Hi all,
I must apologise for the lack of blogs recently - hopefully things here should be back to normal now so the normal weekly service should resume!
The summer has been very kind to us so far, our events have all been running smoothly and the weather has been good! Whether it has been for mini-beast hunting, tree bingo or the school holidays club, we have been having a great time!
Yesterday we had our yearly bird ringing demonstration. This event has increased in its popularity over the past few years as people realise what a great opportunity it is for close up views of some of our common bird species. The event was led by Dave Grant, British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) trained A-licence ringer. We had a great turn out of people (25) and a great turn out of birds...some of you may remember last years demo was quite poor for birds except for the exceptional highlight of a tawny owl (See blog entitled Early Morning Tawny Treat). This year was quite a different story. We had: 10 sedge warblers, 1 willow warbler, 3 robins, 7 great tits, 3 chaffinches, 2 blue tits and 2 carrion crows. Also, one of the highlights of the event was the recapture of one of the blue tits that was rung last year. Considering how many blue tits there are on the reserve, this was a turn up for the books and great to see the bird doing so well, plus we discovered that blue tits and great tits are the most vicious birds that ringers ever come into contact with - who'd have thunk it??
Dave explained about the process of ringing, explained about ageing and sexing the birds, took measurements, weighed the birds and gave further details about why ringing is done. We thank him for all of the time an effort he and his team put in to make the event a success.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the BTO, so to find out more about their work, or to find out more information about how you could become a ringer, visit www.bto.org.uk.
Paula