Friday 12 April
Some team members assembled on the Friday afternoon or evening and enjoyed a relaxed evening.
Saturday 13 April
More team members joined us on the Saturday ready to do some maintenance work and to get ready for the evening mist-netting. With the forecast suggesting the breeze would remain, after discussion we decided on a limited mist-netting session on the White Barn Inner Pool only.
Although we were doing maintenance rather than catching on Saturday morning, Liam prepared a fantastic, large, cooked breakfast for lunch.
A team headed out to set the mist nets, going for two lines of five nets in fairly close proximity. With a net guard left on the marsh, the rest headed back for dinner. After dinner, we all headed down to the marsh. The net team stayed out at the nets throughout the catching period patrolling the nets.
As catching was relatively slow, a lot of the less-experienced team members were able to practice extracting – much more difficult to learn now we use small mesh cannon nets and therefore people don’t learn wader extraction in the light. Birds were processed back at the White Barn (not inside as the barn was funnelling the wind). Although it was a modest catch, it gave training opportunities and was enjoyed by all. A highlight was a particularly large female Curlew which weighed over 900 g.
Catch totals
| Species | New | Retrap | Total |
| Curlew | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Knot | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Dunlin | 8 | 1 | 9 |
| Redshank | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Turnstone | 11 | 1 | 12 |
| Totals | 21 | 4 | 25 |
The other part of the weekend (maintenance) was very productive as the team worked hard to cross lots of tasks off the jobs list, with some team members staying until Sunday evening and Monday.
Thanks to Claudia Gooch for writing this report. Cover image by Rob Robinson.