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

CES Visit 5 17/06/2018

To-day we had our best catch beating Visit 1 by 1 bird.

It was recognisable by the calls that there were a lot more Juvenile birds around this morning and we weren't disappointed. Still a lack of Chiffchaff which was a big concern, it certainly seems that the earlier 'Beast from the East' had taken it's toll with our regular migrant visitors as we seemed to be catching a lot more local breeders compared to this time last year!

What was very pleasing regarding local birds was the first Greenfinch we had caught on a C.E.S visit for a long time. They are very few and far between these days on our site and this was to be the only one we would catch this C.E.S season, we reckon it must have been passing through the site rather than holding territory?

We also managed to catch our first Juvenile Long-tailed tits of the season, with 4 being caught in the same net.

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackcap	2
Blue Tit	4	3
Chaffinch	1
Chiffchaff	2
Common Whitethroat	1	1
Dunnock		2
Greenfinch	1
Long-tailed Tit	4
Great Tit		2
Robin	3
Willow Warbler	1
Song Thrush	1
Wren		1
13 Species	20	9

CES Visit 4 09/06/2018

We couldn't have wished for better conditions this morning, no wind and just a small amount of sun peeking out of the clouds.

Visit 4 heralded the start of the Juveniles....hurray we should catch a lot more now that they have started to fledge, things are looking up?

Again, all nets set by 06.30 to start our first round, it took us to reach net 5 before we caught our first bird of the morning but it was our first Juvenile....a Robin.

Round 2 we caught 3 birds all re-trap adults. It wasn't until 09:00 that we caught our next birds well when I say birds of course I meant bird, a re-trap Great Tit. 09.30 produced our 2nd Juvvie....a Coal Tit. We ended up catching 2 Coati's from the same net, good to see evidence that they were breeding on site. What's interesting is how very few Chiffchaff we have caught this year so far compared to the end of Visit 4 in 2017. Last year we had caught 31 Chiffchaff by this visit....this year 4 so far!!!!

We ended up catching 18 birds today.

Net Lane 2 where we caught our first Juveniles Coal Tits of the season

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	1	3
Blackcap		2
Chiffchaff		1
Coal Tit		2
Dunnock	1
Common Whitethroat	1
Great Tit		2
Robin	1	1
Willow Warbler	1
Wren	1	1
10 Species	6	12