The birds made up for the footy!

We headed out for a brief morning session at Crosby Hall this morning, ahead of the lunchtime clash between The Mighty Blues and the other team from Merseyside. As is Everton's look these days, the reds won the game despite being completely outplayed by the boys in blue! If only I hadn't skipped footy practise to go to the sewage farm with my dad.....

The weather forecast looked grim (a recurring theme this month - I can't remember a day without some form of precipitation!), but before dawn it looked clear. Picking Moxey up on the way we set the usual nets at the feeding station, tempted to add more, but deciding not to spread ourselves too thin incase the weather turned.

Catch rate was steady but almost exclusively titmice, an apparent absence of anything finch-like. A male Sparrowhawk booted it over my shoulder at one point, unfortunately no-where near a net. The rain kicked off about 11am so we packed up with the following totals:

Blue Tit 28 (6)
Great Tit 24 (11)
Coal Tit 2 (2)
Chaffinch 1
Greenfinch 1
Robin 2
Blackbird 1 (1)
Total: 59 (20)

Following packing up, we headed home to pick up more bird food and some feeders to set up the feeding station at The Woodhams. There has been a significant amount of habitat 'alteration' since we were last there and slightly less cover as a result. The northern station is untouched however and there were plenty of birds around. Now that a fair few of the Pheasants have been shot out, it should be safe to net there in the next few weeks. A few noisy Curlews flew off the stubble amongst the legions of Wood Pigs.

Todays total brings us to 486 birds ringed this month!