Constant Effort Site
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.
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| 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
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