A frustrating week, with no ringing possible over the weekend, and only one short session during the weekdays leading up to it, due to poor weather. We therefore set our sights on the evening of Monday 20 August and the following Tuesday morning, as these promised the best forecast of the week.
For several consecutive hours of Monday evening the BBC boldly predicted a likelihood of rainfall that varied between 0% and 4% by hour. This was not borne out on the ground (or across South Wales); continuous light rain threatened the session, which was particularly concerning given how far some people were driving to get to Oxwich. The westerly wind also took some time to die down, and prospects for a decent catch started to look bleak. As dusk approached, however, the wind finally started to ease and the rain became a light mizzle.
Given this backdrop, it was a bit of a surprise that the roost catch turned out to be one of our best of the past few years. We have caught more birds (the total of 207 was good but not exceptional), but the variety was excellent, particularly as we had a good number of trainees present.
The catch since the last blog post has been as follows:
|
Species
Name |
New
|
Recapture
|
Total
|
|
Blackbird
|
1
|
|
1
|
|
Blackcap
|
4
|
1
|
5
|
|
Blue Tit
|
3
|
1
|
4
|
|
Cetti’s Warbler
|
3
|
1
|
4
|
|
Chiffchaff
|
2
|
|
2
|
|
Garden Warbler
|
3
|
|
3
|
|
Pied/White Wagtail
|
8
|
|
8
|
|
Reed Bunting
|
1
|
|
1
|
|
Reed Warbler
|
41
|
12
|
53
|
|
Robin
|
1
|
|
1
|
|
Sand Martin
|
30
|
|
30
|
|
Sedge Warbler
|
32
|
5
|
37
|
|
Starling
|
10
|
|
10
|
|
Swallow
|
137
|
2
|
139
|
|
Whitethroat
|
1
|
|
1
|
|
Willow Warbler
|
7
|
|
7
|
|
Wren
|
|
1
|
1
|
|
Yellow Wagtail
|
1
|
|
1
|
|
Grand
Total |
285
|
23
|
308
|
Highlights have been:
- Three new garden warblers, taking the annual total to twelve. Garden warbler is a fairly scarce autumn migrant on Gower, with most records in recent years coming via ringing.
- Good catches of reed and sedge warbler. It is looking like a record year for both (albeit totals are modest by many people’s standards). We have ringed 201 reed warblers and 157 sedge warblers in the year to date.
- A good first roost catch of 137 swallows (two were captured the following morning), which included two recaptured adults ringed in 2017.
- A record total of 30 sand martins. Our best year on the species was 33 captured in 2016!
- Ten starlings, also captured coming into roost, albeit in a series of nets set for wagtails approximately 600 m from the swallow nets. As is typical, a number were difficult to extract, and several escaped from the net on approach. A roosting flock of several hundred birds is currently present on the marsh.
- A reasonable early catch of pied / white wagtails, along with the star of the evening, a young yellow wagtail. We captured three yellow wagtails among pied / white wagtails in 2017. At the time this seemed like a one-off; there were more yellow wagtails reported on passage than in previous years. However, hopefully this will be the first of a few over the autumn.
Thanks to all who have managed to get out over the past few sessions – Heather Coats, Keith Vaughton, Wayne Morris, Sophie de Grissac, Richard Dann, Amy Schwartz, Martin Georgiev, Lara Bates-Prior and Kathryn Dunnett.
Owain Gabb
21/08/2018
 |
| Starling (Amy Schwartz) |
 |
| Yellow wagtail (Richard Dann) |
