Too wet to whoosh!

Stunning adult male Brambling

Over the past few weeks we have been having great success targeting a large invasion of Bramblings. These attractive finches are irregular visitors in large numbers to the area's many beech woods when beech-mast crops are high. Two sites we operated on the last big invasion in 2013/14 (catching just over 400 birds) once again saw good numbers present as has a new site. These three sites combined have so far yielded over 1,000 new birds ringed and 4 controls - 2 from Norway, 1 from Belgium and 1 same season movement within Wales.

Norwegian-ringed female Brambling

Most birds have been whoosh-netted but unfortunately dry conditions are essential for whoosh netting and we haven't been getting a lot of those recently. This morning I sat and watched for over half an hour whilst literally hundreds of Bramblings helped themselves to the free hand-outs on the whoosh-net site. A new bird-food order was placed this afternoon!

The weather in a couple of days time is looking dry so watch this space!