A busy four hours!

I spent a very busy four hours at Linacre this afternoon, with Ray, my ringing trainer, checking the nestboxes again.

In the four hours we were there we managed to ring another 18 broods, which comprised 6 Great Tits and 12 Blue Tits. The size of the broods ranged from 4 - 10 for the Great Tits and from 3 - 13 for the Blue Tits. In total, we ringed 43 Great Tits and 105 Blue Tits. Added to last week's total of 46 birds (28 Great Tits and 18 Blue Tits), we've now ringed 194 chicks, with another 10 boxes still active! Last year we ringed 166 chicks (pulli), so this year has been much more successful.

A couple of the boxes contained clutches of eggs that were just as they were on our last visit, so they've presumably been abandoned. There were also a couple of boxes with dead chicks. One had been chiselled open by a Great-spotted Woodpecker, whilst one had let the recent rain in and had soaked the eggs through. Very annoying!! One to replace this winter.

As always, the results of today's ringing will be sent to the BTO as part of the Nest Record Scheme, and added to details of other nests from around the country, to see if this success has been repeated elsewhere.

While walking around the site, we also noted 3 juvenile Moorhens, my first Linacre record for 2014.