The early bird catches the worm. Except when it falls asleep half way through... zzzzz

As you can probably tell from the title, I am very tired. Just to reassure you, I didn't fall asleep on the job! Finished work early today at 3:45pm as I'd been awake since 5am and setting up bird ringing started at 6:30am so its been a long day!

Well as I told you all yesterday I was going out bird ringing this morning at Minet. We started out at 6:30am to set up the nets. It was VERY cold today.  Cold and damp. I think thermals may be needed next time as hopefully it will become a monthly thing. So had cold hands all day which is always a bundle of laughs, hmm... So anyway, you start by putting the poles together sticking them in the ground and supporting them with guy ropes then rolling the net out and fixing it onto the next set of poles and so on. It look a fair while to set up. I don't have any pictures of the nets simply because you wouldn't be able to see them. They're quite tall so if you want to know what they look like then google it :)

Today was apparently a good day for ringing because the nets caught 40 birds in total! Soon after we'd put some up, lots of birds flew into it but gradually phased out during the course of the morning. Species we caught and documented include: Blackbird, Blue tit, Longtailed tit, Goldcrest, Robin, Redpoll, Green woodpeckers, Sparrowhawk and Jays. So yeah that was all pretty awesome :) I wasn't able to ring any birds or measure/weigh the birds (see picture) becauuse you have to be a qualified bird ringer. I did get to release a blue tit though after it had been ringed (see picture) and write down the details that the 3 bird ringers called out.

                                          Long tailed tit after ringing

                                          Ringing a Redpoll

                                           Measuring wings

                                          Male Goldcrest

                                         Very fortunate to have caught a Sparrowhawk

                                           Removing a Jay from the net

                                         A rather tired and cold me holding a Blue tit

                                        Also fortunate to have caught 2 Green woodpeckers

After packing up (which didn't take as long as setting up!) we headed back to the centre (aka where I'm living and where the offices are etc) at 12:15pm and waited for lunch at 1pm. After lunch I uploaded the photos onto the A Rocha computers and organised a bit of data on moths at Minet over the years until my brain gave up haha.

I've eaten an incredible amount today just thought I'd tell you all: 4 weetabix and a piece of toast for breakfast, two jam sandwiches as a snack halfway through the morning and a big plateful of noodles, salad and bread for lunch. Its 4:25pm and I'm hungry again - argh! Probably due to the fact I'd used alot of energy today and the cold. Good fun though.

Its been quite a long one today so hope you've managed to keep up ;) Hope you enjoyed the photos too!

Until next time... x