More From The Moss

After an extremely hectic week at work, it was a great relief to be able to get out this morning and get some fresh air with Moxey and Dan. We headed out to Kings Moss as it had been two weeks since we had last ringed there. Despite the overnight rain, we had a cracking morning in terms of weather, flat calm, clear skies and vivid colours from the changing leaves. In fact, the only thing missing from the autumal scene was the chacking of Fieldfare and the 'seep' of Redwing.

Thrushes weren't the only birds that appeared absent as we were putting the nets up, there was very little evidence of anything other than a couple of Chaffinch, the odd Blue Tit and an overhead Redpoll. By the time we took the first net round, we were surprised to find that we had managed to attract a significant flock of Greenfinch, peppered with the odd Goldfinch and a few Chaffinch.

This was the order of the morning with each net round yielding a catch dominated by Greenfinch, given by the low number of retraps, and that most of the retraps were caught together, it is possible that this was a dispersing flock, similar to those found last month during a session in which we ringed another large total of Greenfinch.

Greenfinch with tick: Following the Goldcrest/tick post, I wanted to share an image of this Greenfinch that we caught this morning that had been found with a tick - the tick was safely removed from the bird.

We have yet to see, let alone catch, a Willow Tit at Kings Moss this autumn and tit numbers in general are down. It's not too difficult to see the impact that weather has had on the hydrology of the site. On all of my recent visits there has been significant surface run-off with a build up of surface water in a lot of the lower woodland. This heavy rainfall during the autumn months is not too unusual, however on top of the rainfall earlier in the year, has left the groundwater table full. Time will tell how significant the impact of this rainfall will be on these populations, however when the population is small, it can have notable impact.

Female Bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula)

Wren -   1   (1)
Goldcrest -   1
Coal Tit -   (2)
Blue Tit -   5   (5)
Great Tit -   5    (7)
Robin -    (1)
Dunnock -   4
Chaffinch -   17
Goldfinch -   8
Lesser Redpoll -   1
Bullfinch -   1
Greenfinch -   73   (5)
Song Thrush -   (1)

TOTAL:   118   (22)