Last night myself and Tony headed out again, making the most of the moonless nights. On arrival at the Woodcock site, there were fairly strong winds and a bit of rain, almost perfect 'lamping' conditions. However the weather soon changed! The light rain turned into heavy hail, and combined with the strong winds was very painful!! Needless to say, we soldiered on catching a total of 10 birds: 6 Wookcock, 1 Jack Snipe and 3 Fieldfares, the latter being caught in just one drop of the net!
We've now ringed over 30 Jack Snipe this winter!
This catch added to a very productive week 'lamping' with 40 birds being trapped and ringed: 15 (+1 retrap) Woodcock, 1 Common Snipe, 1 Jack Snipe, 4 Golden Plover, 2 Curlew, 1 Black-headed Gull, 7 Fieldfare, 6 Skylark and 3 Meadow Pipit.
We rarely lamp gulls as they tend to roost out on the sea or in the middle of big estuaries. This first year bird was one of two roosting on a big but shallow floodwater lake
An adult female Curlew. Curlews are long-lived, regularly reaching 20 years +,
so most birds caught are adults
Lets hope this week is as successful.
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