Avenue Ringing - 7th February 2016

After a few weekends of wet and windy weather, I managed to get out with 4 other members of Sorby Breck Ringing Group for a ringing session at Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's Avenue Washlands reserve in Chesterfield. We managed  nearly 3 hours and caught a very respectable 39 birds of 11 species (Jay, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Bullfinch, Yellowhammer, Reed Bunting, Lesser Redpoll, Willow, Blue and Great Tit).

The first bird in the net was a Jay, which I get the "pleasure" of extracting. Over the next few hours we continued to extract and process the birds, with an amazing 17 Bullfinches, being the most numerous species of the day. We also had a couple of Yellowhammers, including an amazingly bright adult male, 4 Reed Buntings and a couple of Lesser Redpolls- nice!

3 of the species we caught today were "year ticks", which took me over the 100 mark for 2016.

Year List update:

99 – Jay

100 – Willow Tit

101 - Yellowhammer