Sheepish Starling...

On Sunday morning I decided to open the garden net as well as having another go at catching a Blackbird in the front garden using a spring trap. The male bird in question refuses to visit the back garden and as a result remains unringed. Interestingly, he does seem to have taken up territory at the front and never moves far even when approached. 

With the trap set and the mealworms doing their best at wriggling all that was left to do was to put the kettle on and extract anything from the 30' in the back garden. Two Goldfinches later, including the first retrap for the garden and the spring trap had made a catch. It wasn't however the target species that had been caught but instead I was faced with removing a very sheepish looking Starling that had obviously been eyeing the bait from roof in which they've been busily building their nest this year.

 Spring Trap ready complete with bait

Rather sheepish looking female Starling

Although the morning wasn't exactly awash with birds a further four Starlings were mist netted along with two Chaffinches trapped together in the bottom shelf and were a new species for the garden. A female Blackbird was caught in the mist net, the spring traps failing to catch another bird.

 Chaffinches - 2CY (5) male left, adult (6) female right

Totals - 14 new and (1) retrap

Blackbird - 1

Blue Tit - 5

Starling - 5

Chaffinch - 2

Goldfinch - 1, (1)