CES Visit 3 26/05/2018

We were hoping to exceed our catch from our last visit (2) which we thought wouldn't be an impossibility, there was a light breeze with sun shining through periodically between the clouds. 

Arriving on site for 05.15 we duly erected our 7 nets and by the time we started our first net round low and behold....one less bird caught than what we managed to catch on the first round of Visit 2. It was starting to look pretty similar.

The 2nd round of the morning coincidently produced the same as visit 2 ONE bird! Round 3 again one bird.

It wasn't until round 4 that we started to catch more, however by the end of visit 3 we didn't catch a whole load more than Visit 2, with only19 birds caught in total to-day. What was most pleasing though was things were starting to look good for Common Whitethroats on site with 4 new birds 2 Female & 2 Male. Hopefully Visit 4 will be more productive?

4 new common Whitethroat to-day

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	3	2
Blackcap	1
Blue Tit	1	3
Chaffinch		1
Dunnock		2
Common Whitethroat	4
Song Thrush	1
Willow Warbler	1
8 Species	11	8

CES Visit 2 19/05/2018

Visit 2 was looking pretty ominous. We realised within the first two rounds that this morning wasn't going to very productive...we were proved to be right with our prediction. 15 birds were caught with re-traps outnumbering new birds a first for a very long time. Although, one of the re-traps was by far very pleasing, one of the Chaffinch we re-trapped to-day was an adult male who we ringed on 4th January 2013 on site....so at least 6 years old, this makes it all worth while knowing that there are still old friends coming back to breed on site!

Heading down to-wards our first net ride

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	2	1
Blackcap	1
Blue Tit		1
Chaffinch		2
Dunnock	1	1
Great Tit	1	1
Song Thrush	1
Common Whitethroat	1
Wren		2
9 Species	7	8

CES Visit 1 06/05/2018

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.

This is now the 11th year that we have been running a Constant Effort site at SWT Hadfast Valley.

We also had a nice surprise this year with one particular species returning to breed after a break of 11 years, the last time we caught one on site was 2007....but more of that later on Visit 9.

CES Visit 1 - 06/05/2018

We arrive on site each visit for around 05.30 each session and look to be packed up by 12.30. Our first visit this year compared to 2017 is one species less with ten birds less also. However, its always nice to have returning birds being faithful to the site year after year. One of the returning Chiffchaff was ringed in 2016 as an adult male, the returning Common Whitethroat was also ringed in 2016.

Song Thrush Anvil on site

Species 2018	New	Retraps
Blackbird	1	1
Blackcap	6
Bullfinch	2
Chiffchaff	1	2
Dunnock	1	1
Goldfinch	1
Robin		2
Song Thrush	2
Willow Warbler	4
C. Whitethroat		1
Wren	4
11 Species	22	7