Marsworth - 24th November 2019

Ringers: LL,CK,CN

	New	Retraps	Total
Wren	1	1	2
Long Tailed Tit	1	3	4
Blue Tit	2	11	13
Great Tit	0	5	5
Robin	1	0	1
Goldcrest	1	1	2
Cetti’s Warbler	0	1	1
Chaffinch	1	0	1
Bullfinch	2	0	2
Reed Bunting	0	1	1
Total	9	23	32

A calm, windless morning; sounds muffled by the damp air. We put the nets up by the reed-bed seed hopper in the half-light with high expectations. Other nets on the edge of the trees were set high with Redwing and Filedfare tapes playing. A flock of over 50 Fieldfare flew into the tall poplars above our heads as if summoned by the tape but never looked like they were going to descend and they moved on quickly. A Mistle Thrush was around all morning calling noisily probably defending his clumps of mistletoe against the incomers.
The peanut feeder did its job well of attracting Blue Tits for the Partial Moult Survey. The survey is looking at the progression of moult in juvenile birds and all moulted feathers are recorded.

Blue Tit with moulted tertial feather and central tail feather

One of the Long Tailed Tits we trapped today was originally ringed in May 2014 and has been caught at Marsworth most years since outside of the breeding season.  We heard Ring-necked Parakeet calling later on in the morning, the first time we have heard them at Marsworth. The last net round included a female Chaffinch and two fine male Bullfinch. The scientific name for Chaffinch is Fringilla coelebs, fringilla is Latin for small bird and coelebs means unmarried or single.  The Chaffinch that breed in the north of their range in Russia and Scandinavia move south in the winter boosting the numbers in the UK. Females tend to move further than males and the Swedish scientist Linnaeus called the Chaffinch "coelebs" because of the single-sex flocks of males remaining over-winter in his homeland. The Bullfinch's scientific name Pyrrhula pyrrhula comes from the Greek for fire or flame.

Male Bullfinch Pyrrhula pyrrhula