CES Visit 12 01/09/2018

It seems a very good year for Bullfinch breeding on site we have caught 13 juveniles compared to 8 Juveniles last year. As far as Chiffchaff is concerned this was a very disappointing year, we only caught 36 Juveniles this year compared to 59 in 2017 and 70 in 2016.

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackcap	5
Blue Tit	3	3
Bullfinch	4	2
Chiffchaff	4
Dunnock	1
Great Tit		1
Robin	3	2
Song Thrush	1
Treecreeper	1
Wren	2
10 Species	24	8

Once again thank-you to every one who managed along and gave up their very early morning spare time, your help was invaluable and very much appreciated. I hope to see you all again next year.

CES Visit 11 17/08/2018

Out of 28 birds caught on Visit 11 again it was clear to see the adults had vacated and moved on to pastures new, only 3 adults were caught this visit.

We caught the other Juvenile Lesser Whitethroat but no sign of it's parent or other sibling this visit. We also caught Common Whitethroat on the same net round so it was nice to get a close up comparison of the two together.

Lesser & Common Whitethroat

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	1
Blackcap	2
Blue Tit		2
Bullfinch	4	1
Chiffchaff	3	4
Common Whitethroat	1
Dunnock	2
Goldcrest	1
Lesser Whitethroat		1
Robin	1
Song Thrush	1
Treecreeper		1
Willow Warbler		1
Wren	1	1
14 Species	17	11

CES Visit 10 11/08/2018

After the excitement surrounding Visit 9 could Visit 10 produce the same?

It was clear now that most of the adult birds have moved off site, we only caught 4 adults out of 31 birds on this session with the other 27 being all juveniles. We have only caught adult Song Thrush up until this visit, we were kinda giving up thinking that all the juveniles had left our site without catching any, however we were proved wrong as we managed to catch our one and only today.

One of the Juvenile Lesser Whitethroat's was still hanging around which was still as exciting, one of the ringers on site hadn't processed one prior to this visit, he was pretty chuffed to be able to go through all the biometrics.

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	2
Blue Tit	3	3
Bullfinch	4	2
Chiffchaff	5	2
Coal Tit	2
Dunnock	1
Lesser Whitethroat		1
Robin		1
Song Thrush	1
Wren	4
10 Species	22	9

CES Visit 9 04/08/2018

With thoughts on our mind that some juveniles will be dispersing from site along with adult birds, it looked as though Visit 8 was going to be our biggest catch during the 2018 season. This proved correct as on this Visit (9) we were back down on numbers with this visit only producing 30 birds.

However, as I said at the beginning of this summary, we had very nice unexpected guests turn up on this visit. Our first 3/4 rounds produced the usual suspects Bullfinch, Chiffchaff, Wrens etc...What we were not expecting is a bird to appear that hasn't been caught on site for 11 years (Lesser Whitethroat). I know a lot of Constant Effort Sites may have these breeding in abundance but there is definitely a lack of the them appearing on any of the Lothian Sites. Catching a female and two juveniles makes us wonder if they were breeding on site and if they have they've most certainly went under the radar, the more likely explanation this far on into the season is that they may have dispersed from breeding nearby and passing through, nonetheless it was great to have them caught on site again.

First Lessser Whitethroats caught since 2007 (2 Juveniles)

Adult 

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackcap	1	2
Blue Tit	1	2
Bullfinch	3	1
Chiffchaff	3	3
Coal Tit	1
Common Whitethroat	3
Great Tit	1	1
Lesser Whitethroat	3
Robin	1	1
Willow Warbler	1
Wren	1	1
11 Species	19	11

CES Visit 8 21/07/2018

Visit 7 + 8 as in the past heralds most adults that we're catching starting to go through post breeding moult, we notice that visit 8 produces the majority of species starting to moult. This session we had Song Thrush, Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, Blue Tit all going through post breeding moult.

With 40 birds caught, this visit it kept us slightly busier than previous sessions with some moult scoring taking place!

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackcap	2
Blue Tit	7	2
Bullfinch	1
Chaffinch	1
Chiffchaff	6	1
Common Whitethroat	4
Dunnock		1
Great Tit	2	1
Robin	2
Song Thrush	1	2
Treecreeper	1
Willow Warbler	1	1
Wren	3	1
13 Species	31	9

CES Visit 7 06/07/2018

CES Visit 7 - 06/07/2018

Visit 7 just became the top visit with 34 birds surpassing Visit 6 by 1 bird!

Although we had 2 more Chiffchaff on this visit compared to last years we were still down overall with this species which is usually our most abundant breeding migrant at Hadfast Valley.

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackcap	4
Blue Tit	5	1
Chiffchaff	4	3
Dunnock	1
Great Tit	5	1
Robin	3
Treecreeper	1	1
Willow Warbler	1
Wren	4
9 Species	28	6

CES Visit 6 24/06/2018

Our first Treecreeper and Goldfinch were caught to-day which was very pleasing and also reassuring that they were still breeding on site.

33 birds were caught today making it the most we've caught this season so far, of course more Juveniles were starting to fledge but still very disappointing compared to 49 being caught on the same visit last year.

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird		1
Blackcap	1	1
Blue Tit	4
Bullfinch	1
Chiffchaff	8	1
Common Whitethroat	2
Dunnock	2
Goldfinch	3
Great Tit	4
Robin	3
Willow Warbler	1
Wren	1
12 Species	30	3