Ringers Report, June 2015
Dan Rouse - A Rocha Bird Observatory, Portugal
Been a great week out in Portugal at the observatory, despite having gone to Portugal a number of times it was only this time did I actually do some ringing. The heat was the biggest issue of the day, the first bird pulled out the bag was a Juv House Sparrow and the birds continued to be less interested until there was one bag left, one of my favourite birds of Portugal: Azure Winged Magpie! As much as I love them, they don't half hurt when they get you good. More common birds continued to fill the nets until a Sardinian Warbler flew into the net in front of me and then a Short-Toed Treecreeper were both major highlights for me!
Zac Hinchcliffe & Jonnie Fisk - Spurn Bird Observatory
Jonnie Fisk had the pleasure of ringing a Marsh Warbler at Spurn. Zac, having managed to avoid them so far controlled a Sparrow Hawk which was first ringed at MigFest at Spurn the year before.
Josie Hewitt - Hampshire
In my garden, June saw the arrival of lots of fledged Starlings. I hadn't really done many Starlings before now so my aim was to catch and ring as many as I could. Using one potter trap over 3 weeks in June I managed to trap 26 Starlings, both adults and juveniles. I think their eyes are fascinating and there is so much variation with them that I decided to take some photos so that if I re-trap any of them as adults then I can see if the iris colour is any indication of sex. I decided to do this because I have been told conflicting things by different people as to whether you can or cannot sex juvenile Starlings based on iris colour. Hopefully I'll re-trap some of the birds once they've done their post juvenile moult and so I can use other criteria to try and sex them.
