The highlight of a morning visit to Jerry and Barbara's woodland edge garden at Silverdale was the catching of 12 Bullfinch. This compares with just 10 over the winter in 13 ringing visits. The down side was that we couldn't ring two of them because of warty growths on the legs, the first time we have recorded this in Bullfinch. We have had several Chaffinch with the same problem but on this visit we caught seven all with no problems.One further Bullfinch had been ringed by Andrew in his Over Kellet garden in January 2012 so it had moved 8 km the longest Bullfinch movement we have recorded. This also was showing slight signs of leg warts.
The catching of two more Great Spotted Woodpeckers brings the total since August to 22 and reflects the large amount of woodland in the Silverdale area. Nuthatch stand at 19 for the same period. Blue Tits at 152, Coal Tits 115 and Great Tit 83. These figures refer to the total number of individuals caught with retraps from previous years only counted once.
The Lesser Redpoll spring passage is underway, on the day after the above catch we caught 17 of which two were controls. Of 170 caught to date so far this year by the Group seven have been controls, averaging ca 1 in 25.
John
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