In
the winter in our house, it is cold. In the winter at Chew Valley Ringing
Station, it is also cold. So you could probably guess why I was so unwilling to
get out of bed. But I did it, and another day of ringing commenced.
It’s always harder to get up
towards the end of a holiday. All that
lying around in bed makes you lazy.
Going twitching just makes it all worse.
I had been twitching on the 1st of Jan, after being out until
1 am and only getting an hour of sleep in my bed. Sleep in cars is just never the same.
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig catching up on sleep whilst twitching Photograph taken by and copyright Helena Craig |
Then on the second of Jan, I
planned a long lie in. Midday would
have been fine. Instead, Dad woke me up
at 7.30 am with shouts of a deer in the garden.
That meant that I did not even get time to adjust to wakefulness, just a
rapid jump out of bed.
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig catching up on sleep whilst year listing Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig |
The Saturday was a morning of
rest, but it just did not seem enough.
That Sunday morning of 4th
Jan 2015, Dad woke me up at 7.00 am, so that we were not late getting to the
ringing station, which is a whole ten minutes drive away. I know I’m really luck to have Chew Valley
Ringing Station so close by. It’s a
really big ringing station with lots of people involved. I know that some people have to ring out of cars,
whilst we have a building to keep us dry.
Somehow,
we still managed to arrive later than usual, at about 8 and were just in time
for the first round.
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig and Mike Bailey on a ringing round Photograph taken by and copyright Oliver Edwards Photography |
A Young Birder's Ring Day
At the ringing station, we
help gets the nets up first. On a
Saturday morning all the nets go up from scratch. Whilst at the end of the day because we will
be back the next morning, the nets are furled so that birds can’t get caught up
in it and then unfurled on Sunday morning.
After the ringing session on Sunday mornings, the nets are always taken
down.
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But
that morning, they had not opened most of the nets because it was so frosty. As
we started to walk towards the nets, Mike Bailey (my trainer) mentioned
something about Redwing that I only half heard.
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig with rings Photograph taken by and copyright Oliver Edwards Photography |
I have been ringing since I
was 9 year old. The first couple of
years, I worked hard on improving my detailed identification skills of birds in
the hand. As an experienced birder, I
could at least identify the birds, which is a good starting point. Some people want to learn to ring without
having any birding experience at all.
That is fine but obviously takes a long time.
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| Rings at Chew Valley Ringing Station Photograph taken by and copyright Oliver Edwards Photography |
During our first round, we
caught the usual Blue Tits but nothing out of the ordinary. If you remember from a previous post, they
are actually really aggressive little birds.
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig holding Redwing Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig |
The
day went quite slowly and I extracted a few birds from the nets and ringed a
few, but nothing amazing. It was a cold winter day and it was not usual for
there to be rare birds on days like that. So, on our third round we were excited to find
that a Redwing had been caught in the net. We left someone else to remove that one from
the net and turned the corner. As we
turned the corner, we saw that there were three more! I got one out of the net myself
and then ringed it. We had been trying
for ages to catch some Redwing, which are winter thrushes, and now these had
turned up in a completely different net without any encouragement! It was great to ring Redwing, which was
something I had not ringed before.
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig holding Redwing Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig |
Later in the morning, I was
handed a bag with a large bird inside.
They would not tell me what was inside as I had to identify it myself.
This made me feel nervous though of putting my hand inside. What if it was a Crow or Rook, waiting to
take a chunk out of my finger? I need not have worried, as it was a beautiful Great Spotted Woodpecker. No issues with ID then. It had already been ringed and so I just
processed it, recording that it had been caught and noting all the measurements.
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig holding a Great-spotted Woodpecker Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig |
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Then managed to ring a Moorhen which was new for me. So, what started as a cold
quiet morning ended with three exciting and fab birds.
About the writer
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| Young Birder Birdgirl Mya-Rose Craig on Scilly Photograph taken by and copyright Chris Craig |
Mya-Rose Craig is a 12 year old young birder,
conservationist, writer and speaker. She is based near Bristol
A fabulous report and well done you on getting out there. Give my love to the original Albert.
ReplyDeleteHi Gary, thanks so much. Albert is the only cuddly animal still in my bed and he sends his love back. Hope the biking year list is going well and shame we won't see you this time.
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