John posted yesterday about the large number of Coal Tits being seen locally. I have also seen this in Lancaster and so decided to do a bit of ringing in the garden today to see how many birds were using the feeders. After 3 hours the wind picked up to be enough to drop leaves into net rather than either side of it so I gave up at that point. Anyway 32 birds in 3 hours made up of:
Coal Tit - 12 New
Long Tailed Tit - 10 New, 1 Control (Probably from the University via Paul's garden)
Bullfinch - 3 New
Great Tit - 2 New, 1 Retrap from November 2010
Blue Tit - 1 New, 1 Retrap from November 2010
Chaffinch - 1 New
Since taking down the net very few of the Coal Tits coming to the feeders are ringed so I only ringed a small proportion of them. The biggest surprise were the Bullfinch which, until today, were not on my garden list.
Perhaps the huge number of Coal Tits explains why the sunflower seed feeder needed refilling 3 times yesterday. I've since upgraded to a bigger model so hopefully they will last at least a day between refills.
Are the large Coal Tit numbers a North West thing or is this being seen nationally?
Richard
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