Spring at Renishaw

It was nice to get back to Renishaw last Sunday with Geoff even though we didn’t get a huge amount of birds.  We got 4 nets up by 7:30 and soon began catching the first birds.  One of our warbler nets produced the first two, a pair of new Treecreepers who were nesting in a tree nearby.  Geoff’s tape lures proved effective and finished with a good total of 6 Blackcaps (1 retrap from last year) and 4 Chiffchaffs.  It was good practise for me as quite a few birds caught had a well developed brood patch. Despite these highlights, by far the best bird caught was a 4M Grey Wagtail caught in the Kingfisher net which was a new bird for the site.  Even better, I got to ring it and it was a new bird for me.  We finished with a total of 22 birds.

Whilst we were there, we also had a walk around the lake to look for Grey Heron chicks in the heronry. We saw two chicks but at very different stages at development. I was going to go out with Geoff to ring them, but his climber could only come out mid-week.