It's warm for the end of September

Too right - and it's been going on a while now. Home here, we shall be in an 'official drought' situation if there is no measurable rainfall before Saturday morning! This (American) Indian summer has kept the birds away from the feeders for much of the time, thereby stringing out the catching rate. However, we seem to be recording a good proportion of new birds.

Last weekend I took Ed 'soon to become a C ringer' Green to Norfolk for a garden session. He did manage to handle two new species and even got to ring one of them. These were Marsh Tit (r/t) and Coal Tit.

Ed looking pleased with his 'ringing tick' [North Wootton]

Over three sessions (Sat pm, Sun & Mon am) we caught just 30 birds. 11 were retraps and just the one was of significant interest, a Great Tit C595264, originally caught back on 23rd December 2005 as a 4F.

Dunnock 1, Blackbird 1 (1), Marsh Tit (1), Coal Tit 2 (2), Blue Tit 6 (3), Gt. Tit 3 (3) & Chaffinch 6 (1).

On most of the Chaffinches, we noticed a white patch on R4 that we don't get down in Bedfordshire. It was particularly striking on the adult male below.

Adult male Chaffinch retrices [Sept 09]

On the way home over the Fens, we were fortunate to see a wonderful sunset that could have been painted for us by Van Gogh. We should really have stopped and captured it for posterity.