Friday 8th April 2016

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A bit of Winter and a bit more of Spring.....


A calmer day than of late and the Gower Ringing Group were at Oxwich  NNR.

The morning started off with little cloud cover but soon clouded over and out of any sun it felt cool, in the sun it was lovely.

We had quite a lot of net set, over 500ft, but had little to show for our efforts in terms of quantity but the quality was great.

The fist Willow Warbler of the year caused some raised eyebrows as it was a very grey bird, but with a definite supercilium and its primaries were emarginated to P5, P6 was not emarginated no matter how hard I looked, after processing and releasing the bird we all felt that perhaps we should have taken a few different biometrics, especially when we caught a "classic" spring bird a few net rounds later.

Willow Warbler
This time of year is always great to see the resident birds getting ready for breeding and we processed a female Dunnock carrying eggs. Two Long-tailed Tits (Lotti) were processed, one being new bird,the other had already been ringed if we capture more than one Lotti we always try and release them at the same time as they tend to associate in "family"groups.

Long-tailed Tits
I guess the surprise of the morning came in the form of a female BRAMBLING, a very unexpected bird at this time of year hopefully she will be continuing on her journey north.

Female Brambling
The weather is looking pretty grim for the next few days....

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