Bird ringing session

On Saturday I woke up early to go to Cissbury ring in Findon, West Sussex for a bird ringing session, my first in over a month. Arriving at around 6 I walked down the path to the site which is adjacent to farmland. Skylarks were singing, but the yellowhammers song was the loudest and a beautiful male was perched at the very top of the hedgerow.

After setting all the nets up and after a few net rounds, we were off to a good start, with quite a few birds being caught including this brightly coloured greenfinch.

Later on in the morning we caught a young great tit, robins, more greenfinches including a juvenile, whitethroats, young blackcaps, a treecreeper and the first lesser whitethroat of the year. It was interesting to see birds that were starting to moult and one that had finished moulting already. 

Lesser whitethroat

Robin

Treecreeper

It was nice to have a ringing tick of a woodpigeon, which aren't the nicest birds to ring as they are surprisingly strong! Whilst there we saw 2 crossbill fly over, which were identified by their call, a year tick for me. There were also plenty of butterfiles around including the vivid yellow brimstone, meadow brown, ringlet, gatekeeper and small white. Overall we caught 32 birds throughout the morning including only 3 retraps which were 2 blackbirds and a blackcap.

After a long morning we drove home and I sat in my garden. I noticed a lot of activity and feathers on a small conifer that is between my garden and my next door neighboors. After a while watching I approached the tree and noticed a woodpigeon sitting on a nest, after it had left I had a very quick look and to my surprise there was 1 egg and a young pigeon! I am now checking the nest every 4-5 days for the BTO nest record scheme (https://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/nrs) to see how the juvenile gets on!

Woodpigeon nest