Woodland ringing and a lakeside walk.

Out and about again this morning with the guys from the Sorby Breck Ringing Group. This week we were back in the woodland garden in Chesterfield, where we were kept very busy with 77 birds, of which only 4 were retraps.

As well as carrying out the identification, ageing and ringing of over 20 birds,  I got more practice extracting birds again this week,including new species such as Goldfinch and Chaffinch.

Birds ringed by me today were as follows (new/retraps): Great Tit 9/0, Blue Tit 5/1, Dunnock 1/0, Coal Tit 4/0, Goldfinch 1/0 and Goldcrest 1/0 ( a lovely male bird).

After the ringing I went out to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park with Jayne where we had a walk around the newly re-opened Upper Lake. The trees were looking super with their autumnal colours and there were lots of woodland birds flitting about. The highlight of the walk, however, were the 2 Kingfishers we spotted perched up and fishing from the lakeside reedbeds. Gorgrous birds!

Here are a couple of pictures of the lake and heronry.

Weir and Lower Lake

 

Heronry and Kingfisher perch?