About this time last year we had Megan from the Tayside Ringing Group come & ring some of our garden birds, well having since given birth to a baby daughter she came back to have another go today. As we have had a wet & cold week I for one did not expect to get the same number of birds as last year, we managed I think 37 then & blow me we got 38 this year, but not the variety of birds as last year, but some interesting conclusions to what we did get.
Our Siskin population has increased with many one to two year old birds amongst the 32 we caught, two birds were youngsters from this years broods & had not long fledged. We also had two birds that had been rung before & we expected them to have been either ones we had rung earlier in the morning or from last year. But both were new birds to us, one which had a British ringers ring on, which will require Megan to investigate further with the BTO to see where it came from. The other one gave us the most pleasure of the morning as this had a ring on it’s left leg (all British birds are rung on the right leg) & on the ring it told us this had been rung in Brussels. Now this very small bird weighs 11 grams & had come all that distance up here to Perthshire, no matter if it came direct or across the English Channel & up that is still one heck of a long way for such a small bird. This gave Megan huge delight as both birds were her first rung birds from outside her Tayside area.
The other birds were a Robin, a Great Tit, 2 Chaffinch & two Dunnock, though we must confess one of the Dunnock got away before being measured & rung. So I have attached some shots of the birds caught & a brief explanation of what was happening in the shots.
