The Lincolnshire Bird Club

I did an ornithological survey at Cote Hill Farm (home of the cheese!) for an HLS application a couple of years ago and was invited back to have a look at the birds feeding in a 2 acre area of wild bird seed. I decided to get an accurate count and got a team of ringers together this morning and caught the following (all new birds):

Sparrowhawk 1
Wren 3
Dunnock 24
Robin 3
Great Tit 1
House Sparrow 1
Tree Sparrow 82 !!
Chaffinch 16
Greenfinch 4
Yellowhammer 1
Reed Bunting 35

A conservative estimate is that we caught 25% of the birds present- a good advert for the farmer who provides suitable food on a mainly pasture farm.

Excellent cheese too

The prolonged windy weather prevented us from re-visiting the site until Saturday when we caught the following new birds:

Wren 1
Dunnock 9
Long-tailed Tit 9
Blue Tit 1
Great Tit 2
Tree Sparrow 10
Chaffinch 4
Greenfinch 8
Yellowhammer 5
Reed Bunting 18

Only 4 Dunnocks and 1 Robin were re-trapped from the 171 birds ringed on 23/11/13 showing that there is a continual turn over at such sites. Although the numbers are well down it was mainly due to 72 lessTree Sparrows! The surprise for me was the number of Reed Buntings - 53 in two visits!