First Wash of the year…

The last Wash trip of 2013 was in December and unfortunately, it clashed with the BTO Conference in Swanwick. I chose to attend the conference, which meant that I didn't get to catch any birds, but I did get to spend the weekend with a large number of the Wash regulars! It was a fantastic weekend with many interesting and informative talks.

Having not been ringing with WWRG since October, I was raring to go when the first Wash weekend of the year came in January. I arrived at the house on Friday evening just as Phil was heading out and round to Gedney to join the early birds who had been able to get there in time to go mist netting. I settled in, chatted to the few others who were there and waited for Nigel to arrive. When he did, it was all hands on deck to load the cannons and the trailer ready to set four nets at Snettisham Beach after high tide. After a warming bowl of soup, we trundled down to Snettisham to set four small mesh nets. We were met by the Gedney team who had managed to catch 38 birds. A great start to the weekend.

After an efficient net set, we headed home for a briefing and bed for a few short hours. Before we knew it, it was morning and we were heading back to Snettisham, keeping our fingers crossed that the sanderling that had been on the beach yesterday had decided to return. We snuggled down at base camp and waited for there to be enough light for Nigel to see the catching area. Luckily, the birds were there and after a little gentle twinkling they were in the right place and we were soon hurtling down the beach to the nets. We were delighted to find over 450 sanderlings in the net, including a huge number of re-traps. More great data! We managed to fully process all of the birds well within the four hour window which was fantastic.

After lunch and a little bit of downtime, some of us went to set two groups of nets on the marsh for an evening’s mist netting. It was a little windier than was idea but it was a stunning afternoon and with the nets up, we went to check out the incredible whale bone. The jaw bone is all that is left of a sperm whale that washed up on the marsh approximately 10 years ago!

It was a little windy as we put the nets up

Sperm whale jaw bone with the 'white barn' behind 

Sunset over the white barn

There was a gorgeous sky as we left the marsh after setting the nets

As we sat on the marsh later that evening, waiting for birds to find the nets, Nigel commented that we only needed to catch another eleven birds to take the weekend total to over 500. Given the lack of birds and the slow rate at which they were being caught, we weren’t that optimistic! Luckily, we were wrong. A steady trickle of birds including two grey plovers (which were duly flagged), two oystercatchers, a single knot and a few dunlin (if my memory serves me correctly) took us over the magic number for the weekend. The early tide and small amount of birds meant that we finished at a very respectable hour white allowed us all to have an early night.

With the forecast for the morning looking very iffy, we headed to bed with alarms set for a reasonable hour with the intention of going colour ring re-sighting, but fully expecting to be able to stay in bed! As it turned out, when the alarms went off it was throwing it down and mass procrastination ensued. Eventually, we decided to go out anyway but restricted our locations to just Hunstanton or Heacham. I joined the majority at Heacham where we all got quite wet but saw lots of colour ringed turnstone.

Colour ringed turnstone with sanderling

When we returned to base, the comedy award for the weekend (we really should have one of these) went to the team of ringers who failed miserably to persuade a new double bed that it really did want to fit up the stairs to the annex. ‘How many ringers does it take to…’ was heard coming from a couple of the mouths of the amused onlookers! All-in-all it was another fun-filled weekend spent collecting really useful data with a great bunch of people. Bring on February!