Mute Swan day

Sean and I spent Tuesday checking on as many of the Islands Mute Swans as we could in order to see if we could catch and ring any of this years youngsters and also see which ringed birds were where.

We ended the day having caught and ringed 3 new Swans, all of them adults. We did find a brood of 3 young at Billown Mansion but the Cob kept on calling his young away from the bank and out of our reach so they didn't get ringed this time.

At the end of the day we had re-sighted 16 Swans and ringed 3 new ones. We had also caught 3 Mallard and to top the day off I got a rare Manx 'tick' in the form of my long-held bogey bird on the Island - Kingfisher. We had superb views of the bird as it spent several minutes loafing around the road bridge over Peel harbour before heading off up the hillside into thick bracken!