Ringing Demonstration for BWT's Annual Llangorse walk.

On Sunday the 11th of January, the annual Llangorse Lake walk undertaken by Brecknock Wildlife Trust was, for the first time, accompanied by a ringing demonstration from Llangorse ringing group. The preparations were made by Andrew and Jerry well in advance with feeders being set up near the end point of the walk, in the orchard of one of the farmers who kindly gives us access to his land. Although we ring elsewhere on his land this was a new site for us and although you will usually catch birds at feeders, when the gale force winds were forecast  for the weekend, with strong gusts lingering into Sunday expectations weren't particularly high. However, despite the very poor catching conditions making the net visible to the birds an impressive 24 birds were caught in a little over an hour by Jerry, Tony and Peter. It appears that if we had the funds and the manpower to maintain feeders at this site it would be a useful addition to our winter feeder sites.

There was a huge turnout for the walk and demonstration, 45 people in total, and although conditions had become to poor to keep the net up, so no demonstrations of how the birds were caught could be given, we did manage to show them a variety of species in the hand that we had caught minutes before they arrived at the ringing site. Andrew, Carola and Cheryl helped with the showing of the birds once they had completed the walk. I think the pair of Nuthatch and the Great Spotted Woodpecker were the highlights among the walk participants.

The totals were as follows:

Species	Total
Robin	1
Coati	1 + (1)
Bluti	7 + (4)
Greti	5 + (2)
Nutha	2
Grswo	1
Total	17 + (7)

Nothing particularly remarkable, but another Great Spotted Woodpecker is a nice addition and it will be interesting to see which of our sites the re-traps are coming from. From nest boxes a few hundred meters or a couple of miles away? One of our summer ringing sites of varying distance? Or one of our two regular winter feeding sites, with one significantly closer than the other?