Day 13 - Pipits and not a big bunting

Better weather this morning. There was still a westerly breeze but it had dropped considerably and was slightly overcast but warm allowing for a brisk session with an influx of pipits and, for the first time in this region, special guest star the Dvergspurv:

Little Bunting (hand supplied by Anders)

We had the usual two team split shift - extending to three teams as a couple of members polled up a little later. Once the nets were unfurled the catching started quickly with the marsh site providing a large number of pipits. The percentage of pipits in the day's catch came to almost 50 per cent and there were enough red throated to allow us to get our eyes in with the differences between the species.

The usual suspects - redpoll, brambling, and bluethroat - turned up in decent numbers but the star of the show came from the bottom shelf of the long line during a mid-morning round.

 After his first Jack Snipe last night Anders was able to ring not only his first Little Bunting but the first record in the region.

The bird was a young female in fine condition who obligingly posed for many photographs before being released.

Aside from the bird of the day we also opened up one wader net by the shore for a few dunlin although whimbrel and barwit had been seen and heard early in the morning whilst opening the nets.

We seem to be doing well on the wader front with a good number (an estimated 30%) of birds feeding along the shore wearing rings.

 On the passerine front the number of bluethroat seems to be tailing off with retraps outstripping new birds. The redpoll still have a strong showing and today the large number of pipits gave us a 10:1 ratio of meadow to red throated.

We closed the nets fairly late at around 13.00.

With the high tide becoming later we decided to miss a wader session this evening.

So instead of heading out to the shores we have tonight opened Nesseby's answer to a fish and chip shop because it turns out that even with eight people to feed a whole cod is an awful lot of fish!





Just before the final scores here is a picture of a happy ringing team. If you look closely you can see that less than one second later Ferg (centre left with hat) does Jazz Hands....

	22-Aug
Greenfinch	2
Brambling	6
Common Redpoll	22
Lapland Bunting	3
Reed Bunting	6
Little Bunting	1
Bluethroat	6
Meadow Pipit	81
Red-throated pipit	10
Redstart	1
Pied Flycatcher	1
Dunnock	1
Willow Warbler	26
Redwing	2
Dunlin	3
Little Stint	1
New Birds
Species Count	16
Total	172