Linacre Ringing and a nice retrap

The weather forecast for this morning was dry and settled, so I was down at Linacre with 3 other members of Sorby Breck Ringing Group, and my nephew, Luke, for a ringing session. Ringing was steady and in the 3 and a half hours on site we caught 22 new birds of 7 species. Birds caught were (new/retrap): Blue Tit (7/0), Great Tit (5/2), Coal Tit (0/1), Goldcrest (1/0), Robin (2/2), Chaffinch (1/0) and Nuthatch (1/0).

Nuthatch

Whilst ringing at Linacre we often retrap birds that we've previously ringed here. As you can see from the totals above, today we re trapped, amongst others, 2 Great Tits, 1 of which was wearing a B ring. As soon as we see a Great Tit wearing a B ring we get excited, because this means the bird was ringed as a pullus, in the nest (adult birds are ringed with an A ring). Anyway, this afternoon I found out that today's bird was ringed at Linacre Reservoirs, by me, in a nestbox just above the top reservoir, at 7.30pm on Thursday 4th June 2015 (thanks for the details David).  It came from a brood of 5 birds, and this sighting is the first since it was ringed. All the birds ringed in this box fledged successfully, but none of the other birds have been re trapped ... yet. See blog post here for details of the ringing trip. Here's a picture of one of today's Great Tits (can't remember if it's the re trapped bird or not!).

Great Tit

In between net rounds we also recorded the following birds: Kestrel (1), Sparrowhawk (1), Jay, Starling (c.20), Magpie (1), Mistle Thrush (1), Bullfinch (heard), Siskin (heard), Long-tailed Tit (heard), Woodpigeon (10s) and the immature Shag (found on the bottom reservoir by Luke- thanks).