Saturday 13th June 2015

Spent the day (10 hrs anyway) with friends from the North Wilts Ringing Group on what we cheekily call a "safari" on the downs in North Wiltshire.

Having a great relationship with landowners is really important and today was no exception.

Most ringers would have stayed in bed today, in fact we had a ball with plenty of nest boxes checked and two impromptu mist netting sessions.

As I will be leaving the area shortly today was quite special with some of my favourite birds ringed

House Martin



 

Kestrel nestlings

Kestrel nestling

Little Owl - owlets



 

Thursday 11th June 2015

This ,morning had been set aside to ring some Canada Goose goslings, originally there were two broods to ring on a private Cotswold estate, unfortunately Mr Fox beat me to one of the broods so only a brood of 6 left to ring.

Geese obviously need larger sized rings, the opportunity to use large rings doesn't come along too often so I invited Anna another ringer to help with the session.

When I last saw the goslings they were cute and yellow, today at four/five weeks old they were grey and much bigger than I imagined but perfect for ringing.

With the assistance of the gamekeeper and his wife, manning the boat, we managed to trap just three of them, given the size of the lake and the sloping ground I was happy with three.

We checked a coupe of nest boxes and found Stock Doves using two of them and a female Barn Owl roosting near another.

Wednesday 10th June 2015 FLOWER QUIZ

Hi, taken a day off from house sorting and packing so here are some flowers/plants to identify use the comments box to reply or use the contact page on my website
nativewildliferesearschandnaturallesvos.com. Plus some cute Lapwings

Sunday 7th June 2015

Today saw me out with the team from the North Wilts Ringing Group  (NWRG), for the fourth CES session of the season, a 4am start on site and it was already light!!

Much quieter today we think that the poor weather in May has had a negative effect on the early nesters, the beauty of the CES science is that it can monitor such an event.

There were a few highlights with young Robins, Dunnocks and Great Tits evident plus smart, recently fledged, Greenfinch, Reed Warbler and a family of four Chiffchaffs and best of all a Lesser Whitethroat which had clearly left the nest this morning.

Lesser Whitethroats are remarkable warblers spending the summers in the UK and Europe then migrating south of the Sahara for the winter, the entire world population is thought to follow the eastern Mediterranean coast into Israel/Jordan before hitting Africa... amazing

Tree Creeper fledgling

Reed Warbler Fledgling



Common Blue butterfly, female



Slow Worm, female

Lesser Whitethroat fledgling