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| 4th February 2009 | ||||||||||||||||||
| I found 7 Waxwings around a berry-laden rowan at Avery Hill Braunstone about three weeks ago. Although they were easily repelled by three resident Mistle Thrushes I felt it would only be a matter of time until more arrived and tipped the balance. I�ve seen this before where Thrushes eventually get outnumbered and are unable to stop the Waxwings, but it usually takes a few days of skirmishing to get to that point. Once birders were reporting 40, 50 and 60 I knew it was time to get organized with a view to ringing. The nice woman who lives at no1 (who I�ve talked to in previous invasions about ringing) kindly gave permission to erect a mist net in her garden, so we were set and over the last three days we have ringed 10 birds (approx 15% of the flock) along with 2 of the 3 Mistle Thrushes. The tree has now been stripped so that's it! The images below are from our efforts in Braunstone. To make sense of ageing and sexing (for example the birds shown are adults) please click here to see a photo essay on the subject. ageing & sexing Waxwings |
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| 21st February 2009 More Waxwings! Andy Smith found a flock of 80 in Thornton but the bushes they were feeding in were almost empty, so quick action was required. We erected a single mist net and caught 11 new birds in just one attempt. That takes the 2009 total to 21 and our all time total to 40. |
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