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