Thursday 22 October 2015

County bird ringing

Hello

During the last few weeks members of the Northants Ringing Group have been active in and around the county. Chris Payne has been ringing down in South Northants at Bradden and Silverstone and has been catching a nice selection of birds including some stunning Nuthatches. John Woollett has been catching birds at Stortons Gravel Pits with team members and birds caught have included Redwings which are arriving and passing through in good numbers now. Kenny Cramer has been working hard at his new site down at Linford Lakes on the edge of Milton Keynes and has been catching good numbers of a variety of species and this new site is now looking very productive. Dave Francis in the meantime has been busy at Pitsford Res with his trainees, and the feeding station is producing good numbers of Tree Sparrows, a couple of Redwings and some latish Chiffchaffs among others.

Our colleagues over at Stanford Reservoir have been spending long periods of ringing and this has paid off with some scarce birds including a couple of Firecrests, a Yellow-browed Warbler and an 'eastern' Lesser Whitethroat as well as a hat-full of more common species, particularly warblers.

On 1st November a ringing demonstration is planned for the old railway reserve at Woodford Halse over in the west of the county, and it is hoped to carry out some more ringing soon at Harrington Airfield.

We have been informed of a number of recoveries from the Ringing Unit at the BTO recently. One of these referred to a Lesser Redpoll, a species particularly renown for producing excellent data. This individual was first ringed as a first year bird at the village of Spratton in March 2013 and was caught again by a ringer operating at Leighton Moss Silverdale, Lancashire on 12th October 2015. An excellent example of the nomadic nature of some birds, even tiny ones like Lesser Redpoll!

Regards

Neil M



Nuthatch

Treecreeper

Redwing

All images courtesy
of Chris Payne

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