The Last Post from Arctic Norway

The last day today, still cold but the wind turned round from the north  to a south easterly. It's now looking Autumnal with a few trees starting to drop their leaves. 114 birds today, we did have our second a Merlin, a very handsome juvenile. Also we had excellent views of another Hawk Owl sitting on the aerial post of the Police Station. We finished early because we had to pack all the equipment away and get is ready for storage until next year.

Many mornings we have seen this magnificent bird and only got to photograph it on two occasions. At the corner of the field we had two 60ft nets up and the Owl when it flew away was heading for these nets. It was only a few seconds away and it saw them and just managed to fly over the top. This would have been a great end to our holiday if we had caught it.

There was a draw to see who would ring and process this Merlin. There were three members of the team that had not done one before. Kevin got the lucky draw. It was aged as a juvenile.

This is the Police Station at Nyrud. A massive thank you must be given to the Norwegian Police for allowing us to use this site at our ringing headquarters and the facilities that came with it
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Above are the ringers of the team I have spent time with, this last 2 weeks. Left to right Charlie (me), Colin 1, Paul, Kevin, Scott, Colin 2, Dave and Stuart. This has been a particularly difficult site. The nets furthest from the ringing station must have been at least a kilometre away so you can appreciate a half hourly visit to the nets is a lot of walking during the day. The effort paid off and when we get time to finalise the total results I will post them on a further blog.

Species	Re-traps	New	Totals
Willow Warbler		40	40
Bluethroat		4	4
Meadow Pipit		44	44
Sedge Warbler		1	1
Reed Bunting		21	21
Redstart		2	2
Merlin		1	1
White Wagtail		1	1
Totals		114	114

Like yesterday, the numbers of birds have reduced slightly. Nevertheless we have had some stunning days in terms of quality and numbers. We have met some great people including all the staff and pupils from the schools.