Monday 23 February 2009

WWT Slimbridge - Failed catch!

04/02/2009 - Planned swan pipe catch at Slimbridge ended in a complete failure!! Lots of birds went into the swan pipe (Decoy) including over 10 Bewick's Swans until something flushed them out and nothing ventured into the catching area after that!!

Caerlaverock swan/duck catch.

After leaving Martin Mere we headed on up the M6 to WWT Caerlaverock, for another trapping session on the morning of 29/01/2009. Another good catch consisting of 74 Whooper Swans, 49 Mute Swans, 40 Canada Geese, a few Mallard and one Gadwall




Three more Whooper Swans were fitted with satellite transmitters.

Tuesday 3 February 2009

Martin Mere - Duck & Swan catch.

28/01/2009 - WWT Martin Mere.

With several WWT staff, volunteers and local ringers in attendance at MM, a successful trapping session was pulled off, catching over 200 birds. 95 Whooper swans and 114 duck were caught including Shelduck, Mallard, Pintail and Pochard.

A number of Whooper swans were fitted with satellite tracking devices, which will enable us to determine the route in which the swans fly back to Iceland. This is due to the proposal of offshore wind farms in the Irish Sea. The progress of these birds will soon be shown on the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust website. http://www.wwt.org.uk/

Windermere.

21/01/2009

Myself, Craig Brookes, Ciaran Hatsell and Chris Bridge all made our way up to Lake Windermere, for our monthly ringing session. En route on the M6 it was looking somewhat a miserable, grey day but none of us expected that a certain bird would soon brighten it up!



And that bird was the first one to be caught and processed.......a stunning female Goosander!

The day progressed fairly slowly, but in total we managed to catch 19 birds including - Goosander, Jackdaw, Mute Swan, Canada Goose, Mallard and Black Headed Gull.

Thanks to Chris Bridge for the photo.