For the last few months I’ve been working away in Yorkshire, which on one hand has been great for bird watching but also very frustrating that I am so far away from any of our ringing sites. So when there has been any opportunity to go back to Wales, I’ve gone. Last night was one of those opportunities, so when I had finished work I headed home stopping at some of our winter wader ringing sites en route. With the moon not up until 23:45 I knew I had plenty of time to search the fields. The main species I was searching for was Jack Snipe (so Silvia and myself can continue our study on them), although as usual I’m happy to see/catch most species. I was not disappointed, after searching four of our sites I must have seen at least 30 Jack Snipe quite evenly distributed between the sites. Many of the birds we mixed in with Snipe ‘flocks’ making them hard to get near, but I did manage to find 10 or so on their own of which I caught 6! All 6 birds were new, which I was a bit surprised by, given that over the past 3 winters we’ve probably ringed 150+ individuals between the 4 sites. Maybe it’s a sign that it’s going to be a bumper year for them, fingers crossed.
Several other birds were seen throughout the searching including 50 Golden Plover (3 were trapped), 10 Lapwing, 250 Snipe (2 were trapped), 2 Woodcock (1 was trapped), 6 Fieldfare (2 were trapped) and 2 Skylarks.