Avenue Siskin

Taking advantage of the bank holiday we spent a few hours ringing at the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Avenue Washlands site this morning. The weather on arrival wasn't too promising as it was zero degrees with snow flurries. Thankfully the flurries didn't come to anything and we set up  three nets and managed to catch 15 birds over 3 hours.

The highlight of the morning for everyone was, without doubt, a superb adult male Siskin that found its way into the nets mid morning. Although an annual winter visitor to this site, this was the first one caught by the group and made a very nice ringing tick for Stewart. Well done!

Siskin

 

For anyone wanting to know a little more about ageing and sexing Siskins, please follow this link to a very good blog post by The Barley Birder. I don't know this person but the blog is excellent and well worth a read.

My personal totals for this morning were (new/retrap):

Blackbird 0/1 and Chaffinch 1/0