Wye oh Wye

On the way back from ringing Nightjars last night (we caught another 2 new males) visiting Irish ringer Damian Clarke and I dropped into our wader site on the River Wye. Despite Paul having had a near total clean-up of the waders there a few weeks ago we still managed to catch 7 out of 7 Common Sandpipers and 1 out of 3 Green Sandpipers that were present and pleasingly all of them were new birds. 

A juv Green Sandpiper already well on its way south from more northern breeding areas

As if the waders weren't sufficient reward for stopping by we also managed to catch this very smart adult male Yellow Wagtail, a bird we rarely see here in mid-Wales let alone get to ring. 

It was great to see that several of the adult birds were carrying food into a nearby potato field but, having spent a while watching and searching for nests, it became clear that they were all feeding recently fledged juveniles sitting about amongst the spud plants.  We did manage to ring one of them though.