My day has been a very full and fruitful one. Temperatures have not risen above freezing but we have had a bright, clear, blue sunny sky all day long. My morning was taken up with my preparation to begin my ringing training under the auspices of the British Trust for Ornithology. I have attended 4 sessions so far. I will begin training to obtain a license to net and ring the birds that visit the garden. This, along with the data collected, will enable me to completely survey the bird life in the garden and their comings and goings. I will be able to, for example study individual birds and discover if the Blackcaps that we have this year have returned and are the same ones we have had in a previous years. Today’s session was not particularly fruitful but was interesting never the less.
Back home by lunchtime and with the weather still beautifully bright we went to the Great Western Canal at Halberton, Mid-Devon. I had read that there is a Drake Mandarin Duck on the canal amongst the Mallards. A little bit of searching proved very fruitful and we found him with very little difficulty. He was a gorgeous little bird, very feisty and active but not in the least bit scared of human presence. There are, according to the RSPB 7.000 breeding pairs of this oriental/Chinese bird which originally escaped from Water Fowl collections up and down the country. I have never seen one befor in the “wild” so it was a nice sight but I have to say that it is probably a recently escaped bird from a collection nearby because of it’s lack of fear of man.

As you can see he is pretty smart, ridiculously ornamental don’t you think? From time to time he would come out of the water and waddle around with the Mallard on the ice giving me some really good photo opportunities.

He could really hold his own with the other ducks and was not in the least bit scared to offer them the side of his beak!