Ringing in a Winter Wood-erland

New Years Eve.

To most 21 year old's, those three words only mean one thing. Getting so unbelievably hammered that by the time you've stumbled home you'd have added about 35 new birds to your life list after misidentifying lampposts and postboxes as birds that didn't exist before you pulled them out the imagination of your intoxicated brain.

To me however, it meant something slightly different. The morning of NYE (which is apparently an abbreviation thing that everyone does now), I was off out into the snowy woodland to try and catch some birds. We went to a feeding station deep in the woodland that had been diligently fed by a member of our ringing group and was attracting great numbers of birds.

The path down to the feeding station. Half expected to see a fawn stood under a lamppost down there.

The ringing didn't disappoint either. We finished on around 70 birds and got a great mix of species including 4 species of Tit, Chaffinch, Blackbird, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Nuthatch and 2 Jays.

Always a joy to catch these. A loud joy, but a joy nonetheless.

With feathers like this I think I can forgive them.

Nuthatch. Not seen one of these in the hand for a while!

GS Woodpecker in strike pose. A millisecond after this photo was taken, blood was drawn.

The day before I had been out ringing with another chap from my ringing group to ring a garden that has large finch flocks coming to the feeders. I was expecting to do brilliantly due to the snow bringing the birds to the feeders but when we arrived it was a fairly breezy morning. Unfortunately we only finished on 10 birds and I think it was a combination of the wind blowing the net and it being against the white snow covered background of the fields that made the nets too visible. I did see my first Lesser Redpoll of the winter however, with 6 seen on the feeders and one managing to find its way into the net.


Definitely worth getting up for.

Lesser Redpoll. Nothing "Lesser" about it.