Photo Finnish

With the run of wet and windy weather continuing I didn't have much hope of posting anything today. The garden attracted the usual 30+ Goldfinches, 1 or 2 Siskins, 9 Blackbirds along with the other garden regulars. One bird that has been conspicuous by its absence so far this winter has been Blackcap with none being seen in the garden since 20/11/13. Hopefully that will change before the winter is out, not that winter has really started yet. Hazel catkins emerged before the end of December and Mistle Thrushes and Great Tits have been singing more and more in the past few days.

I had a quick walk on the water park to check out the Black-headed Gulls and noted one was already well on the way to getting a full black hood. The Cardiff ringed Coot was still present but I couldn't pick out the regular German ringed adult Black-headed Gull amongst the 120 or so present. However, I did see a first winter bird with a metal ring which I had not seen before. I managed to get a few photos of it just as it started to rain so I scurried off home to see if I could make out the ring number and address on the laptop.

A review of the shots revealed it to be a Finnish ringed bird (Museum Zoolog. Helsinki- Finland) and I had captured all of the numbers except for the last one. I could only make out the top half of the last number and couldn't be sure if it was an 8 or a 9 although I suspected the latter. About an hour later the rain eased off for long enough for me to go out and try to photograph it again. Luckily it was still there and eager to come to bread. This time I got the last number with the first photo and it was a 9 but I rattled off a few more shots just to be sure.

Finnish ringed Black-headed Gull photographed at Orrell Water Park 05/01/14
My first control (bird ringed elsewhere) of 2014. I will post the ringing details
when we receive them in due course.