How things have changed on the ringing front recently. Back in the early winter we were getting nothing but new birds, now it is nothing but re-traps. It is all valuable re-trap data but it is getting a bit mad. Yesterday we had 9 new birds including a cracking woodcock but an amazing 113 re-traps! Most of them were blue tits but a 1st year male bullfinch from last year was nice.

Getting home, there were 13 long-tailed tits on the feeders so I decided to open a net and see if I could get any. With a tape playing, I managed to get one within a few minutes but the only annoying things was that some of the others were investigating to trapped one by sitting on the net but not going in.

This cutie and 2 blackbirds were caught

This morning was the Snettisham WeBS count. Not really something to enjoy as it is a nightmare to count. It starts off with an hour walk to get into position and the you are counting at nearly a mile distance in poor light. This morning the high was too high before the light was good enough. There didn't seem to be many waders around and they had probably been pushed further up the river. The pinkies (ca 25,000) returned to the saltmarsh at dawn and there were 4 Lapland buntings and a barn owl over the farmland. On the way back to the hides for high tide, 3 corn buntings by the pumpstation was a good local record.

From the roost hide there was a decent numbers of waders on. Although not easy to count, there were 16,000 knot and about 5,000 oystercatchers on the pits.

On the way home I jammed in on the 3 waxwings just to the west of Bircham that had been around for a few days and a load of gulls in a pig field produced this adult med gull.

If anyone wants to comment on the large gull they are welcome. It was the only one at the site and when I first saw it I thought that it may be a Caspian. I only saw it briefly before it flew off but it did show pale pinkish legs and a small looking bill and this was the only shot if it I got.