It had to be a shorter session than usual at Billinge this morning because I had an appointment to go to but it turned out to be interesting nevertheless. There weren't many thrushes moving but over 2,000 Woodpigeons were counted going south by 9:00am (per CAD). A single Brambling was the first of the autumn and another or the same was heard again later. There were no warblers, not even a Chiffchaff, but Goldcrests found their way into the nets at regular intervals and a total of 13 were ringed. A couple of Sparrowhawks livened things up with a 1cy male being caught first and a 2cy female being caught in the same net an hour later. Catching 2 Sparrowhawks in the same session doesn't happen very often but the 3 previous occasion it has happened have all been in mid October like today's double act. The lively theme continued when a rather feisty Jay was caught and it did its best to take lumps out of me, as they usually do. The last net round produced a group of 5 Lesser Redpolls and, interestingly, 4 of the 5 were adult males which continues the predominance of adults in the Redpolls caught so far this month.
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| 1cy male Sparrowhawk |
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| 1cy male Sparrowhawk |
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| 2cy female Sparrowhawk |
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| The female Sparrowhawk had an unusual and very hard accretion on the tip of one of its claws. I have never seen anything like this before and have no idea what could have caused it.. |
Ringing totals (retraps in brackets) for 15.09.18 were: Sparrowhawk 2; Jay 1; Coal Tit 2, Blue Tit 1; Great Tit 1; Goldcrest 13; Blackbird 1; Song Thrush 3 (1); Bullfinch (2); Lesser Redpoll 5. Total 29 new birds and 3 retraps.
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