It feels like winter..

Second CES ringing session of the season was held today. The conditions were horrible, strong northeastern winds blowing right on the nets and us, plus temperatures in the morning reaching 5 degrees, but later it turned a bit warmer, 10 degrees at least!! Not only we were cold, but the birds also. It was also nice to have some more company, with John Mulder and Tim de Boer joining my dad and I.

As expected with these conditions, we didn't catch too many birds, but we had some nice species. In the early morning a Woodcock was displaying above our nets, but we weren't lucky enough to catch it.

There were still many Pied Flycatchers around, we caught 5. One was a bird ringed somewhere else in the Netherlands. After I'd entered the record into our Dutch database called GRIEL, I immediately received the requested information: the bird was ringed as a nestling on 03-06-2010 on the Hoge Veluwe. So the bird is now in its 3rd calenderyear and returned close to where it was born.

We ringed the first two Redstarts of the year, both of them being 2cy males. New species for the year were also 2 Long-tailed Tits, a Song Thrush.

Below the totals and some photos.

Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) 1 -

Great Tit (Parus major) 3 - 3

Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus) 2 -

Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) 4 - 1

Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) 2 -

Robin (Erithacus rubecula) 2 - 1

Song Thrush (Turdus philomelos) 1 -

Willow Warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) 2 - 1 Total 17 - 6 (8 species)

 Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus), >1cy male

 Common Redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus), male.

Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), >1cy male; probably the brownest male I've ever seen. Note the lack of white spots on the forehead (just some buffish on the base of the bill), something that should rarely occur with male Pied Flycatchers. But note the black tail, which reveals its sex.