Net Ride Maintenance

Thursday, May 2nd 2019

With the CES (Constant Effort Sites Scheme) bird ringing season about to begin, staff and volunteers focused on preparing the net rides for the coming weekend. During the summer the bird ringers operate the same nets in the same locations over the same time period at regular intervals through the breeding season at over 140 sites throughout Britain and Ireland. At Foxglove this has taken place for twenty-six years. The scheme provides valuable trend information on abundance of adults and juveniles, productivity and also adult survival rates for twenty-four species of common songbird.

With the recent warm weather and rainfall, the rides were in need of strimming, mowing and pruning. Priority was given to the CES rides and then others were tackled too. 

This was the perfect opportunity to try out the new, shiny hover mower.

Later, with the mowing complete and rain threatening, it was decided to catch up on a few indoor jobs such as weighing out bird seed.

It wouldn't be a Thursday unless Bob built another bridge! He has six under his belt so far. Many thanks to all of the volunteers who gave their time today.

Finally, the tadpoles in the classroom aquarium have eventually grown some legs! The one pictured below is a Common Frog tadpole. These can be distinguished from Common Toad tadpoles by their speckled greenish brown colour. In comparison, the Toad ones are jet black all over. Both can be seen in separate tanks in the field centre.

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