Christmas Eve with Craig & Ciaran.

For months we had planned to visit Lake Windermere on Christmas Eve, however at the last minute we had to cancel. It was probably for the best we didn't go as thick snow fell throughout the night. However Craig & Ciaran decided to come down to Manchester to deliver Christmas cards - and so we decided we'd nip up to Crompton Lodges again.

Armed with 8 loafs of bread (for the birds), hot chocolate, whiskey and mince pies (for us!) we arrived to find we had most of the Lake to ourselves and with only us feeding the birds - which were hungry again - we managed to catch 25 birds.

Coot - 9 new / 3 recaps with metal rings which had colour rings added.

Mute Swan - 3 new

Canada Goose - 10 new

Great to see Ciaran back up north for Christmas - he's been working with the RSPB in Norfolk for 4 months.

We also took time to try and read as many Coot colour ring combinations, resulting in 31 rings being read.

However after all the ''hardwork'' we could not resist a sledge on the hills at Crompton Lodges before we left!

On the way home we nipped into the Shakerley feeding station for an hour, catching 19 birds. 15 new + 4 recaps (in brackets).

Blackbird - 6

Bullfinch - 3

Goldfinch - 2 (1)

Blue Tit - 4 (1)

Great Tit - (1)

Robin - (1)

Merry Christmas from us all....

Have you seen Z3G?

There's no stopping him......yes our Whooper Swan yellow Z3G is now on his travels again, after leaving Bowness on Windermere in October he took up residence at Watermead Country Park in Leics - where he made him self quite at home (see the below photos).

He was last seen at Watermead on 17/12/2009 - so where is he now!? If you see a Whooper Swan on your local pond begging for bread - please get in touch!!

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Thanks as always to Julie at Watermead for this information and for the photos.

Cool day for Coots.

The snow fell again during the night, here in Manchester and it's been very cold today, so I thought I would take a trip up to Crompton Lodges in Bolton. Most of the lake had frozen over and the Coot numbers had increased from my last visit. Around 30 Coot have been colour ringed at Crompton this year - however not many of them where around today (only read two ring combinations).

The birds were very hungry, when it's cold the birds are much tamer - so I thought i'd try and catch a few to ring. With it being quite cold - I kept handling to a minimum - so therefore didn't take any biometrics, just ringed the birds / aged and released.

30 birds in total caught - 22 new + 8 recap metal ringed birds which had colour rings added.

108 Coots have been colour ringed since October 2009

Any sightings of these birds can be sent to http://www.ring.ac/ or to kanebrides''@''googlemail.com

New species for the garden!

I don't keep a garden list - but it's always nice to catch a new species in the garden!

Where's the Wood Pigeon?

I was only saying to Steve today, that I had not caught or seen a Wood Pigeon in the garden for quite a while and as soon as one comes in - look what happened!!

Yes...foxed! He managed to catch it underneath the bird feeders this afternoon! Never seen a fox out in daylight....must be the cold! Video of him below....

Another week gone by.....

14/12/2009 - 20/12/2009

79 birds caught - 66 new & 13 recaps in brackets.

Blackbird - 9 (2)

Robin - 2 (1)

Dunnock - 5 (3)

Goldfinch - 16 (1)

Long Tailed Tit - 4

Blue Tit - 3 (4)

Great Tit - 8 (1)

Willow Tit (1)

Wren - 1

Starling - 2

Chaffinch - 3

Bullfinch - 5

Black Headed Gull - 1

Coot - 6 colour ringed.

End of the week!

A nice steady week which didn't go totally to plan - mainly because of Christmas shopping and minding kids! But I did manage to get out for a few days and ended the week with 73 new birds, 7 recaps and 3 controls.

Totals

Coot - 11 new + 3 retraps

Mute Swan - 24 new + 1 control

Tufted Duck - 3 new + 1 control

Mallard - 3 new + 1 recap

Black Headed Gull - 4 new + 1 control

Dunnock - 3 new + 2 recaps

Goldfinch - 17 new + 1 recap

Greenfinch - 2 new

Coal Tit - 1 new

Blue Tit - 1 new

Blackbird - 4 new

All the new + recap Coot have been colour ringed (example below) any sightings of these birds can be sent to http://www.ring.ac.uk/

Many thanks to Stephen Menzie for the above photos & for his help this week.