Game of two halves

Well, you could say that, with no score in either half but a fruitful half-time interval!

Not only has the weather been awful, we've had over 80mm of rain so far this month, but the birds are not about also. If you want to do any decent ringing/netting, the dawn lull in the wind soon turns to a hefty breeze. The Elderberry, one of the mainstays of passing migrants at this time of year, is beginning to ripen but the fruits are sparse because the flowerheads were not fully pollinated. The Blackberries are still hard and many are far from ripening, but it promises to be a decent crop, so who knows. The Policeman's Helmet [Himalayan Balsam] is approaching 3m tall down by the stream and seems to be the only thing keeping the local bees happy.

I know it's that time of year when many of our birds moult and therefore tend to stay out of sight, but this lack of birds is getting me down a little. Last year, I was enjoying reasonable success at a site that I had only just got permission for, but then the weather was a lot better than it is now. I was even catching the odd bird in the garden. But not this year.

In deep contrast to us here, a fellow ringer, Denise, who lives 10 miles to the west, just inside the National Park, has been ringing Siskins by the score (a score = 20, for our foreign readers) for the last two weeks or so. Her total for new Siskins alone exceeds 750 this year, just in her garden, while other Siskin ringers, well to the east, are wondering if the birds will grace their nets at all in any number this season.

Since the last post we have endured - rain, rain, rain, a couple of 3's in the garden, a decent morning down at the meadow = 20 birds (although nearly all the birds were trapped in just one net), 3 dawn retraps before the rain, showers, wind, nothing, nothing and, lastly, nothing except heavy showers. The garden nets are all in the shed now!

The main stay have been the young Chiffchaffs, together with a few Blackcaps. The prize for getting in a session down at the meadows last Sunday was a juvenile Grey Wagtail, that I forgot to take a picture of. That's two I've ringed this year, bearing in mind we haven't found out where they nest yet.

Adult Grey Wag (library pic) - possibly the mother of today's bird

Total tally for the period turned out to be 21 plus 4 retraps of 9 species:

Great Tit (1)

Long-tailed Tit 1

Chiffchaff 9 - just one adult, a female with a MS of 18

Blackcap 4

Wren 2 (2)

Blackbird (1) - one of the first males caught in Jan. 2011 

Robin 1 (1)

Dunnock 1 (1)

Grey Wagtail 1

Right now, we're keeping an eye on tomorrow's weather forecast - as it may be possible to get another sesssion in, down by the stream in the willows and balsam.

All the action here - Net ride Nr.1

After that, it's house and garden - as both our neighbour and uourselves have some fencing to attend to  following the Bank Holiday. Meantime, the other half will be harvesting the mega plum crop, which has ripened at long last (4 weeks later than 2011).