winter, so the news from Claughton could prove ominous for recent Grey Heron survival rates.