Once again we set up nets the night before and got to the site very early so that we had enough time to get the nets open by sunrise.
As with the previous few sessions, the first two net rounds were a bit quiet, but the numbers picked up once it began to warm up. By 8am we had caught a total of 21 birds including a mixture of new and re-trap Reed Warblers, a Great Spotted Woodpecker and quite a few young Blue Tits.
The last couple of net rounds were a bit slow, the highlights being our first young Chiffchaff of the year and yet more young Blue Tits - they seem to have been very successful at our site as we re-trapped 5 out of 6 Blue Tits that we ringed as pulli in a nest box.
When taking down the nets, we foolishly forgot to take any bird bags with us! So, surprise surprise, what happened? Oh yes, we caught a family party of Long-tailed Tits in the last net, meaning that MC had to go back to our base and grab some bags while TB and I set about extracting the birds.
Thanks goodness for tits, is all I can say after this session, for without them the numbers would have been pretty abismal!
The totals for the morning were as follows (re-traps are in brackets):
Blackbird - 1 (1)
Blue Tit - 8 (6)
Chiffchaff - 2
Great Spotted Woodpecker - 1
Great Tit - 3
Long-tailed Tit - 6 (3)
Reed Warbler - 2 (3)
Robin - (1)
Here are a couple of photos from the session:
 |
| Juvenile Long-tailed Tit (Aegithalos caudatus) |
 |
| The same young Long-tailed Tit as above |
 |
| Juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) |
As always, thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget you can
No comments:
Post a Comment