It has been a bit of a milestone for me this week in that I celebrated my 50th birthday, as a result much of my time has been spent on social events, or recovering from them! That said I have still been able to get in a couple of ringing sessions, and also a visit to Portland Bill to catch up with the Barred Warbler.
The first session was on Friday 12th December, I met Rob at Curbridge in the hope of catching some Goldcrests and Firecrests. Unfortunately we didn't succeed on the Firecrest front but did catch five Goldcrests and a couple of Blue Tits. After Curbridge we headed to Manor Farm Country Park, to set nets for the following morning, but left the nets open for a while just in case. A Treecreeper was the only notable capture, the other seven birds were a re-trap Goldcrest, five Long-tailed Tits and a Great Tit.
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| Eurasian Treecreeper |
The morning of Saturday 13th December was cold, with a light frost, which fortunately hadn't frozen my furled nets. I was joined by Rob and Megan for a pre-dawn start, but was on a tight deadline as I had to be home by 11am. The pre-dawn start proved well worth the effort as we caught seven Redwing on the first round, with a further seven caught throughout the session. In total we caught 28 birds, which other than the 14 Redwing included two Blackbirds, one Song Thrush, eight House Sparrows, four of which were retraps and single Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit and Dunnock.
After a night away in Dorset I decided to pop into the bird observatory on Portland to look for the wintering Barred Warbler. I arrived expecting the bird to be performing well, as it had been for the last week, but chose the time when it decided not to show for about an hour and a half. Eventually, though it was back in the apple laden Sycamore in the Obs garden. It was a very active bird which rather than sitting and feeding on one apple, jumped around sampling a piece of each one that was on offer. It had one of its outer tail feathers hanging off, but otherwise was a very smart bird, performing much better than the usual skulkers that I have seen. I am embarrassed to admit that this is the first Barred Warbler that I have seen in the UK for many years, so it was good to catch up with this bird. My most recent Barred Warblers have been spring birds that I have encountered whilst guiding for Ornitholidays in Turkey.
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| Barred Warbler - Portland Bird Observatory |
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| Barred Warbler - Portland Bird Observatory |
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| Barred Warbler - Portland Bird Observatory |
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| Barred Warbler - Portland Bird Observatory |
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| Barred Warbler - Portland Bird Observatory |
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