First Buzzards for SWLRG

On Friday night, me and Moxey headed to some private land to ring the first Buzzard chicks for SW Lancs Ringing Group! We had missed the young at this nest last year, we had been too late and the birds were too big to safely take from the nest. It looked like we had left it a bit too late this year, but eventually I was able to lift the birds off the nest and get them down the tree.

The nest was pretty large, about 1.4m wide, which doesn't sound like much, but when you're at the top of a pine tree that is swaying under a combination of your own weight (and I'm not that heavy) and the wind, it wasn't that easy to get the birds off the nest.

Feisty Buzzard (Buteo buteo) chick

The two chicks

Following the successful ringing of the Buzzards, we headed to a nearby farm and ringed two Barn Owl pulli. There had previously been four chicks in this nest, but only three when we returned, one of which was too small to ring and is likely to fall victim to its siblings.

On Saturday morning I met Steve at Brook Vale for another ringing session and similar to last week, we were hoping to pick up some fledgling warblers. Charlie overslept - which, although he was unaware of this, put a huge target on his head, but more of that later.

We had hoped to catch some fledgling Whitethroat and Blackcap given the breeding density in the dell area, however we were unsuccessful. We supposed that the birds must have fledged midweek and were more mobile around the country park.

The weather was forecast to be dry and calm. By 8am we were hit by a freak hail shower and we continued to get intermittent showers for the rest of the morning as the wind got up. By 10:30 we were all packed up with nothing too special to report.

The highlight of the morning, was catching this in the top shelf of a net in the dell:

Short-tailed Field Vole (??)

The vole must have been dropped into the net by the Kestrel that had been hunting the fringes of the playing fields and it gave me and Steve a bit of a laugh. Now, I thought it was only fair that as Charlie overslept by two hours, we had a little fun...can you see where we are going here?....

Let me just say this, if it had been the Bullfinch that I said it was (or should it be Short-tailed Bullfinch?) then I was very impressed that Charlie pulled the 'bird' out of the bag, after thirty seconds of fiddling, with the vole in the ringers grip. Cue Moxey, Steve and me pissing ourselves laughing!!!

Chiffchaff - 3 (2)
Wren - 4
Reed Warbler - 1
Whitethroat - 1 (1)
Dunnock - 5 (4)
Robin - 6 (1)
Linnet - 1
Blue Tit - 1
Great Tit - 1 (1)
Blackcap - (4)
Song Thrush - 2 (1)
Blackbird - 2 (2)

TOTAL: 27 (16)