Things can break..

Saturday morning was spent ringing again. I was really looking forward to ringing this weekend again because the real meadow pipit migration had started and I was hoping that we would be able to trap some with our clapnet. Also, the coal tits have started to migrate through the netherlands and I thought we had a reasonable chance of catching some. The weather was quite good, a soft wind blowing and a partially covered sky. We had a lure tape of meadow pipit and grey wagtail on at the clapnet, the were plenty of meadow pipits migrating through but they were all too shy for landing. Only a few dropped down but did proceed to the clapnet. So in the early morning probably 300 meadow pipits migrated through but they refused to land on the clapnet. Then around 10pm some meadow pipits came down and 1 landen on the edge of the clapnet. I waited for it to walk on it. Then suddenly a second bird landed on the clapnet and the other bird started to walk. I pulled the cabel connected to the clapnet but nothing happened! Pipits gone and clapnet broken... that was a pity... Fortunately we could fix the cabel provisional and we were still able to trap a meadow pipit and a white wagtail!
Furthermore the morning produced two Jays, a long awaited ''handspecies'' for me as we call it in holland. The next day I could definitively feel that I had never handled one before..!

The wing on the left is from a 1cy bird: it has less than 9 black stripes on the coverts and the stripes are irregular. An adult bird has got >9 stripes on its wing and these stripes are neat and regular.

So in the end we still had a nice ringing day!