Thursday 21 August 2014

CES 11 20/8/14 TREEmendous catch

I have to start with the fact that there were two new birds for me on CES 11!
Grasshopper Warbler
The first was the Grasshopper Warbler . The photo doesn't do it justice (and my fingers don't look that big in real life).

Then there was the Tree Pipit 
Tree Pipit
and not just the one, we caught 26 of them by the end of the day. Both these birds are proof that you don't need lots of colour to look stunning in the sunlight.

But having said that between those catches we had this showy little thing. All iridescent and either blue or green depending on which angle you look at it. So a bit of colour doesn't look bad either.

Kingfisher



Kingfisher






























The session was attended by Dave, Heather, Cedwyn and Chris.
As on previous visits we augmented the 6x18m CES ride nets with 2x18m in the west pool slack(WPS), and another 3x18m in the Glaucous Reed ride (GLR).

The nets in  the scrub area was by far the most productive yielding a total of 40 birds.
GLR was a poor catch with only 11 birds, but the walk over there is good exercise (as if we needed it!)

The CES ride was again an increase on recent years with a total of 28 birds. That means we have caught almost 50% more birds than last year with CES12 still to come.

Also of note were the controls that we caught, both were Sedge Warblers, one of which had a French ring on. We will be interested to know where they were first ringed.


Totals for the day:



Saturday 9 August 2014

CES 10 - 8/8/14

CES 10 started in excellent conditions with no wind and clear skies. Dave, Cedwyn, Heather and Chris had another new companion this week. Phil Mead had his first taste of the joys of ringing whilst up to your knees in mud.

With the extra assistance it was easy to get both the CES and additional nets up early, and we were rewarded by an excellent first few rounds, with approximately 30 birds caught by around 08:30. We added an extra net in GLR making a total of 11x18m nets. 

The session obviously quietened after this but the total for the day (67) was more than acceptable. A control Sedge Warbler turned up later, which was thought to be originally ringed on Gower.


The CES ride again provided and improved catch on previous years, continuing the much welcomed trend for this survey.


Kingfisher


An early birds was 
this juvenile, female
Kingfisher.










Total for the day: