Day One - Pipitry in Motion
After a marathon 18 hour journey we finally arrived 500 km north of the Arctic Circle at Nesseby in Finnmark at 10 last night The sight of the full moon cutting a silver swathe over the Barrent's Sea as we descended into Kirkenes seemed like a good omen. However later the torrential rain at midnight rather spoiled our optimism for the day to come.
After a meagre 3 hours sleep we were up at 4 am to be greeted by calm dry weather with a very light westerly. Nets were finally up and open by 5 and then the adrenaline rush began. Meadow Pipits began streaming through and dropping into the dwarf willow and birch scrub around the nets. The first round of the nets seemed to take a lifetime as six sleep-deprived ringers battled to extract birds faster than they dropped into the nets. The first round produced an astonishing 202 birds and by the time we finally furled the nets at 1.30 we had handled 460 birds of which 429 were newly ringed and 31 were re-traps most of which appeared to be the first team's birds.
Totals ringed for the day were -
Meadow Pipit - 224
Reed Bunting - 135
Common Redpoll - 20
Willow Warbler - 13
Dunnock - 11
Bluethroat - 8
Brambling - 6
Redwing - 4
Great Tit - 3
Redstart - 2
Garden Warbler - 1
Chiffchaff - 1
Greenfinch - 1
The highlights were undoubtedly just the huge volume of Meadow Pipits and Reed Buntings moving through but the adult male Bluethroat certainly took the prize for eye candy of the day. Perhaps most interesting though was a Chiffchaff (rare birds here) of the sub-species abietinus.
We did occasionally have chance to glance up from the ringing table and usually saw something of interest - two White-tailed Sea Eagles, three Rough-legged Buzzards including one hovering a mere 50 m. away, Merlin, Peregrine, Ring Ousel and for your blogger at least a superb Arctic Hare which lolloped past just a few metres away.
All in all as good a first day as we could have dreamed of. We think we might sleep well tonight!
Bird bags after the first net round- today we have mainly been catching Meadow Pipits!
Worth another pic
abietinus Chiffchaff
Hi team--brilliant start!! The hare has been around all the time we were there--we almost caught it in a single shelf on the beach--would have med a nice stew.......Ring O would be a new species and one we should have had by now. Bound to nab a Merlin soon. No Lappies?? We had lots go through but they proved elusive to catch--hanging round outside the net area. We caught loads of Bluethroat--and never used a tape for them. Go for it guys!!
ReplyDeleteCol
Admiring your pun work there.
ReplyDeleteColin H