Mealy Redpoll footage

A Mealy Redpoll and a Lesser Redpoll on a feeder at The Lodge. Video taken by Grahame Madge from the hide. Still plenty of these chaps around the reserve, with many of them now singing.

If at first you don't suck seed...

... make your own nyger feeder!

Since the Lodgers' gripping start on the redpoll front, we've been grilling the modest offering of redpolls (among several hundred Siskin) on the Nunnery Lakes reserve at every opportunity, to no avail. That was until today, however, when I blundered in to our ringing site to fill up the feeders, only to be smacked in the face by a monster Mealy Redpoll that was feeding away quite happily on my home-made nyger feeder. Incredibly, considering my complete lack of fieldcraft on this occasion, it stayed put for the next 5 minutes. Fantastic!

That takes the score to 92.

Since writing this post, a bumper ringing session on Saturday
not only landed us the bird in question (above) but a second one as well...

...posing below with one of its Lesser cousins