A team of five ringers met at Harty on Tuesday 17th December and managed to catch 34 birds. A damp night with drizzle on and off throughout, and with winds variable in both strength and direction but never to wet or windy. The two small pools were used, plus an experimentally positioned net over a small pool closer to the Swale. Plenty of activity from Lapwings and other waders at two and a half hours before high tide as we were erecting the nets and immediately afterwards but less movement at what is normally the peak period. Lapwings are notoriously difficult to catch, and even with cloud cover some of our nets stood out from the background, resulting in only one Lapwing being caught.
The following birds were caught:
- Shelduck 1 (adult female)
- Avocet 1 (first year)
- Oystercatcher 1 (adult)
- Lapwing 1 (adult male)
- Bar-tailed Godwit 9 (8 of which were males)
- Dunlin 14 plus 3 retraps
- Redshank 3 plus a retrap
The retraps were all fairly recent, the Redshank from August 2012 and the Dunlin all from the autumn of 2011. A remarkable coincidence occurred in that two of the Dunlin had consecutive ring numbers and these two birds were taken from the keeping bags consecutively.