Saturday December 18 - Ringing round up, and the Bittell conundrum

 Before I get to my own exploits, I will just report Tony's ringing results at Morton Bagot for a combination of Friday and this morning. They had a couple of pretty successful sessions, although over half of the birds handled were Blue Tits.

The full statistics with retraps in brackets were:

Blue Tit 107 (52)

Great Tit 16 (5)

Long-tailed Tit 11 (7)

Wren 1

Redwing 1

Robin 3 (2)

Greenfinch 8

Lesser Redpoll 6

Goldfinch 17 (1)

Tony also caught a Bullfinch and an extra Goldfinch which they couldn't ring because they were showing signs of the contagious bumblefoot, a scabbiness shown on the legs of birds which spend too much time feeding under feeders.

When not catching birds they noticed both Barn and Tawny Owl, and using his new bit of kit, a thermal monocular, five Jack Snipes.

Greenfinch - per T Kelly

Meanwhile, I was somewhere else entirely this morning. Lower Bittell Reservoir is on the north-west edge of The Circle, and is giving me sleepless nights. I really didn't want any part of the two Bittell reservoirs to be within the new patch area because they are too good for birds.

I know this makes little sense, but the problem is this. I have no intention of abandoning Morton Bagot, or any of the other marginal sites which are all firmly in the ring, but if the Bittell Reservoirs get in the mix, I'd be tempted to go there a lot. Fortunately, only Lower Bittell qualifies geographically so I suppose it will have to be included. It's good for ducks and smaller grebes, but doesn't pull in as many rarities and particularly waders as Upper Bittell.

Lower Bittell

Just to give you an idea of how good it is. I estimated a flock of 200 Siskins, and counted 250 Redwings. A Water Rail made its squealing call (although I couldn't see it), and on the water were 12 Little Grebes, 12 Gadwall, 27 Coot, 27 Tufted Ducks, 109 Black-headed Gulls, 20 Shovelers, 17 Wigeon, 15 Mute Swans, and 10 Cormorants. A Kingfisher called from the Mill Shrub, and I discovered a female Goldeneye near the dam of the main Lower reservoir. 

The Goldeneye

I'm concerned that banging on about the status of geese and ducks etc within the Circle might be interesting me and no one else! However, I can't bear to abandon the plan altogether, so I will be creating a new page with all that data available to anyone else who might like to see the whole history of the birds around here revealed.

The Bittell conundrum is that most published data refers simply to Bittell Reservoirs, and not to Upper and Lower as separate locations. This is understandable, but it means I am minded to leave the Bittell data out altogether for reasons of clarity.

I'll be back at Morton Bagot tomorrow trying to find these Jack Snipe.