Wednesday 13 October 2010

A net full of tits

Before I go any further with this post, the idea of trying to make a catchy title with the word 'tits' combined within, proved rather tricky, so... a plain and simple title for this post..

If I wasn't already knackered from the cornish Green heron twitch a few days ago, arriving back into Bangor at 2am last Friday; at least gave me the chance to have a lie in, or did it? Amazingly, a brief lie-in was acheived but yet again, it didn't take long for me to be on the move again.

An invite from Kane to do some ringing on Saturday morning at one of his feeding stations was more than enough to tempt me out of my pit. Yet again, it involved catching 3 more trains and soon I was back home in Ormskirk. Friday afternoon, just 1 more train to Atherton and all was over and done with and the thought of catching another train soon, made me feel somewhat sick.. Kipping overnight at Kane's on Friday night and up early for a few hours mist-netting in the morning - a shorter lie-in this time, but well worth getting up for..

Arriving on site, a slight breeze drifted through the woodland edge and with the sounds of birds at the feeders, the net was set quickly and effieciently to increase our catch rate that morning.

A total of 35+ tits were caught that morning including Blue, Great and Coal, aswell as 2 Chaffinches and 2 Nuthatch..

Several net-rounds were done and at times, the catch was rather impressive..

Myself with a lovely catch of mixed tit species and a Great tit ready to be ringed and processed..

Late morning we went off to Crompton lodges to catch some Canada geese, resulting in 5 new birds being caught..
Many thanks to Kane for inviting me along, for a pretty productive morning's session..
A quick note:-
Just 2 more trains were needed to get me back home on Saturday afternoon. The thought of the hundreds of autumn migrants over on the east coast, any guesses as to what happened on Sunday 10th October?!

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