Kingfishers and dippers

On Saturday, we went ringing at Renishaw with Geoff and some ringers he had met on the Isle of Wight Ringing Course. We put three nets up,  with a net by the feeders producing lots of tits and also some Nuthatches but the birds of the day were a pair of Kingfishers caught in a net specially to catch them.  There was one new bird which I ringed and a retrap.  It was a female due to having orange on the lower mandible and a first year due to having brown on its legs.  The other bird was an adult male. Kingfishers have a really weird habit of twisting their heads round! The day after, we went out ringing again this time at Ramsley.  We caught 13 Fieldfare and also 10 Redwing.   The nets were taken down at 9:00am and then we moved on to Lathkill Dale to catch Dippers.  Almost as soon as we had put the net up across the river, two birds flew straight in!  One was a retrap that Geoff had ringed as a chick and the other was an adult bird.  I didn’t ring a Dipper but I did get to handle one after it was processed.