Linnet News

Back at the beginning of April, we were celebrating a catch of 13 Linnets at our then new whoosh-netting site at Mwnt. Little did we know or guess that nearly 8 months later we would be ringing our 500th new Linnet of the season at this site, exceeding our wildest expectations many times over.  This is the milestone bird, a young male fledged earlier this year:

Note the moult limit in the greater coverts, dull brown juvenile feathers with broad buff tips to the right of the arrow, and new rich brown adult feathers to the left. If only they were all so easy to age correctly!  I'll be posting again on this subject in more detail before too long.

Today's catch of 37 new birds and 8 retraps brings the year's total to 514, with 145 recaptures of 110 of them, and we're now registered with the BTO as a RAS project for Linnet, with 2016 making the first year of data.

Also whoosh-netted today was a Blue Tit, adding to an interesting collection of by-catch species comprising 21 House Sparrows, 19 Meadow Pipits, 6 Dunnocks, 2 Chaffinch, 2 Goldfinch, and singles of Robin, Stonechat, Wheatear, and Blackbird; (... still waiting for the unringed Mwnt Chough to wander into the catching area, it's been close though).