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Winner: Under 8's

The story of a ringed blue tit

Once upon a time there lived a young blue tit called Bluey. He was only 10 weeks old but every now and then he would hunt out on his own. He was very adventurous and he was an only child which meant that he could decide where he would go without an argument.

One day he was very unlucky and being careless when he flew straight into a mist net without knowing. At first he thought it was some invisible force pushing him backwards but then he saw several men heading straight for him. ”Oops” he thought. ”I’ve got myself into a bit of a mess now”. He closed his eyes and waited for the death blow. Without him knowing, he was carefully put into a bag. When they lifted him out with great care, he still hadn’t opened his eyes.

When he finally dared to open his eyes he was sitting very comfortably in one of the men’s hands. ”Maybe I won’t die after all.” Of course he didn’t think he’d die because the men weren’t being rough with him.

Quite a few eyes were on him. Firstly they turned him over and blew on his belly feathers to check his fat score. It tickled! Then they measured his wing length which was 65mm. Soon his head was put in a small pot so that he could be weighed and all of a sudden, it seemed like night-time!  He heard the man say that he weighed 10 grams.

 When he was taken out of the pot he saw a wire with a collection of rings on it. They were all different sizes and he got one on which there was a number. All of the numbers were unique. A ring was put carefully on his leg using special pliers. The blue tit got number 20 (which means no other bird will receive that number).

When they had finished he thought, ”Hmm, I know this ring has been put on for a reason but I can’t think why. I wonder what I look like.” He sat down and gathered enough courage to fly off with the ring on because he thought it would make a slight difference to his way of flying. But it didn’t. He got home quite quickly.

He burst in on mum and said “You won’t believe what an adventure I’ve had today!”

Ethan of Sheffield - Age 7