Mighty Hunter thwarted by Nimrod

Now David lives at the Nursery and in Nov 2008 was still sleeping when I put the nets up. The modest first round brought the site's first Brambling and expecting it to be first of several it was it was processed and released. David arrived vowing revenge. It was the only Brambling of the winter (!) and until last week there have been no regular sightings in 'our' part of Woodford just north east of the AVRO factory (British Aerospace in modern parlance). On Saturday David was poised with the whoosh net trigger like 'tail end Charlie' in a WW2 Lancaster waiting for the one Brambling and a Meadow Pipit to move a couple of feet into the catching zone, when the silence was shattered by an RAF Nimrod taking to the skies. No Brambling. It was a lack lustre weekend with only Bullfinch (Jan total 36 birds) reaching double figures. Fieldfares and Redwing reappeared in a pre-roost assembly of about 40 birds so the whoosh net moved back into Richard's orchard on Sunday. In an inch of early morning snow the thrushes were very reluctant to feed, but eventually David fired on a single Fieldfare and just managed to keep the female Sparrowhawk from having it for breakfast. This was the second attempt to take a bird from the whoosh net with David, out of the hide, only a few feet from the birds. Nimrod is yet one more excuse for poor catches.