CES Visit 11 17/08/2018

Out of 28 birds caught on Visit 11 again it was clear to see the adults had vacated and moved on to pastures new, only 3 adults were caught this visit.

We caught the other Juvenile Lesser Whitethroat but no sign of it's parent or other sibling this visit. We also caught Common Whitethroat on the same net round so it was nice to get a close up comparison of the two together.

Lesser & Common Whitethroat

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	1
Blackcap	2
Blue Tit		2
Bullfinch	4	1
Chiffchaff	3	4
Common Whitethroat	1
Dunnock	2
Goldcrest	1
Lesser Whitethroat		1
Robin	1
Song Thrush	1
Treecreeper		1
Willow Warbler		1
Wren	1	1
14 Species	17	11

CES Visit 10 11/08/2018

After the excitement surrounding Visit 9 could Visit 10 produce the same?

It was clear now that most of the adult birds have moved off site, we only caught 4 adults out of 31 birds on this session with the other 27 being all juveniles. We have only caught adult Song Thrush up until this visit, we were kinda giving up thinking that all the juveniles had left our site without catching any, however we were proved wrong as we managed to catch our one and only today.

One of the Juvenile Lesser Whitethroat's was still hanging around which was still as exciting, one of the ringers on site hadn't processed one prior to this visit, he was pretty chuffed to be able to go through all the biometrics.

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackbird	2
Blue Tit	3	3
Bullfinch	4	2
Chiffchaff	5	2
Coal Tit	2
Dunnock	1
Lesser Whitethroat		1
Robin		1
Song Thrush	1
Wren	4
10 Species	22	9

CES Visit 9 04/08/2018

With thoughts on our mind that some juveniles will be dispersing from site along with adult birds, it looked as though Visit 8 was going to be our biggest catch during the 2018 season. This proved correct as on this Visit (9) we were back down on numbers with this visit only producing 30 birds.

However, as I said at the beginning of this summary, we had very nice unexpected guests turn up on this visit. Our first 3/4 rounds produced the usual suspects Bullfinch, Chiffchaff, Wrens etc...What we were not expecting is a bird to appear that hasn't been caught on site for 11 years (Lesser Whitethroat). I know a lot of Constant Effort Sites may have these breeding in abundance but there is definitely a lack of the them appearing on any of the Lothian Sites. Catching a female and two juveniles makes us wonder if they were breeding on site and if they have they've most certainly went under the radar, the more likely explanation this far on into the season is that they may have dispersed from breeding nearby and passing through, nonetheless it was great to have them caught on site again.

First Lessser Whitethroats caught since 2007 (2 Juveniles)

Adult 

Species	Total New	Retraps
Blackcap	1	2
Blue Tit	1	2
Bullfinch	3	1
Chiffchaff	3	3
Coal Tit	1
Common Whitethroat	3
Great Tit	1	1
Lesser Whitethroat	3
Robin	1	1
Willow Warbler	1
Wren	1	1
11 Species	19	11