Sand Martins Saturday 23/07/2016

This 10m banking has 9 active nest holes. So far this year we have managed to catch 61 Sand Martins over 2 sessions, 20 of these have been juveniles, not too bad for this small colony. 2 re-traps, 1 from July 2014 & 1 from June 2015.

Juvenile Sand Martin

Saturday morning we arrived on site for 03:15hrs to have the nets in place prior to sunrise, we usually just set the one net alongside the small colony, but having seen Common Sandpiper on this stretch we decided to set another 12m net across the river, on returning to check the nets and extract, there was no Sandpiper, we had a few Sand Martin. However, imagine our surprise when our first of 2 Kingfishers were caught in the net we had erected over the river this morning.

On a later check of the nets we flushed some Mallard as we approached them, one flew into the net, we tried to run through the water to make sure it didn't escape, we were about one metre away from securing it when, yeah, you guessed, it escaped! I guess our fitness levels aren't what they used to be.