Linacre Ringing

I spent a few hours down at Linacre yesterday morning with 3 members of the Ringing Group. We put a couple of nets up and managed to catch 37 birds of 9 species, including a new species for Linacre, which was also a ringing tick for me, a Magpie!

Young Magpie

One feature of this session was the number of young birds (3Js), which is very good news. This time last year we were mainly ringing adult birds with very few young birds having survived to fledging. Luckily this year seems much better.

Also interesting were the adult birds under going their post breeding moult, including this male Blackcap that was very tatty...

Blackcap

and this Great Tit.

Great Tit with new tail feathers

 

Birds ringed by me today were (new/retrap):

Magpie 1/0, Robin 1/0, Chiffchaff 1/0, Blue Tit 3/0, Great Tit 4/0 and Bullfinch 1/0.

 

As well as the ringing I also took the opportunity to pick Brian's brain and identify the plant species on site. We managed to record a very impressive 36 species.