Tuesday 27 March 2012

Quality not Quantity!

I would just like to apologise for the complete lack of posting lately, mainly due to a mass concentrated effort on my 3rd Year Honours Project at Bangor University.

Now that our winter ringing has finished and all our Woodcock have moved off to Scandinavia - I would like to inform you all that I managed to catch 10 Woodcock this winter and all were new birds! My 10th Woodcock was lamped at my site at Glanwydden Lane along with a very welcome Woodpigeon later on that night. So, even though I began lamping at the very end of winter I did manage to lamp 14 birds including 10 Woodcock, 1 Jackdaw, 1 Woodpigeon, 1 Meadow Pipt and 1 Shelduck. I really can't wait until next winter to see what I can catch..

Spring migrants are already turning up in good numbers so last week I headed over to the Great Orme in Llandudno with Rob Sandham, where a few hours spring trapping produced a stunning Male Stonechat and a Male Wheatear. Absolutely stunning birds and both were new species as I had never had the chance of seeing them in the hand before; again very useful for getting to grips for the ageing criteria for these species.

I am currently in Dumfries and Galloway on a week's holiday so posting will resume around 4th April when I begin trapping and lamping again.

Scottish ringing so far consists of a spring trapped 6 Male Great Tit yesterday afternoon.

4 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your degree - now that's out of the way, can we expect more snippets about your ringing, birding, etc?

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  2. Hello Chris,
    is it possible to contact You by email?

    Eleri

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  3. I run a blog for Smestow Valley LNR. I have started a nature network to protect our patches and coordinate wildlife surveys. Please could you e-mail me at smestowsightings@gmail.com and I can send you more information. Thank you. Regards, Chris Millward.
    movingmountains4nature.blogspot.co.uk

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Chris,
    Could you drop me an email on anne.gallagher01@bbc.co.uk
    Thank you.

    ReplyDelete