Linacre birding and ringing

I managed a couple of visits to Linacre this weekend, one for birding and one for ringing.

Saturday's visit was just a quick walk around the reservoirs with the following waterbirds counted: Mallard (121, the highest count of 2015 so far), Moorhen (7), Coot (6), Mandarin Duck (13, also the highest count of 2015), Tufted Duck (24, the highest count of the year), Black-headed Gull (42), Cormorant (1) and Goosander (1 male). The weather was quite sunny too, and Great and Blue Tits were singing. Here's a picture of the field above the top reservoir with just a little bit of this week's snow remaining.

The second visit of the weekend, on Sunday, was the first ringing  session of 2015. There were just 3 of us there, but we still managed to ring 57 birds of 7 species: Dunnock, Nuthatch; 2 new birds, a male and a female, Robin, Goldcrest (2 males), and Blue, Great and Coal Tits.

My personal totals were new/retrap: Blue Tit 8/7, Great Tit 5/5, Coal Tit 0/1, Robin 2/0, Goldcrest 1/0, Nuthatch 1/0.

As always, we managed a bit of bird watching in between net rounds. Today the Mistle Thrushes were very vocal around the ringing site, with 4 different birds seen, including at least one bird singing (first record of the year). A small flock of 5 Redwings flew over, a Kestrel was also seen hunting over the ringing site too and David heard the first "drumming" of the year from a Great-spotted Woodpecker. On the way in at 7.30am I saw a Little Owl in its favourite tree, a  nice "year tick"

Year List update:

62: Little Owl