CES Visit 3 21/05/2017

I must admit it was a slight struggle when the alarm went off at 04:15 this morning, I suppose in comparison to some CES this might be regarded as a long lay in. 3 of us completed this visit. Again no surprise our first round of the day produced 3 birds Robin, Blackcap and a bird that hasn't let us down so far for being caught on the first round, Chiffchaff, a returning female that had been aged and ringed as an adult on visit 2 in May 2016.

Our lowest catch so far this season with 26 birds caught, in terms of birds caught this visit equaled what we had caught in 2016.

Although not too busy with the amount of birds we were catching in the nets, in between rounds we were kept occupied with ringing broods of chicks in our on site nest boxes.

In between net rounds

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	2	2
Blackcap	3
Blue Tit		1
Chiffchaff		3
Coal Tit		1
Dunnock	1	1
Goldcrest		1
Robin	1	3
Willow Warbler	1	1
Whitethroat	2	2
Wren		1
11 Species	10	16

CES Visit 2 13/05/2017

Visit 2 kicked off in the fashion that we are pretty much used to, with the first round of the morning catching 1 bird, again it was a Chiffchaff, a returning adult female caught in net 1. The second net round was a little more productive with 10 birds caught, our first Whitethroat of the season was caught amongst them, we managed to go on and catch another 3 Whitethroat throughout our 2nd visit, coincidentally, it was visit 2 last year that also produced our first Whitethroat of the season. 21 birds were caught on visit 2 last year with 31 caught this year.

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	1
Blackcap	1
Blue Tit	1	2
Chiffchaff	1	3
Dunnock	1
Goldcrest		3
Great Tit		1
Long tailed Tit		2
Robin		4
Song Thrush	1
Willow Warbler	2
Whitethroat	4
Wren	3	1
13 Species	15	16

CES Visit 1 29/04/17

Constant Effort Site

CES season is now upon us again, back to the early morning rises to carry out 12 visits to our site throughout Spring/Summer.

The Constant Effort Sites Scheme aims to gather information, which will help to explain bird population changes, through a programme of standardised summer mist-netting at sites in specific habitats. A series of standard net-sites are used to gather trapping data. It is important that the net positions and the number and type (i.e. length, height and mesh) of nets remain constant for each visit in both initial and subsequent years. 

We arrived on site for 05.15hrs and quickly erected our 340m of mist nets, we have seven lanes around our site 3 x 60m & 4 x 40m. 

Our first round of the morning isn't usually too productive, in previous years we're lucky to catch anything between 1-5. However, this morning was more than productive with our first net round totalling 14 birds. Our first 2 birds out of net 1 were returning Chiffchaff of which one was ringed as a juvenile in August 2015, we were now able to sex this bird as a male. Another which was first ringed in June 2016 as an adult female, it looks like these two could be paired up, hopefully we will catch some of their offspring this year and subsequent years.

Our first returning Chiffchaff of the season (W.E)

Also in the same net round we caught 2 new Bullfinch, she had a brood patch which would indicate that they are both breeding on site, this lets us know how important our site is for breeding birds, not only returning migrants but also for our local breeders. 

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	1	1
Blackcap	4
Blue Tit		1
Bullfinch	2
Chiffchaff	4	5
Dunnock	2	2
Goldcrest	2
Long tailed Tit		2
Robin	3	2
Song Thrush	1
Willow Warbler	2
Wren	2	3
12 Species	23	16

Our first net round wasn't equalled throughout our morning but we did end our first visit of the season with 39 birds