Marsworth - 29th August - CES 12 An excellent final session

Weather: Calm, sunny, warm
Ringers: LL, GK, CMS with AM and SK
Nets: 540' 06.00am - 12:00

The last CES session of the year and there was a feeling of autumn in the air. The reeds were wet with dew and starting to fall into the rides and Tawny Owls were calling as we put up the nets. The early rounds were very busy with lots of juvenile Chiffchaff and Blackcaps, a few Willow Warblers, Bullfinch plus 4 new Robins and a new 3J Cetti's Warbler. By 9am we had already caught 80 birds and it then started to quieten down. Claire had to leave early for work so we were pleased to have had the assistance of  Szabina and new trainee Anna, who was thrown in at the deep-end as Scribe and coped admirably. There were three Hobbies flying around constantly calling, they must have been young birds; one was chased over our heads by a Magpie. We caught two juvenile Reed Buntings which we colour-ringed. The Song Thrush was an adult female with BP4 almost certainly the parent of the three late nestlings ringed last week. Only 5 birds were found to carrying any fat: 3 Blackcaps and 2 Willow Warblers. We finished with 109 of which 104 were juveniles.

A total of 109 brings our CES total for 2017 to 829, this is the =2nd highest final total since 1991 (when my computerised records start).
We would not have thought this possible at the start of the year as we started with very low numbers of adults. At session 6 we were 8% below average. The high final total is a result of the extraordinary high numbers of juveniles in the last 6 sessions.

I am very pleased that we have managed to complete all 12 sessions again and thank you to everyone who has helped to get it done.
Lynne

SPNAME	Row Summary	Control	New Bird	Retrap
Blackcap	23		23
Blue Tit	6		5	1
Bullfinch	3		2	1
Cetti's Warbler	2		1	1
Chiffchaff	42		36	6
Goldcrest	1		1
Great Tit	5		3	2
Reed Bunting	2		2
Reed Warbler	5	1	4
Robin	5		4	1
Song Thrush	1			1
Treecreeper	1			1
Willow Warbler	5		5
Wren	8		5	3
Totals	109	1	91	17

Wilstone Reservoir - CES 12 - 28th August 2017

JT,JSJ,LL and new trainee Anna
540’ CES 12
Report by Johne

Bank Holiday Monday began warm with a slight south westerly breeze and it soon became quite hot.
An early round of over 70 birds quickly subsided to a more sedate pace apart from a brief flurry in net 2 around 9am.
A respectable total of 103 new birds and 24 retraps, one of which might be a control Chiffchaff. We shall see.
3 more Willow warblers and 3 Garden warblers plus 38 Blackcaps and 20 Chiffchaffs.
Star birds were 2 juvenile Marsh tits.

A moth trap had been run overnight again, this time in long grass and scrub away from the reedbed. Moth captures were rather disappointing as the table at the end of this report shows. It could be partly explained by the presence of a hornet in the trap which might have encouraged some moths to find a way out.

Looking at the CES figures for this year shows an average catch of 75.33 birds. An improvement on 2016 average of 61 per visit.
This years average is in fact close to the mean for 2005 until  2017 of 75.56. I have not looked in detail at the CES data yet but I suspect that 2017 will prove to be at least much better than last year.

	New	Retrap	total
Blackcap	33	5	38
Blue Tit	5	8	13
Bullfinch	4	1	5
Chiffchaff	18	2	20
Dunnock	1	1	2
Garden Warbler	3		3
Goldcrest	1		1
Great Tit	1	1	2
Kingfisher		1	1
Long Tailed Tit	13		13
Marsh Tit	2		2
Reed Warbler	11		11
Robin	2	1	3
Sedge Warbler	3		3
Song Thrush	1		1
Whitethroat	1		1
Willow Warbler	3		3
Wren	1	4	5
Total	103	24	127

Moths recorded on the night of 27/8/2017

Species	Count
Green Carpet	2
Light Emerald	1
Poplar Hawkmoth	2
Canary-shouldered Thorn	1
Burnished Brass	1
Large Yellow Underwing	3
Setaceous Hebrew Character	3
Flounced Rustic	2
Straw Dot	1
Snout	2