Friday 12 June 2020

Today's weather was rather changeable, this morning was overcast, but by lunchtime the cloud had dissipated and it turned into a lovely sunny afternoon!

Early Afternoon in the North West Fields

The morning was spent typing up some re-sightings of gulls which were darvic ringed last year and finishing marking up some new posts for there Manx Shearwater Productivity Burrows. While George was cracking on with the office work, he set a walk-in trap in the garden and caught a Magpie, it had been ringed back in 2016 on the Mountainside as a bird in the nest - nice to see this bird is still around!

the Magpie caught in the Obs garden.

Magpies can do some serious damage with their beaks, they're certainly built for tearing up carrion...

Then, George set off around some of his empty Manxie burrows to see if any birds has moved into them since the first burrow checks, of the 34 that were checked today, 23 are now occupied! It will be exciting to go around all of the burrows again in a few weeks time to see how many of the eggs will have turned into little cute Manxie chicks!

West Coast 5, this burrow also had an adult bird and an egg inside!

While George was at Nant checking the burrows, he heard a Common Rosefinch singing from the Mountainside above, this is the second of the spring, and always a nice sound to hear - unfortunately the bird stopped singing quite soon after it had started, and there was no further sign.

Sam continued with his Manxie Census at the Northern end of the West side of the Mountain and today he counted just over 160 burrows. The West Side of the Mountain is thick with gorse, so to survey this area, the callback lure is played at the gorse and then the number of responses are counted as the burrows themselves are covered by the gorse.

Over on the West Coast, three Lapwings were seen, these are only the third record of this species for the year, despite once being a breeding species on the island...

Other highlights were one Buzzard, one Peregrine, three Willow Warblers, one Chiffchaff, two Blackcaps, six Great Tits and six Goldfinches.






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