We reached a milestone today whilst out ringing Coots at Westport Lake in Staffordshire. We ringed our 300th Coot of the year, which means 2010 has been our best Coot year, totals wise since our group started ringing this species. Our previous highest total stood at 211 in 2008.
This now means that we’ve colour ringed over 550 individual birds since we started the project in October 2009.
Anyhow today along with Chris, Craig & Ciaran we planned on catching Coots at Redesmere Lake, however when we arrived at 8am the whole lake was frozen over! So we headed off to Westport Lake in Stoke-on-Trent, where we caught 16 Coot, 9 Canada Geese (+2 controls) and 2 Black Headed Gulls which were expertly caught by Ciaran (below)
Most people don’t like the cold weather, but us Coot catchers love it! Since the birds are more easily catchable when it’s cold. Certainly we’ll be making the most of the cold snap over the next week or so.
On returning home we quickly put a net up in the garden, before returning inside to warm ourselves up! In total we caught 9 Goldfinch, 1 Chaffinch & 2 Blue Tits.
Well done Kane, what a fantstic achievment!
ReplyDeleteKane,
ReplyDeleteIt may be a silly question, but how do you catch the Coots?
regards,
Mark
(Ivel Ringing Group)
Could you please add my Dutch ringing blog to your list with links for blogs from Europe? It's www.ringersdagboek-henri.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteThanks Seumus :-)
ReplyDeleteHi Mark,
ReplyDeleteAll the Coot we catch are ''hand picked''when feeding with wildfowl in parks, gardens, lakes etc.
Coots can also be caught in duck traps & by whooshing netting, once they've become accustomed to the set ups.
All the best
Kane
Hi Henri,
ReplyDeleteSure - this is now linked up.
Best wishes
Kane