Today was highly anticipated. After the disappointment of the last ringing day at Titchfield Haven had been cancelled, the weather was promising, and the ringing went ahead. I was really looking forward to it, seeing the birds up close, and we possibly had the chance to release a few. There hadn't been anything reported at Blashford that would be new for this year, but I didn't care because that was not the purpose of this trip. The craziness starts next week with trying to see new species.
I arrived at Fareham Station at 8:00, was picked up by my two birder friends there, and we drove straight to Blashford to get some birding in before the ringing session.
We arrived at 9:00 and were met with the car park for the Tern Hide being completely flooded, resulting in the hide being closed. After wading through the water, we went up the path to the viewing platform to see if we could see anything on Ibsley.
There were hundreds of birds on Ibsley, as expected, mainly made up of Coots. Tufted Ducks, Pochard, Wigeon, Cormorants, Gadwall, and various species of gulls were also present.
The gulls were probably just a bit too far out to be certain of ID. There had been an adult Yellow-legged Gull recently seen, which would be a new species for this year, and one I have not seen since I started birding (saw one on the Farne Islands 8 years ago, before I was into birding). The adult bird in the centre of the photo appears to have yellow legs, as reviewed from the photos, and a seemingly paler back than Lesser Black-backed Gulls. However, the bird was very far away, so the quality of the photos hinders identification. I'm not entirely sure what I believe it is yet. Its back definitely seems paler than a Lesser Black-backed Gull, and comparing the legs of the Herring Gull (left bird in the photo), the legs do appear a different colour (far right large gull in the photo).
Chaffinches, Blue Tits, Great Tits, Coal Tits, Robins, and a Nuthatch were seen close up, but the lighting was pretty bad so I couldn't get great photos. All very pretty birds.
Time was up, so we walked over to the Visitor Centre, where we met Keith Betton (we hadn't met before) and chatted for a bit. He mentioned how close he was to 9,000 species in the world- wowee!
Another Nuthatch was feeding nearby.
10:00 finally rocked around, so we walked to the ringing station where we met Brenda, who was going to be taking the session. We were shown how to hold the birds, and then had a first look at a bird in the hand- a Great Tit. It was so tiny and cute. It's only when the bird is in the hand and not with its feathers all fluffed out that you realise how truly small they are.
We were taught how to age and sex most of the birds we saw, which included a Wren, a Dunnock, a beautiful male Nuthatch, truly a pleasure to see up so close, plenty of Blue Tits, Great Tits and Coal Tits, Greenfinch, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, and probably best of all, a Great Spotted Woodpecker, but more on that later.
I personally first released a Blue Tit, which had a good go at trying to eat me alive before it flew off. It was so cool holding a truly wild bird in the hand, so small and beautiful. I also released a Great Tit and a male Greenfinch, which was so cool.
In terms of birds that were just cool to see in the hand, the Great Spotted Woodpecker won, closely followed by the Nuthatch. It was so beautiful and incredible to see its spotted wing open for a good length of time, rather than the usual split-second viewing we get in the wild. I took some photos of the woodpecker.
The birds were all handled with great care and settled down eventually after a minute or two of trying to peck at our hands. Ringing is a great work that is very important to understand the birds' movement, population numbers, conservation and many other things.
We decided to go to Ivy Lake to try for the Bittern, but a while spent there produced nothing, with no sign of anything interesting. We walked back to the car, where a Song Thrush was singing, and discussed what we thought best to do, with no reports of anything interesting around.
We spent a few more minutes on a bank scanning Ibsley, with most of the species from earlier and a few Mute Swans and Canada Geese seen, before heading back home.
A very different but enjoyable experience, seeing the birds so close was just incredible. A very fun trip. Still not sure about the gull- might send some emails and try and get a certain ID- if you do have any thoughts, please do comment with advice. The next two weeks are going to be a lot of fun I hope. I'm going to be doing a Selsey Big Day at some point. I've got a gold Stagecoach bus ticket (or something like that), which gives me travel on all the buses, so I'm going to get to Chichester nice and early and then bird the peninsula via buses throughout the day. The aim won't be the year list but simply a day list. Try and see as many species as possible in one day- I'm really looking forward to it, although I'm going to have to be sensible with camera batteries... not sure two can last a whole day! Elsewhere, I'm not sure there's much about, with Hampshire especially being quiet bar the returning Ferruginous Duck at Brownwich. The year list is still stuck at 204 after that Ferruginous last week... December has been very quiet so far. But now it's the holidays, I will have a lot more time for going around and seeing more cool birds. We'll have to see.
Anyway, good night, and a big thank you to all who arranged the ringing and made it possible, really enjoyed it.
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