After a previous check of the nest boxes in the pine forest of la Dehesa de las Yeguas in Puerto Real, today it was time to ring the nestlings. Together with nine other volunteers, I walked for several hours from nest box to nest box, guided by a GPS device that provided us with the correct coordinates.
They hang between the trees, but the strong wind made it quite difficult at times to take the nest boxes down.
Most of the young we found in the nest boxes were Great Tits or House Sparrows. In the more than twenty boxes that we checked, we found a total of more than forty young.
Some nest boxes had up to eight young crammed together. Occasionally we also found a number of eggs that had not yet hatched.
Most of the nestlings that we banded were between 11 and 15 days old. Once we were startled by a little bird that jumped down when we were taking down the nest box, but to our relief we later saw its example was followed by seven other birds from the same nest. No doubt they already had just enough feathers to fly out.
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