More garden ringing

With the wet and windy weather recently I haven't had a chance to do much garden ringing but with the improvement over the last week now on government imposed lockdown I'll be doing more. I have deployed the whoosh net  (see details here) to try and catch some less regularly ringed garden birds that we don't normally get in a mist net!

Star birds recently have been two Mallards, A Collared Dove and a female Magpie. The Magpie was interesting as its one of a pair nest building in our neighbours garden. It was sexed as a female as it had the beginnings of a brood patch and aged as a 2nd calendar year bird on the extent of black on the 1st primary. The other half of the pair, presumably the male, is ringed on the left leg so is one of the birds I caught last year.

Collared Doves are also nice to catch as they're generally fast fliers and very agile. This one was sexed as a male but its pretty hard to distinguish.

Every year we get Mallard visiting the ditch in the back garden before it dries up in the summer and I was more than pleased to catch and ring these two! It'll be interesting to see if these are the same birds we get every year and they come back next year.

Jays have also featured and I've caught three in the last couple of weeks. One was an adult female that must be nesting nearby as she had the start of a brood patch.