Appearance on One Show still on iPlayer

My One Show appearance on Thursday is still available on BBC iPlayer! This shows me colour ringing robins - it's around 20 minutes into the programme!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pbppp#synopsis

grey phalarope

Well, the grey phalarope made it through the night - phew!! Very relieved.
I fed it some more mealworms before hurrying out to film the results parts of the colour-ringing robin project I had been involved with for the BBC One Show. This went well with some nice results (to be aired before X-mas). I got home to find the grey phalarope, a female, had been pottering around and seemed quite bright and lively. I fed it some more mealworms and hoped it would keep going from strength to strength. Sadly, however, when I got home at the end of the day the phalarope was sat huddled, closing its eyes. Never a good sign. It was weak and although I managed to feed the delicate bird, it wasn't responding well. An hour later it had died. Examining it in more detail the bird was incredibly thin and too far gone to save.

The last few days have been very eventful and fun. Yesterday was the second round of robin colour-ringing - although sadly we didn't catch any robins!! We did however catch three wrens in the same area of one garden - all young birds hatched earlier in the year. After a few hours of trying before work, I quickly got to Clifton and grabbed the next bus (after watching two zip past me before I could get to the stop) and arrived on the platform at Bristol Temple Meads just as the guard locked the doors of my train!! I just missed it and waited another hour at Bristol before the next train - although I did enjoy a nice cuppa in the cafe on platform 12 and took a few notes prior to my meeting in Exeter. Had a lovely train trip to and from the city, meeting went well and enjoyed a snooze on the journey back - not before spotting a pair of shoveler ducks on the flooded fields with the swans just outside of Exeter. Plenty of redwings flying out of the trees and over fields too. Looking forward to some more robin ringing tomorrow morning - fingers crossed we catch at least another 2!

Colour-ringing robins for the BBC One Show

What an amazing morning!! After a late evening getting back from scuba diving training, it was an early start today to be on site in Westbury on Trym, Bristol, to catch and colour-ring robins for the BBC One Show and help promote the British Trust for Ornithology. While everyone was getting ready with the filming gear I was getting traps set and mist nets up with one of the researchers Sophie. It was a slow start and by 8am we still hadn't caught anything. Then, one robin went into a net in a garden followed by some great tits, a coal tit and a dunnock. The robin was successfully colour-ringed and filmed, with friend and presenter Mike Dilger. It was then released, ready for studying who's who in robin world of this neighbourhood. We then moved to another garden where a robin quickly became interested in robin song (we were playing) and a decoy, stuffed robin we had next to the CD player. The robin was right by the net, feeding under cover. In the end the decoy and some mealworms were just too tempting and the robin made a dash straight into the net. Robin number 2 was successfully colour-ringed and released. Before midday we caught another two robins which was brilliant, four robins in total - we return on Wednesday and Friday to catch some more. Eight colour-ringed individuals would be ideal for the neighbours to look out for and to build up a picture of what territories are where.