Nets: 130m
Sound: None
Weather: cool to warm
(persistent cold E wind)
Ringers: CS and EB
May is a busy time ringing
and we thoroughly enjoy the mix of normal mist netting sessions combining with
Tawny Owl box visits, our passerine nest boxes to check and Kestrel boxes as
well. This May has been particularly busy: the Tawny Owls have had an excellent
breeding season, the best we have recorded; and our passerine boxes seem to
have a good occupancy rate too.
The captures table
below is from two ringing sessions – the totals in both sessions were slightly
above average.
Species
|
Ringed
|
Re-trapped
|
Total
|
Blackcap
|
4
|
1
|
5
|
Blue Tit
|
1
|
5
|
6
|
Bullfinch
|
2
|
2
|
|
Chaffinch
|
4
|
4
|
|
Chiffchaff
|
1
|
1
|
2
|
Crested Tit
|
1
|
1
|
|
Dunnock
|
6
|
6
|
|
Firecrest
|
1
|
1
|
|
G S
Woodpecker
|
1
|
7
|
8
|
Great Tit
|
11
|
11
|
|
Greenfinch
|
14
|
14
|
|
Marsh Tit
|
1
|
3
|
4
|
Mistle Thrush
|
2
|
2
|
|
Nuthatch
|
6
|
6
|
|
Pied
Flycatcher
|
5
|
15
|
20
|
Robin
|
3
|
2
|
5
|
Song Thrush
|
2
|
2
|
|
Willow
Warbler
|
1
|
1
|
|
Wren
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
Total
|
43
|
60
|
103
|
The Mistle Thrush is
special bird for us because they are the first of the summer’s returning
passerine migrants. Their arrival at the
end of February is our indicator that the seemingly interminable cold winter is
really going to end! When a Mistle
Thrush sits at the top of a pine in the first few days of March and sings it’s
fluting song with much gusto – noticeably thrush like, with long cadences in
its chords - it cheers us up no end while doing garden chores. Their habit of perching at the top of trees
and singing, often in stormy weather, has earned them the colloquial name:
stormcock, which according to folklore was supposed to forewarn of coming bad
weather. CS’s father used to consider
that poppycock and thought the bird just had a personal sense of joie de vivre
– a pleasant thought.
Each spring we enjoy
the Mistle Thrushes’ joie de vivre expression from high in the canopy and have
considered it improbable that we would ever catch one of these heralds of
spring; as they seem reluctant to descend from on high. So having two Mistle Thrush simultaneously in
a net was totally surprising. Both were
males, with substantial cloacal protuberances, and may have been disputing
breeding territory boundaries when they blundered into the net. Each year several do breed on-site and
nearby, and earlier in the month we had observed a Mistle Thrush collecting
moss and flying off in the direction where they were caught.
Pied Flycatchers
continue to arrive. The re-capture
figures are mostly for first re-captures and include two birds that were ringed
as nestlings in 2016 and 2018. The
re-capture from 2016 was particularly pleasing as it is the first re-capture
this year of a bird that was not ringed in 2018; we are finding that statistic
a tad disturbing. Though these are not phenomenal numbers they give some
vindication to our efforts at encouraging their breeding by providing nest
boxes – currently nine boxes are with birds on eggs; and several others have
males singing in proximity to unoccupied boxes.
Fourteen new
Greenfinch is a surprisingly high number for May and we speculate that these
are some of the many Greenfinch that were locally abundant during the winter
and have remained to breed; certainly the females had the start of brood
patches and several males are pronouncing their presence with their nasal song.
As the Greenfinch are
about to initiate their breeding efforts some birds have completed their first
broods as evidenced with the year’s first fledglings being caught. The first
fledgling captured was a Marsh Tit.
Simultaneously the three re-trap Marsh Tits had nearly completed their
primary moult with moult scores of 42, and two of 46; ah, the seasons roll ever
onwards.
Pleasingly this year the nest
boxes in Meisen Wood have produced good number of tits; currently
we have ringed 150 Great and Blue Tit nestlings with more to come as many are
currently too small to ring. And there
are still the Kestrel boxes to visit and Swallows - though initial observations
indicate their numbers are down – indeed hirundines in general were late
arriving and in low numbers. We look
forward to collecting this valuable data through the rest of May and into early
June particularly as some of the time will be spent with visiting ringers.
