By Thomas Weston.
Sunday starts with an S and so do most of the birds seen today!
Ringing this morning with Luca and Lucile went really well. Our mission was to catch an unringed wild brood House Sparrow. A brood we have been seeing since the third week of June and during each ringing session, one of its siblings have been caught and colour ringed, blood sampled and pit tagged leaving just the one bird out of three. This for context was the only unringed House Sparrow of ringable size on the island. Yes, the Sparrow Project has reached that moment where they have almost completed what most Pokemon players dream of. Alas today was the day, Lucile ringed a brood in a box and whilst checking the traps I returned with our target individual. Almost completely the same biometrics as the previous two, we knew we had finally found our last fledged wild brood - until the next! Starlings in comparison were caught and we processed 14 in total - 1 new and 13 retraps. The retrpaping is great, watching their mould develop and the birds being a lot bigger now then they were in the nest back in May! A cute round circle and soon to have that glossy plamage for the first time.
A couple of Sand Martins heading south later and at 10am I gave a walk and talk about Manx Shearwaters, showing guests and staff our cutest and fluffiest breeding birds we have on the island currently. These birds are growing well and it was a surpirse to have another new chick born. A bird we thought was a failure, succeeded. Having an expected hatch date of the 22nd June, it is certainly a 'late one' though not too late in the Shearwater world. It is so great watching them grow and to be in the company of people who love the Shearwaters too! We really feel priveliged every time. On our way back, a seemingly slight passage of Swifts was ongoing with some coming a few metres in front of the face! More came through later which was nice.
Gathering a team together after some lunch we checked on our Swallow broods. With fine weather and adults happily feeding, we manged to ring two broods whilst another brood were too small and the final one on eggs. This means we have had at least 6 broods of Swallows this year, a high in recent times!
Back to the office for admin and catching up on emails before an evening of blog and log later!