On the 30.12.2018 we did the first ringing on water pipits (Anthus spinoletta) for this season. Some followers may
know that we are capturing those birds since some years regularly during October till April at our station. read
more
Before this activity, many things had to be prepared. Thanks to our team we managed everything! We already cleared the net trails in autumn, controlled and replaced all the broken nets and watched regularly the fly in of the water pipits.
The left graphic shows the last observation during 4 days on the 20.12, 21.12, 25.12 and 26.12.
Measured by means of this observation we calculated the time when we had to open the nets to have a successful catch. The blue and grey line show the fly in of the water pipits on normal “warm” days without wind and clear sky. The number is of the orange and yellow line is lower and is explained by the bad weather. The 21.12 we had a strong breeze and the 26.12 was a very misty evening that made an observation very difficult.
Beside the fly in, some water pipits were also observed searching for food between the net trails.
We mobilised many people of our team to help out the 30.12 and opened all us know water pipit sleeping places. In total we caught 14 birds.
Determined by the criteria of the Vogelwarte Sempach, 11 birds were males, two females and one bird was determined as unknow. The age (grafic right) was classified in four water pipits as adult, three as juvenile and one as unknow. Five birds were recaptures of other years. The oldest (Code C) were ringed 2013 the first time. Furthermore, we recaptured a water pipit which had a GPS in 2015.
Autor: Charel Klein
