Army Ornithological SocietyGibraltar Ringer 18
We finally topped the thousand birds ringed today. Not bad against some difficult weather conditions. Admittedly they are nearly all Blackcaps so there will be absolutely no excuse next year for mis-ageing juveniles at home. We have also got our act together in splitting Iberian from normal Chiffchaffs. All juvenile Chiffs are coming through here dressed in bright yellow similar to Willows and so even in the hand it has not been easy. With the Willows and Iberians gone last month, only basic Chiffs should be going through now. The hope that we could catch more Red-necked Nightjars has faded although a European Nightjar (pictured) was lured into the nets before dawn yesterday. The use of tape lures has been with mixed results. The weather plays a more significant part with nightjars and we have tried a variety of calls to attract migrants. This has not been an exact art and where we have played typical northern woodland calls, there have been Blackcaps. Clear though is that nets without tapes have caught less.
With Julia and Robin Springett at a Trafalgar night, I am now preparing to check all our data transferred to a memory stick from Jew's Gate this afternoon. I have no faith in this exercise without my IT guru Mark Cutts. I may just tweet the results!
No blog from Gib would be complete without the obligatory phot of a Barbary Macaque. Less for the theft of an apple, we have been unaffected by these guys who merely pass through under the nets.
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