Army Ornithological SocietyGibraltar Ringer 7
A pause to give Mark's Cyprus blog some space and to recognise what a real blog should look like. So much information and consistently great photos.
Here we are on day 10 and two more housemates join us in Bruce's Farm - Carl and Ann Powell. Their arrival coincided with Mark's work experience day when he inspected something in the Dockyard. Never to miss an opportunity he joined us on the hill in uniform but surprisingly didn't try ringing Blackcaps for obvious reasons. His two mornings away coincided with the largest number of birds netted in one round. At this rate we are having to download data to IPMR daily at Jew's Gate and gives us a chance to compare numbers and species caught. This is getting a little embarrassing as the winds seem to favour us and they have had a week of poor results.
Today of course, Carl ringed all we could throw at him and he has caught up with most of the good birds such as Redstart but we could only get him one retrapped Iberian Chiffchaff. Yesterday's Willow Warblers failed to put in a repeat performance and must have moved on. Mark's face on one net round gave away that he was holding something special and I was therefore surprised that he offered it up after the promise of a beer. Not exactly a rare bird in Britain but I have never ringed Grasshopper Warbler until this one and spend some time looking at the differences with Lanceolated Warbler. It's all in the under tail coverts and tertials and did not take long to work out. A lovely bird and photogenic as the attached shows. A beer worth spent.
We now have two chefs - bad for all our waist lines and I have already failed on the no beer on weekdays rule, foolishly mentioned on Ascension and already picked up by our one avid reader!
The Bird Finder General | 2nd Oct 2013 06:17 PM
Great BLOG and good reading so far. Can’t wait to see a Booted Eagle in the hand
Tony Giles | 2nd Oct 2013 08:20 PM
Roger,
Did you start @ 4:30am to get the Grasshopper Warbler?