Linacre Ringing - 25th November 2017

Last Saturday saw 5 members of the Sorby Breck Ringing Group down at Linacre for a ringing session. The weather was a bit blustery, with a few rain/sleet showers and a temperature of just 4 degrees, so, as you can guess, the ringing was slow. After 3 hours we'd caught just 9 birds of 5 species, namely (new/retrap): Blue Tit (3/1), Great Tit (1/0), Coal Tit (1/0), Goldcrest (2/0) and Dunnock (0/1).

Other birds recorded on the ringing site were: Redwing (20+ over), Fieldfare (12, the first of the winter), Long-tailed Tit, Bullfinch (heard), Chaffinch, Jay (2 seen), Magpie (1), Blackbird, Song Thrush (1 seen) and Kestrel ( 1 hunting over the site).

Whilst there, my nephew, Luke had a quick walk around the bottom and middle reservoirs were he recorded: c.20 Black-headed Gulls, 12 Mandarin Ducks, Mallard, 1 Great-crested Grebe and 2 Cormorants.

Linacre - 11th November 2017

It's been a while since I was last at Linacre, but today I was down on site for a couple of hours with my nephew, Luke.

We arrived at 7.40am, and walked around all 3 reservoirs. Waterbirds seen were: Mallard (69), Tufted Duck (12), Mandarin Duck (2), Little Grebe (2), Great-crested Grebe (1), Coot (5 adults), Moorhen (16; 11 adults and 5 well grown juveniles), Black-headed Gull (26)and Grey Wagtail (3).

Black-headed Gull

Grey Wagtail

The woods were quite quiet, but we did manage to record Great-spotted Woodpecker, Nuthatch, Blackbird, Robin (singing), Wren (singing), Siskin, Kestrel (1 male), Starling (flock of c.30 flew over), Redwing (17 over), Jay, Magpie (2), Carrion Crow, Blue, Great and Long-tailed Tit.