Waterbird ringing

After the bird walk at Goose Marsh Mark and I decided it should be good fun to do some water-bird ringing there. So Sunday morning Mark, Shirley and myself set out for the first, hopefully of many, ringing sessions at Goose Marsh. We put our gear on a mostly dry patch of ground and sloshed off to find a good spot to put up the nets. As this was a trial run, we put up 3 sets of 2 nets in various spots hoping that we would catch something in our artful and practical arrangement. There was a wind making the nets billow which wasn’t helpful, but when after the first hour we hadn’t caught anything and there were no birds even in the vicinity I went for a walk. Mission: Find birds and chase them closer to our nets! I was so grateful for gumboots! Wonderful invention they are! I stepped off the firm “mainland” and sloshed and slogged and splashed and schlepped around on sea grass, soggy mud and sandbars. We had timed the ringing badly, with the tide going out leaving our nets on drier land while all the birds foraged further out on the newly exposed soggy ground. Unfortunately I do not make a good herder and the birds evaded all my attempts at gently edging them closer to the nets. Eventually I gave up and made my way back to firm ground where I didn’t need to worry about sinking into a mud pit and overbalancing to land in the muddy soup, or getting a gumboot full of it! Mark suggested we move 2 of the nets further out to where the birds were foraging, quickly and easily done, mostly. And then we resumed the wait. After 3 hours of waiting since we had put up the nets we decided to call it quits; we took the nets down. A rather disappointing day bird wise but we have refined our game plan and hopefully will catch something next time!

Our nets left somewhat high and dry as the tide receded.

The birds foraging in the soggy ground.