Country diary: ringing the changes in the bird population

Bedgebury Pinetum, Kent Checked and weighed by surer hands than mine, I felt the hollow-boned weightlessness of a blue tit in the cup of my palmThere’s something extraordinary about holding a bird in the palm of your hand. For me, out bird-ringing with volunteers from the British Trust for Ornithology one brisk November morning, it was a blue tit. It had been checked and weighed by surer hands than mine and then placed delicately in the cup of my palm. A familiar bird transformed by such p