Willkommen heir Bergfink!

With the tail end of the 'beast storm" still hanging on and making it impossible to net the Redpolls, Siskins and Goldfinches in the garden I thought I'd pop over to one of our two Brambling feeding sites to see if the bad weather had made them hungry! Despite there having being lots of Bramblings present at both sites for well over two months now catching has been a bit slow to say the least. They've generally been none too bothered and clearly have other places to feed as frustratingly they'd often turn up, sit around for a while and then fly off again without coming down!  This morning was a bit different. maybe the natural food is running short or maybe it was the bad weather but they certainly seemed a bit keener on coming out of the trees and dropping onto the feeding area. Consequently, in just a couple of hours I managed to catch 51 in three pulls of the net, including 2 retraps and, more excitingly, a German ringed bird!!  A good number of Bramblings are ringed on the continent so we've been expecting a 'foreigner' for a while but this is the first from over 250 Bramblings caught so far this winter.

German-ringed adult male Brambling

'Helgoland, Germany'.

Lets hope we don't have to wait too much longer for the next one!