CES 11 - 13/8/17

The morning started with a glorious sunrise as evidenced by the pic below.

What the picture doesn't show is a modicum of panic when we reach the final net to find that the usually ready installed guy rope had been shredded by some necessary but enthusiastic clearance of the reeds. Undoubtedly a moral here is "carry a spare guy at all times". i.e. be prepared. Where's a boys scout or girl guide when you need one?
We still managed to have the CES nets up by 06.10 before moving on to the scrub areas to put up the extra nets as per session 10.
It was a slow morning and surprisingly the additional nets were far less productive than previously though from a CES point of view it was a positive days work. As can be seen by the results table on the linked page this year CES has matched last years with the last visit to come and two missing sessions.
The usual suspects turned up with this week these two -

Thanks for the assistance again of Heather,Stephen and Kirsty(who supplied the photos).

Totals for the day -

CES 10 - 8/8/17

After a very frustrating day checking the weather which seemed to be changing hourly the decision was made to go for a session today.
The weather looked close to perfect when we all met at 05:30. Today's team consisted of Cedwyn Sarah, Kirsty, Stephen and Chris.
As there were a number of us we decided to put some extra net  in place on a ride a little further into the scrub and crossing a gap in a line of trees.

This meant we had a total of 10x60' nets in place, so boredom shouldn't be on the cards this morning.
Especially as we were again dealing with bird poo in the interest of science.
There were a good selection of birds in a fairly steady stream for the first hour or so, mostly the regular species of warblers (reed, sedge and willow) but then we caught one of my favourite birds ( I like them all really) a Lesser Whitethroat.

 

At this point Dave had arrived and heard tree pipit overhead, We were already using a tape lure playing on  the non CES ride, so Cedwyn decided to change the tape and we were rewarded almost immediately with a few pipit in the net.

The steady run of birds continued and included another less than regular species, this garden warbler.

Though a good session overall the downside was that the CES total of 20 birds for the morning was disappointing. That said the annual total this year is an improvement on the average of the last few seasons.
Totals for the day:

Thanks to Cedwyn,  Stephen and Kirsty for the pictures.