A gentle south-easterly wind and open skies at Oxwich this Saturday. We had a relatively small team, and only put up limited nets. Ninety-three birds was therefore a good return.

The catch broke down as follows:

The highlights were:

• Our first juvenile blue tits of the year.
• Surprisingly, perhaps, our first juvenile dunnocks of the year
• A good day catch of new blackbirds. These included new juveniles, adult female and male birds.
• Our first ever jay at the site. A female with an engorged brood patch.

Jay has been the odds-on favourite to be the next new bird to be captured at the site for the past couple of years. Given that parties of 3-4 birds are seen around the nets on most visits, that there are a wide variety of netting locations, and that we had ringed over 18,450 birds and processed in excess of 27,300 birds since we started at Oxwich in 2013 (a pilot year), a jay was very much overdue. When it finally came, it was captured in a 12 m net adjacent to a feeder; the net runs through dense ruderal vegetation dominated by hemlock water-dropwort enclosed by stands of willow – not the location we would have betted on. It is the 64th species to be captured at Oxwich.

Owain Gabb
02/06/2019

Jay (Richard Dan)