More Mealies at the Feeders

A short morning session at the UEA feeders was quite productive, highlights being 2 Mealy Redpolls, a Jay and a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Mealy Redpolls (left hand bird wing 77mm, right hand bird 75mm)

Mealy and Lesser Redpoll

This photo shows nicely how we ages this bird as a 5 (a bird hatched in the previous calendar year). Red arrows showing unmoulted 'Juvenile-type' feathers (the outer alula, all the primary coverts and the outer greater covert) Notice how the pattern of the bands across the primary coverts is the same on each feather showing they were grown at the same time. Green arrows show new 'Adult-type' feathers (second Alula and greater coverts).

Totals 

New birds (retraps in brackets)

Blabi 6(3)

Lesre 5(4)

Comre 2

Grefi 4

Bluti 3(16)

Dunno 0(2)

Robin 2(5)

Grswo 0(1)

Bramb 1

Greti 2(11)

Jay 1

Lotti 2

Frosty morning riverside session!

A good short ringing session this morning at the campus river site, despite us all being freezing and extremities becoming occasionally numb! 

30 new birds and 49 retraps, consisting mostly of everyones favourite feisty blue tits, with the highlights being a few long tailed tits, five new blackbirds some nice 6 male chaffinch and a lovely 5 female bullfinch. 

Photo below showing a nice contrast between the new iridescent gc's and old buffy tipped ogc's.

Crow Trap!

With decent numbers of corvids roosting in the Blackdale Woods on campus (recent estimates being 1300 birds involving 60% Jackdaw, 30% Rook and 10% Carrion Crow per LON) A few of us spent Friday morning making a crow trap to see if we can catch a few!

It only took an hour or so and there's still a bit of work to do before its finished but hopefully it will work. The design is slightly more 'heligoland' than traditional crow trap, the idea being that birds can be driven to end of the funnel and extracted.