Colour ringing Rock Pipits and Mute Swans

I met up with Sean this morning and our aim was to try some shoreline sites to see what we could get.
We set two nets on the foreshore at Pooil Vaaish and ended the morning having caught just 2 Rock Pipits and a Dunnock. It was good to catch some more Rock Pipits which we colour ringed as part of our ongoing project on them (click here to see info on our colour ringing projects).

Red over Bright Pink on left leg, Metal over Blue/White striped on right leg, one of the birds caught this morning at Pooil Vaaish

At one stage, a Chough 'bounced' in the net which caused a momentary bit of excitement, but it was out of the net again as quick as it went in and it settled down to feed with its mate about 50 yards along the beach.

After the tide had turned, exposing more depth of beach than we had covered, we packed up and headed to Castletown harbour to catch some more Mute Swans for our colour ring project on them.
We caught 5 new Mute Swans, 1 of which was a first year bird.

Castletown outer harbour

The first year Mute Swan with its new colour ring 'P21'