No Dippers but.....

This morning I decided to have a few hours on the river at the bottom of my garden to see if I could catch a Dipper. I had already seen one a few days earlier flying up and down. I put the net up across the river and furled it last night before it went dark, in readiness for a quick start.

After about half an hour I was hopeful having seen a bird about 30 metres down stream, however that's as far as it went. I did walk downstream and upstream the long way round to see if there were any birds on the river that maybe would fly towards the net but it wasn't to be.

Then came the surprise a Sparrowhawk with a partially eaten Starling flew from upstream into the net. I dashed down to extract it and it had a ring on its leg. Back at the car I processed the bird. The ring was one of mine and was originally caught on 15th October 2015 as a 3M from my other site at Fygin Common.

It was good to catch this bird and it shows what a large feeding area the smaller raptors can have. Since I caught it in October last year it increased its weight by 15.7gms.