Happy New Year...

I travelled over to Nottingham this morning to join Jim, Pete and Duncan at the Granby Fridge Experience. It was a beautiful sunny morning, but very cold and slightly breezy. The windy conditions seemed to be keeping most of the birds at bay so the catch was a small one consisting of mostly tits (nearly all adults), chaffinches, dunnocks and robins.

By mid-morning, the wind had increased in velocity (and bitterness) so we decided to take the nets down. As we headed to the nets, Pete suddenly launched into a sprint with the words ‘big bird’ trailing in his wake. At first I thought he had been spending too much time with the little ones and was having visions from Sesame Street, but when I couldn’t see a giant yellow bird anywhere, I realised he must have seen something bouncing in the nets! When he emerged from the nets a minute later he was holding a fabulous 5M (male bird, born last year) sparrowhawk which I was lucky enough to ring.

Me, my new friend and a silly hat!

For more photos and a full list of what we ringed, head over to the South Notts Ringing Group blog.

So, time to set a few New Year resolutions:

·        New Year’s Resolution #1: get the garden nets up more often.

·        New Year’s Resolution #2: get some traps set in the garden for when it is too windy for nets (which it invariably is).

·        New Year’s Resolution #3: get out with SNRG more often and ring more passerines.

·        New Year’s Resolution #4: make more bird bags when the weather is too rubbish for ringing full stop.

·        New Year’s Resolution #5: keep resolutions 1 – 4!!!

I hope 2013 is a birdtastic year for everyone.

 

Happy New Year!