Blackburn Meadows - 4th February 2012

Wow, was it cold this morning! I was up and out at 6.45am this morning to join up with several other members of the Sorby Breck Ringing Group for a ringing demonstration at Blackburn Meadows in Sheffield. On arrival the car's thermometer read minus 5degress and by the end of the session it had only risen to 0 degrees.

The reedbed at Blackburn Meadows

This site, is a new one for me  and, after a week of freezing conditions the open water was frozen solid. This meant there weren't any waterbirds seen on site, but a couple of Mallards flew over, as did 2 male Goosander and a Grey Heron.

Despite the cold conditions we put out 3 nets within the reedbeds and very soon starting catching birds. Because there were ten ringers present, we kept doing almost continous "net rounds" which meant the birds were very soon proccessed and released so they could get back to the feeding sations.

By the end of the morning we'd had an amazing 74 birds, of which I had handled 14. My totals for today were, new(retraps):

Long-tailed Tit (1), Reed Bunting 5, Wren (1), Great Tit 3 (1), Blue Tit (3), Greenfinch 1

Long-tailed Tit