Friday, 21 April 2017

BonJour mon amiee? Friday 21st April 2017

With a perfect forecast for this morning, overcast and little or no wind, I was on site at Pembrey by 05:30hrs for a ringing session.

I set up in the recently created reed bed ride, deeper into the reeds, and with a bit of bush craft and luck soon had a GRASSHOPPER WARBLER, (Grawa) in the net, another trans-Saharan migrant with the unmistakable "reeling" song. The tail of this bird shows "growth bars" which may indicate poor feeding in the wintering grounds.






I also caught seven SEDGE WARBLERS, (Sedwa) including a bird already carrying a ring, it's always interesting to find a ringed bird in the net, although usually they are birds that have been ringed in the area on previous occasions---- not today though this Sedwa was wearing a FRENCH ringing scheme ring, my first control of a bird ringed outside of the UK.






The information has been sent to the BTO who will forward the ring number to the French scheme and in the future not sure when I'll know exactly where it was originally ringed and when. This is the science part of ringing how old is the bird?, where was it ringed? what condition was it in? has it been controlled elsewhere?, how many migrations has it completed... so much to learn.

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