Hawk Owl!

13/09/16

A quiet day on the ringing front due to our ringing site being temporarily unusable. We expect to return to the site tomorrow afternoon at the earliest to rest a number of nets ready for a good bash on Thursday.

We however opened the net at our basecamp, which proved quite productive with a good array of Finches. A flock of House Sparrows have now found the feeders, so we were happy to find that a few of these had found their way into the feeder net. Although not a particularly notable thing back home, the birds up here are significantly different in size, shape and bulk to ‘our’ birds, so made for a very interesting catch. On all birds caught, there were very obviously dark centrered undertail coverts, a very striking feature, and one I have not noticed being so prominent on birds back home.

Massive House Sparrows! (CR)

Wannabe River Warbler undertail coverts! (CR)

The Greenfinch flock continues to build, and a variety of plumages were seen in the birds caught. Interestingly, we are observing no retraps in the finch flocks here, with very few ringed birds being sighted, showing that some movement in occurring.

Great Tit	9
Greenfinch	4
House Sparrow	3
Brambling	1
Totals	17

As a result of our main ringing site being unringable, the team drove north on a shopping trip, and also to visit a couple of local nature centres/ park visitor centres, where a number of feeding stations provided good views of a number of the common species up here. A Hawk Owl was seen by 1 carload of the group, but unfortunately disappeared just before the other had arrived. Obviously, it had been showing well!

Hawk Owl (AW)

A few of the group visited a couple of sites early this morning scouting areas within the park for ringing sites after an interesting opportunity arose, perhaps leading to increased and more widespread ringing within the park in future years. On this early morning venture, they saw a flock of Willow Grouse, Great Grey Shrikes and a number of Redpoll, including this stunning male Mealy.

Willow Grouse (AW)

Male Mealy Redpoll (AW)

This evening, the group scouted some habitat around a outdoor activity centre, with adjacent feeding station, where a Red Squirrel was giving point blank views, and some interesting variations were noted in the local Willow Tits compared to the birds we have been catching in Pasvik. These birds show prominent apricot flanks, rather that our cold ‘silver’ Willow Tits we have been finding. 

Willow Tits showing apricot/ peachy flanks (AW)

Red Squirrel (HH)