The Scouse Experience

This morning we joined David Norman for a ringing session at his site. The rain stayed just south of us and it proved to be a great morning. Windstill and later on sunny skies. We caught 45 birds with a nice diversity of species. Many Sedge Warblers were trapped, mostly local (ringed) birds. Other species included Willow Warblers, Chiffchaffs, Reed Warblers, a few Goldfinches a male Reed Bunting, some Whitethroats and some other common species. A Grashopper Warbler was also a nice capture.

A great observation in the early morning was a hunting Barn Owl of the subspecies alba along the highway, while on our way to the ringing site. These Barn Owls here are whiter than white in contrast to our continental birds, that are much darker (on the breast eg.), though sometimes they tend to be kind of white too.

 Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita), juvenile; ringed by David as a pullus three weeks ago

 Sedge Warbler (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus)

 Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus), male

 Pair of Goldfinches (Carduelis carduelis), female left, male right

Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis), 2cy female; note the old outermost greater covert

 Tammo, David and Menzie during the ringing.

And David, Menzie and me.

After a few hours of well deserved sleep we did some grocery shopping and afterwards we visited the city center of Liverpool. Liverpool has a beautiful city center with lots of old buildings, some of them being like 200 years old. We walked around for a bit and headed to the river Mersey. Here we also saw the Liver building with the famous Liver birds on top of the building. So we had a great afternoon/evening in Liverpool!

 The Liverpool Train Station

The Port of Liverpool building

The Royal Liver building with the Liver birds on top.