First cormorants fledged.

Michele and I were up early this morning to see what ringing we could do in the observatory garden. We had nets open from 6 to 10 and only caught 4 birds, so not a fantastic haul. One was a recently fledged yellowhammer and another was a tree pipit, which were nice to see in the hand.

After we closed the nets, we both decided to be more visible around the centre for anyone that wanted to ask questions about the birds of the area of our work here in general. I based myself in the centre, but as I didn’t have a sign, very few people approached me (this has been rectified) but I did chat to a few visitors and they seemed to go away happy. Hopefully we can be more present around the centre over the next month at least, to help guide and inform.

After lunch Simon came back, with a camera crew in tow, ready to film a section about the Iberian chiffchaff we caught a month ago, and soon disappeared off to film the bird itself. After a brief afternoon snooze, I headed over to the cormorant colony to undertake the bi weekly count. This has changed slightly in the recent weeks. In collaboration with Morten, we’ve picked out the nests we want to focus on for the season and so each visit now will be focussing mainly on those nests (though we’ll still be recording what happens to the others as a whole). It was an interesting visit, things have changed in the week that I haven’t been there. The red necked grebes have all lost their nests, and not just the eggs, but all of the nests have disappeared, which is odd, but we have had some foul weather recently which could have contributed. The finer weather now seemed to be having an affect on the cormorant chicks, several of which seemed to have died from exposure. Other nests are suspiciously empty, but it seems that some of those may have fledged young, judging by some of the very young birds I saw perching amongst the trees. Others are still full of almost grown young, and still others have tiny chicks that can only have hatched in the last week, so there’s a diverse age range in the colony.

After I took my records, I had a tip from Morten about a pond where red necked grebes had bee; successful in hatching a chick, and I spent a pleasant hour there watching and filming the small family. This made me late for dinner but thankfully Igor and Jonas had made a bbq and there was more than enough left for me when I arrived. After a pleasant, but late night, Michele and I went to bed early in preparation for ringing tomorrow.