Marsworth CES 9 - two attempts

After 5 weeks of drought we finally had some rain - great except that CES 9 was due and going back to work has limited the choice of days for ringing. We attempted to get it done on the Saturday 28th July and I was grateful for Claire, Chris and Ed being willing to give it a go with little prospect of success. Carrying umbrellas and wearing waterproofs to wade through the chest-high wet vegetation we started putting nets up at 4:30am and it started to rain a little at 5:30am. Then began a long morning of opening and closing nets as the showers kept passing through.  The nets were sheltered from the SW wind by the belt of poplars that runs behind the reed bed and conditions where we sit were actually far worse than by the nets, with the wind making the trees rustle and drip. We decided to close Net 1 at 9:30am because it was starting to catch the wind but other than that we had the nets open for roughly four hours instead of our usual six and caught 36 birds. The birds were mainly Reed Warblers and Blackcaps, the Blackcaps were all 3J but the 16 Reed Warblers included 7 adults including a female with BP4 that had been ringed in 2015 and three other females with BP5.
We checked the large nest box and found an adult Stock Dove on two warm eggs plus two large ringable chicks from her previous brood still in the box.
The following Sunday, 5th August should have been CES 10. The weather had returned to hot and dry and a Hobby was hunting over the reed bed against a rosy sunrise as we put up nets. Catching was very slow at the start but then some migrants started passing through including a little group of Chiffchaff and Willow Warblers. We caught numerous Migrant Hawker dragonflies in the nets - all released unharmed. The total of 44 at the end was surprisingly not much higher that the previous week and we continue to be well below average.
Our total for sessions 1 - 9 is 366 which is the lowest since 1994 (range is 335 - 672).
It remains to be seen which of the two sessions the BTO will prefer to use as the CES 9, assuming we manage to get another session in next weekend to use as CES10.

	28th July Wind and rain	5th Aug Calm and very hot
Blackcap	8	4
Chiffchaff	1	12
Reed Warbler	16	7
Willow Warbler		2
Blue Tit		5
Great Tit		1
Bullfinch	3	1
Wren	6	11
Robin	1	1
Blackbird	1
	36	44

Lynne