Rain stopped play but a double century still achieved.

I think the title of todays post will probably sum it up straight away as to what sort of day we have had. Up at 3.00am as usual and it was chucking it down, so back to bed for some sleep which we all needed. We got up again at 6.00am and were on site for 7.00am. This was a serious loss of prime ringing time. Anyway nets were opened for just past 7.00am and it poured down again, so nets up for another 30 mins and it stopped, so nets we opened yet again but on this occasion we managed to keep them up for the rest of the morning. It was still slow but we managed to catch a few birds.

After these were processed we bagged them again because Colin was doing a talk and demonstration to some school children from a second school in the area who were just arriving. Colin had learnt the Norwegian names for these birds and the kids loved it. After they went we had plenty of other visitors, Petra and Frank our Dutch friends and then an English and Finnish couple who were also on holiday.

Colin giving a ringing demonstration to the students.

There was some movement of Meadow pipit and 89 were processed the second highest since we arrived, but everything else was in smaller numbers. As the title suggests we ended up with 202 birds, under the circumstances an excellent result.

Below I have summarised the number of species and total number of birds processed for week 1.
The birds with an * against them are new birds for the site.

Species	1st Week's Total
Willow Warbler	230
Sedge Warbler	17
Common Redpoll	185
Fieldfare	12
Redwing	66
Meadow Pipit	407
Bluethroat	235
Reed Bunting	300
Red Throated Pipit	5
Branbling	58
Greenfinch	25
Great Tit	24
House Sparrow	14
Little Stint	10
Siberian Tit *	1
Blue Tit *	1
WhiteWagtail	5
Lapland Bunting	41
Redstart	7
Dunlin	22
Ringed Plover	13
Wheatear	6
Chiffchaff	3
Willow Tit	2
Arctic Redpoll	3
Dunnock	13
Barred Warbler *	1
Little Bunting	2
Pied Flycatcher	2
Bullfinch *	1
Curlew Sandpiper	5
31 Species	1716 Birds

By any standard 1716 birds is a great start. The Meadow Pipit passage has been slow until the last couple of days and there is a very good chance that this could improve.

Caught this pair of Lapland Buntings today. The male is on the left and female on the right. On the male two clues of identification are the development of the black bib and slightly redder beak.

The weather forecast tomorrow seems to be ok until 8.00am and then rain so It could be another day with low numbers, we will see.

For further information see http://varangerringing.blogspot.co.uk