Sunday 8 July 2012

Big Brother coming to a nest near you!

Over the last few weeks Gillian & I started our nest camera trapping work on our Reed warbler colony. We’re placing cameras at the nests of Reed warblers in the hope of identifying the adults by their colour rings. This is a video of the first nest that we filmed at, containing small chicks. We’re rather pleased that we’re able to identify the female as BTO Pink, Pink Dark Blue. She was ringed at the site as a 3J in 2010, she was recaptured in 2011 and again in 2012. Hopefully with the colour ringing & the cameras we'll be able to follow her nesting attempts over the coming years.

As you can see from the video the male is unringed, but hopefully more trapping over the coming weeks will see him colour ringed! We’re rather excited at being able to film our nests as we never get to see the ‘private’ lives of the Reed warblers and what goes on after we’ve left the nest! With well over 70 nests at the site – we’ve had our work cut out!

This short video is slow to start off with, but you can see some cool/interesting stuff further on….

The above work is being carried out by Gillian for her dissertation.

Excuse the sounds of the planes in this clip! The site sits under the flight path of the UK’s third busiest airport!!!

2 comments:

  1. What camera do you use as the quality is pretty good?

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  2. Hi guys! Amazing blog! What you do is so impressive. Do you ever come to Salford Quays? I watch birds here and see some with rings. Id love to see you guys in action or even help you :) I dream about holding canada geese :D Keep up the good work! let me know if you re coming to the Quays :) Alex

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