Woodcock catching in Cornwall

by Chris Heward

We're lucky enough to be visiting Cornwall this week on a woodcock-catching fieldtrip. Having driven down on Saturday, we've spent the past three nights in the field trying to catch and ring as many woodcock as possible. The ultimate aim is to try to recover geolocators from birds caught and tagged last winter; as well as deploying more tags for the coming spring migration.

Every bird we catch is ringed; an exercise which helps us learn about the longevity, condition and movements of individual birds (the benefits of ringing are described here). So far, no geolocators have been recovered but we have managed to recapture a couple of birds ringed in previous winters.

We have a second trip to Cornwall planned for March, when the plan will be to deploy two more satellite tags.

Please subscribe to blog updates as we have two more nights of catching left, and will keep you posted on our progress. Hopefully we'll also have some pictures to share.


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