A fine bright morning which rapidly became warm and sunny.  The lack of significant breeze was a positive, in that the nets were fairly still for much of the time, but the brightness made them more visible.

Despite the fact that the weather was not absolutely ideal, we managed a good catch, passing 100 birds for the second week running.  The total of 131 birds was made up as follows:

The highlights were four new great spotted woodpeckers, including a couple of juveniles, two juvenile song thrush (as we don’t always capture this species at the site until the autumn), our first willow warbler for a little while, the first fledgling blue and great tits of the year and a control reed warbler (a bird ringed elsewhere and recaptured on the marsh).  Breaking a half century of goldfinches in the session was also excellent.

The catch was swelled by numerous juvenile birds

We periodically look at how we are doing against 2014.  Following wet and windy weather in April and May, which resulted in our falling behind last year’s pace, a couple of good sessions in early June have now seen us move slightly ahead again.  The table below is of unique birds between 1 January and 7 June inclusive in the respective years.

Species	2015	2014
Jack Snipe	1	0
Snipe	2	0
Kingfisher	0	2
Green Woodpecker	1	0
Great Spotted Woodpecker	11	4
Swallow	1	1
Wren	18	14
Dunnock	22	18
Robin	23	18
Stonechat	0	2
Blackbird	9	5
Song Thrush	6	0
Mistle Thrush	1	0
Cetti’s Warbler	7	5
Grasshopper Warbler	2	1
Sedge Warbler	8	7
Reed Warbler	9	11
Whitethroat	3	1
Blackcap	17	12
Wood warbler	0	1
Chiffchaff	7	8
Willow Warbler	3	11
Goldcrest	6	3
Long-tailed Tit	11	0
Coal tit	0	2
Blue Tit	141	127
Great Tit	61	43
Treecreeper	2	0
Magpie	1	1
Chaffinch	122	58
Greenfinch	118	175
Goldfinch	232	191
Siskin	29	60
Lesser Redpoll	1	0
Bullfinch	8	4
Reed Bunting	37	83
Total	920	868

As can be seen from the table, the diversity of species trapped in 2015 is well up on this time in 2014, which is testimony to the fact that we have tried ringing in various different locations around the marsh, and sampled different habitats.  The only species we have captured significantly less of in 2015 than we had by this time in 2014 are greenfinch and reed bunting.  It may be that numbers of both species have been affected by the lack of ground baiting this year.  However, the presence of pheasants around the feeders has necessitated this.

Many thanks to today’s team of Wayne Morris, Darren Hicks, Heather Coats, Dan Rouse, Charlie Sargent and Dai Stacey for company and assistance this morning.

A couple of photos below.

Owain Gabb

07/06/2015