We have been ringing in the garden for years and today was a really nice early morning which produced a steady flow of interesting birds.
In total we caught 54 birds of which 36 were new and of those 16 (6 female) were Blackcaps which were all new in as none of the birds ringed in the last couple of weeks were recaught. The best thing about this is that almost all of them were in great condition and still carrying a lot of fat (we score fat from 0 to 8 - which is frankly obese!) but we caught birds today with scores of 4 and 5 and we guess they are just going through.
Perhaps as interesting were the retrap Chiffchaffs which included a bird ringed as an adult (and therefore hatched at least a year before) on 31st May 2018 and another bird ringed as an adult on 21st June 2019 and another ringed as a one year old on 1st March 2019. All these have returned to the same breeding area at Mullock.
We also caught 4 new and 2 retrap Bullfinch which for a basically sedentary species sort of suggests they have also been moving about a bit and records recently on the islands tend to confirm this. In a whole year we have rarely seen so many.
A nice day in lockdown.
