Tuesday 30 May 2017

CES 3 - 28/5/17

The weather was just perfect for us to get the nets up by 6:05am, with no wind and a completely over cast start to the day.
Heather, Sarah and Chris were then joined by Kenfig volunteer Val who was keen to assist with the scribing.
The first round was a catch in the CES nets of a pair of bullfinch.
Later a family of  great tits had obviously encountered the WPS nets, though the adult birds were smart enough to avoid being caught leaving us with this handful of juveniles.

They were all of a similar weight indicating the adults must have had their work cut out to keep them all well fed. We made sure we released them all together to rejoin the parents in  the nearby scrub.
This robin was a very newly hatched bird as the colouring in the picture hopefully demonstrates.
The weather became a little brighter and warmer through the morning and the catch was then pretty slow in keeping with recent years CES records. The total catch being only very slightly more than the same session last year
Thanks to our interested visitors, Kevin and Tracy, for the pictures.

Totals for the day:


Saturday 20 May 2017

CES 2 - 18/5/2017

Heather, Sarah and  Chris were at the pool for CES 2.
Again the aim was to collect samples for Sarah's project and the numbers whilst pretty low meant there was no stress on taking the samples and processing the birds. There seemed to be plenty of birds in the vicinity, but avoiding the nets. The catch was fairly evenly split between the CES nets and the additional nets in the scrub.
The wind got up later in the morning but by then most of the catching had been done.

Totals for the day:


Tuesday 16 May 2017

CES 1

We had a pretty good start to the season with a nice sprinkling of warblers. The water level was low for the time of year; still deep but thigh wader deep not chest wader deep. Sarah Davies came to catch invertebrates in the nearby habitat and gave Heather and Dave guidance in collecting bird poo ready for DNA analysis.

Willow warblers were about in reasonable numbers.

Several sedge warblers in the catch was perhaps what we'd expect at this time of migration. Hopefully a pair or two will stay to breed by the pool this year.