Saturday 19th March 2016

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Oxwich NNR ringing

A grey overcast morning with a light but keen breeze, the "Snipe" nets were set and yielded one Common Snipe, a good start.

The rest of the morning seemed busy but was in fact a slow one but with a good mix of birds, including Reed Bunting, Chaffinch, Siskin, Goldcrest Robin, Dunnock and Chiffchaff.

One of the Robins looked interesting as it had a grey wash to its back and wings, we initially though that it may be a continental bird, you would expect a slighter longer wing than the 72mm we measured as birds which tend to migrate also tend to have slightly longer wings, so who knows?


A definite grey wash to the wings and mantle
The Chiffchaff was a nice find, it had been buzzing around the bushes behind the net for a while before being caught.

Initially I thought it may be the first returning migrant but it had a fat score of 3 so possible an over winterer and not a traveller from the south, usually birds arriving from the Mediterranean have "pollen horns" on their foreheads where they have been delving into flowers, not so on this chap.

Chiffchaff, the first of many this season....


We packed up around 10:30am.

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