Its late, the alarm is set for hideously early tomorrow morning (again!) and the camera is in the car so there are no pictures to upload, so just a brief update on how things are progressing up here...

The last couple of days have seen a combined total of about 28 hours in the field and this has resulted in our resightings total reaching 550 by the end of this evening. These 550 resightings are of about 280 birds, which shows just important the area is for Brent staging (we haven't made it away from Alftanes/Hafnarfjordur/ Seltjarnarnes yet). In addition to this we have started recording five minute focal observations on colour-ringed individuals - more on why we're doing this when I have a bit more time! All in all stuff seems to be going OK so far, although lots of frustrations along the way with uncooperative geese often choosing the worst possible times to fly away!

Best ring read of the day!

Rich's awesome photo let us get a read on CJBW before it had even landed in "field 17" this afternoon!! A good job too as it wasn't an easy spot for ring reading. 

Getting to know Alftanes...

Rich and I completed three tours of the Alftanes peninsula today as well as dropping Stu back off at Keflavik, although our post dinner jaunt was a bit too late in the day to add anything much to the previous two. Still the weather was great and the geese behaved well meaning we managed to read about 150 rings during the day. This included lots of "old friends" I'd bumped into in Dublin over the winter.

Other highlights at Alftanes were a smart Black Brant spotted in fields near the roundabout (next time the camera won't be in the boot!!), at least 7 Barnacle Geese and a single Dark-bellied Brent. Elsewhere a quick seawatch from Gardur on the way to the airport produced a single "blue" Fulmar (a first for me) amongst an impressive stream of other seabirds.