Spring Wagtails

With the White Wagtail passage tailing off, last night was probably the final session of the spring to target the roost at dusk. A total of 119 birds were ringed in April with no retraps. Only a handful were Pied Wagtails, the rest were White Wagtails. This was our first effort at catching them in Spring and we have been surprised at the number caught.
Whether this was a just a particularly good year for migration along the West Wales coast remains to be seen when we repeat the exercise in 2012. We have successfully targeted Autumn Wagtail roosts on the marsh before so will be trying again this year, a much more challenging time of year to separate the races so some homework to do before then.