Thursday 16 February 2012

Siskin showdown!

Over the past few days there has been a flock of around 40 Siskin residing in Matt's garden in Bangor with a large proportion of the flock making visits to our feeders with many feeding on the floor. It is only until now that I have had time to make a visit over there with my traps.

Unaware of how many I would actually be able to catch I made the decision to try and catch a good proportion on the floor as they were constantly feeding on the Niger seed. The Chardonneret was put to the side for once and my drop trap put into practice for the first time. Matt and I made this trap at the end of 2011 with the hope that it would come in use one day; yesterday it sure did that!

This is the drop trap that I used yesterday to catch the Siskin I did.

Yesterday I spent the whole morning in the garden resulting in 23 Siskin being caught in this drop trap! Catches of 2, 5, 6, and 10 were made and all new birds. 1 Blackbird and 1 Robin were also caught in here too with just 2 Blue tit in the Chardonneret Trap!

A mix of males and females of euring age code 5 and 6 were captured during the morning and unfortunately no controls were caught. I would love my first control with my permit to be a Siskin but you will have to wait and see if this happens on my next visit next week when I have more A rings as that morning I ran out - never good!

Thanks to Matt for allowing me to ring in his garden once more. If you do happen to catch a flock of Siskin with rings beginning with Y088480 through to Y088500, please let me know!

No comments:

Post a Comment