6 June 2016

New moon Stormies

The first summer new moon coincided with a period of nice still weather so we had the chance to do some nocturnal netting for Storm Petrels. We headed to Hot Point, Lizard on the last two nights, netting a total of 52 birds. This is more than we've caught so early in the year before so worth the missed sleep!

Close up you can see where these 'tubenoses' get their name from
Most of these were new birds, but we did recatch birds we'd ringed there in June and July last year which is interesting and also a single French-ringed bird. Cornwall really does get the lion's share of French birds with 2/6 birds caught in the UK in 2015 being caught in Cornwall.


We sometimes catch birds with parts of feet or legs missing and the last couple of nights saw a bird missing a whole leg and one just missing the end of its foot. This doesn't seem to hinder them too much though which is lucky!

This is as drastic an amputation as we've seen!

2 comments:

  1. 07-10 June 2016: 702 storm petrel caught on Banneg Island, Brittany, during 3 consecutive nights, with 3 British ringed birds (from Cornwall?...), 3 Spanish + 2 Portuguese

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    1. We can't compete with that Bernard, but then ours don't breed very locally... Nice to have some BTO birds and I'm sure they'll be ours or from South Wales!

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