Sprawk Alert

As you may of guessed Saturday was another ringing trip with Peter, Pete, Dad and Dan. Getting up isn't as early now, but I was still a bit tired when me and my dad left the house. I was up in South Lancashire this session and we noticed from various sections of the site that there had been some reasonable bird movements. Although finch numbers are building up their has been fewer numbers of Goldcrests.

In the last 3-4 weeks we have been catching quite a good number of Redwing and Fieldfare at this site and we had a feeling we might catch even more. A new net ride we had been trying has been catching really well and probably has caught the main Redwing and Fieldfare numbers. Once all the nets were up we went down a track to where Peters van was parked and collected our ringing equipment.

On the first net round we all check them together and if we bring back a large volume of birds me and Pete will start processing them straight away and ring them. When my dad and Peter came back after one net round he had loads of birds he also said that a male Sparrowhawk was around the area. This particular site doesnt seem to have many sparrow hawks about so it was noticable.

But when they both came back from another net round; I saw them bringing a large bag with a biggish shape in it; as the bag came closer towards me I saw these four big talons piercing through the bag material, me and Dan then knew it was the Sparrowhawk.

 However, this Sparrowhawk wasn't the male that had been seen earlier it was a female. The female is much larger and takes and E ring. The male takes a D ring. Dan ringed this bird and we both were amazed by its beauty and it was fantastic to gain this experience.

 At the end of the day the total of ringed birds equaled 130;  the most amount of birds caught in a session with me training yet. Other birds ringed were:

2 Fieldfare
13 Redwing
4 Song Thrush
27 Greenfinch
2 Bullfinch
13 Chaffinch
37 Goldfinch
1 Yellowhammer
8 Blue Tit
1 Coal Tit
2 Great Tit
9 Long Tailed Tit
3 Wren
4 Goldcrest
1 Meadow Pipit
1 Blackcap
1 Robin

Here's me looking rather cautious holding this stunning bird, it possibly will become my new profile picture. I had a lot of respect for this powerful predator.

A big thank you to Dave Culley on Twitter who gave me this information on using the eye colour to age a Sparrowhawk. 

"Eyes first born,black brown/then grey green/then lemon/then yellow/then orange/blood red in older birds. That would put his bird at about 5 months old."

Dave made a film all about a family of Sparrowhawks living near Northwich and Chris Packham narrated it.

Wild Bird Wednesday