On Thursday 18 June the weather conditions were ideal to ring the young chicks, so an early start was essential.
At 9am that morning myself, Steve and Adrienne (from BTO), and two volunteers (Judith Babbage and Gwyn Harrison) were there to witness the occasion.
Steve climbed the tree and approached the nest while the parents flew overhead; the chicks were then placed into individual sacks and lowered to the ground. Adrienne was waiting at the bottom of the tree and ringed them in a matter of minutes.
The rings used were white with the letters YF, 90 and 91 on them – these will be used for future identification of the chicks. Both volunteers had a ringside seat and were delighted to be involved in a once of a lifetime opportunity like this.
Once they’d been ringed the chicks were placed back into their individual sacks and lifted back to the top of the tree where Steve was waiting. Within two minutes of us leaving the site, the male bird had landed with a fish and the female had started to feed it to the chicks.
Visitor numbers have been excellent again this year and we have exceeded 18,000 as of last week, and we hope this will continue into the summer season.
For those who are interested, pictures of the ringing taking place will be up at the viewing site by this weekend.
Back in June, we were fortunate enough to have a residential volunteer helping us on site. The volunteer lived in a caravan in Prenteg for a week and helped us with species protection on site, and monitored the birds and their activities on a daily basis.
I’d just like to thank her for her work and wanted you all to see what she thought of her experience, she said: “I had a wonderful time, everyone was wonderful. I felt that I was doing something useful and would definitely recommend this to anyone”.
We offer residential volunteering at various sites across the UK, so if you’re interested in this sort of thing and would like to know more please visit www.rspb.org.uk/volunteering