Marsworth CES 1

All CES nets 560'
Weather: Very warm, clear skies, light breeze.
Ringers: LL, CMS, CK
Nets open 5:00 - 11:00am

Species	New Birds	Retraps	Total
Blackbird		1	1
Blackcap	1	2	3
Blue Tit	1		1
Chaffinch		1	1
Chiffchaff	1		1
Jay	1		1
Reed Bunting		1	1
Reed Warbler	6	1	7
Sedge Warbler	1	1	2
Song Thrush		2	2
Wren		4	4
	11	13	24

The start of the CES season began with a beautiful sunrise and a reed bed symphony of bird song: reed warblers, reed buntings, willow warbler were the main players with occasional bursts of cuckoo, cetti's warbler and blackcap.
Our first round was quite busy with four new Reed Warblers and a male Song Thrush originally ringed in June 2015. Later on in the morning we trapped a female in the same area that had been ringed as a juvenile in Sept 2013. By the second round it had already started to go quiet, neither of the two singing Willow Warblers went in the net and neither did the Cetti. We retrapped an adult male Chaffinch that had been originally caught in Feb 2016, his central tail feathers had the black patch at the tip characteristic of adults even though the tertials lacked the rufous colouring on the fringe you would expect to see on an adult male. Bird of the day though was a female Jay caught in net 3 later in the morning.

Chaffinch

Black patches on central tail feathers of Chaffinch

Tertials with unusually yellow fringes

 With time on our hands we checked all the tit boxes and from 9 boxes we found only 4 occupied, two by Great Tits and two by Blue Tits, including this clutch of 9 blue tit eggs in a box made by Chris's son.

The final total of 24 was better than last year (21) but well below the average of 38 for session 1.

Lynne

Wendover CES 1

The first session of the 11th year of CES at Wendover was a brilliantly warm and sunny day, but perhaps not the best ringing conditions - with the low sun picking out a number of the nets.  The total count was disappointing, but most of the usual suspects put in an appearance.  Male Chiffchaffs were marking out territories but all preferred to sing from their high perches rather than descend to our nets.
One of the Robins was at least 5 years old and it was good to see an adult male Blackcap from 2017 had navigated his way back safely.  Whitethroat numbers have generally declined over the past 10 years but it would be nice to see an upturn this year if the summer turns out to be supportive for them. 

SPNAME	Total	New Bird	Retrap
Blackbird	2	1	1
Blackcap	1		1
Bullfinch	3		3
Dunnock	4		4
Great Tit	2	2
Robin	3		3
Song Thrush	2	1	1
Whitethroat	1	1
Wren	5	3	2

Ginny & Pete

Meisen Wood: Woowa!

Date: 22-4-2018

Nets: 105m – new summer configuration

Music: none

Weather: slight breeze, 15°C at start rising to 27°C at end

Ringers: CS and EB

Species	Ringed	Re-trapped	Total
Blackcap	4	2	6
Blue Tit		1	1
Chaffinch	2	3	5
Firecrest	1		1
Long-tailed Tit		1	1
Pied Flycatcher	2	2	4
Robin		2	2
Song Thrush		1	1
Willow Warbler	1		1
Wood Warbler	1		1
Wren	1		1
Total	12	12	24

Wow!  What a change!  So quick! They were CS’s response on returning to Meisen Wood after a week away visiting friends. 

In that brief interlude life had vigorously burst forth from its winter dormancy into an eruption of colour.  Deciduous trees and bushes had become dressed in freshly emergent light green leaves; several trees were now draped with white and pink blossoms; the meadow had been transformed from dull brown to a vibrant green liberally sprinkled with numerous colourful flowers; and the air was buzzing with insects.  This sudden flourishing of life, this great release of latent energy, contributes to making spring an exciting season.

Setting the nets in the pre-dawn light to the accompaniment of an increasingly loud dawn chorus was a delight and accentuated our sense of anticipation of a good morning’s ringing.  Our anticipation was not for a large catch but for a session that would hopefully include some returning, and passage migrants.  We were not disappointed.

At supper, last night, we had chatted about the new net configuration which has been forced upon us by last winter’s storms toppling eighteen pine trees.  Potentially a positive consequence of this aeolian destruction has been the creation of some new open areas; such changes are a natural part of woodland ecology and thus would we experience, in the short and long term, a change in the species we catch.  This is something we look forward to monitoring.  We also talked about Wood Warbler saying we normally hear a few singing and calling in the canopy from about now to mid-May when they disappear and never deign to enter our nets.

Well blow us down there was irony in the first net round!  In a net set by a newly opened area, in the lowest pocket was a Wood Warbler!  A cracking little bird with a mossy-green back, a beautiful yellow throat and upper breast sharply delineated from a pure white belly.  Pure delight, what shall we try and wish for next!?

Today’s captures included four Pied Flycatchers: two new and two re-traps.  The two re-traps were from last weekend when we had squeezed in a session before CS went off travelling.  During that session we had also put up six additional nest boxes as part of a cunning plan to encourage more Pied Flycatchers to breed in Meisen Wood.  The thinking behind the scheming being: hopefully by now the resident Blue and Great Tits have established their territories and claimed the nest boxes they’ll use.  Therefore the new nest boxes will be available for arriving Pied Flycatchers.  Sounds great in theory but like most of our cunning plans for birds will it do it’s usual, and fail?  O, um……; we’ll see!

The Pied Flycatchers and the Song Thrush have arrived late this year.  Normally we catch our first Song Thrush in late March.  And in the last three years have consistently caught our first Pied Flycatcher on April 6^th in the same net – there’s consistency for you.  Late seems to be this spring’s theme.  So far we have seen few swallows and no House or Sand Martins.  Similarly in the three local areas where we monitor breeding Curlew, Lapwing and Black-tailed Godwit they all arrived late and in lower, than normal, numbers.  The Black-tailed Godwits are only just arriving and starting their attractive display flights.  Hopefully this is a consequence of poor weather and not some calamitous event at their wintering, or passage, areas!

The Song Thrush maybe late but it seemed to be ready to breed as, to quote EB, “It’s got a stonking great CP!”  Translation: it has a large cloacal protuberance.  A cloacal protuberance is not quite a penis though it is the avian equivalent in that it is used in insemination.  Cloacal protuberance size varies with species and seasonally: large during the breeding season; much reduced, almost absent, when not required, in the winter.

A final tally of 24 birds is typical for Meisen Wood in late April.  This number will decline further, such that by mid-July a15 bird session will be considered to be good.  Is it worth the effort? Yes, as it is an integral part of population and ecological monitoring to which bird ringing contributes.  Such a decline is natural in woodland where the birds require quite large territories to secure their needs, and those of their young; food particularly is not as abundant, unlike in reed-beds where there are multiple hatches of insects.  But come late summer with breeding completed and the trees’ fruiting the bird numbers will increase again.

Chris

An Interesting Blackcap movement

It is always interesting when we re-trap a bird ringed in another country; we are used to re-trapping birds who may well have flown to the bottom of Africa and back in-between, but who were originally ringed in the UK with a BTO ring.  

On Sunday morning the 15th October 2017 at Wilstone Reservoir, we caught a Blackcap with a foreign ring.

She was aged and sexed as a female juvenile (3) with one original greater covert; wing length 72mm and weight 19.0, Fat score 1.

The metal ring on her right leg contained her unique ring number and inscribed RADOLFZELL GERMANIA. On investigation this led us to understand that she was ringed under the Bird Ringing Scheme “Radolfzell” (DER) which is hosted at Vogelwarte Radolfzell in the small village of Möggingen near the city of Radolfzell in the state of Saarland.  Saarland is a forested, south-western German state bordered by France and Luxembourg. Vogelwarte Radolfzell is a subdivision of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and issue rings with the inscription "Radolfzell Germania" for use in Southern Germany, Berlin and Austria.

Just last week we received the BTO Ringing Report which gave us her original ringing history. 

She was ringed on the 25th September 2017 at Beringungsstation Klein's-Garten Biringen, Saarland, Germany as a Juvenile (3) Female; no wing length but a body weight of 18.4g.

Twenty days later she had covered a distance of 576km and arrived at the reed beds at Wilstone. What would be interesting to know would be did she migrate north-westwards from mid-Europe to winter in Britain (as opposed to flying south to Spain to sunnier climes), or was she just stopping off for fuel and where did she end up? As the BTO reports on its website, blackcaps are wintering in the urban areas of Britain with increasing frequency over the last 60 years. Reasons offered being milder British winters and garden feeding. The latter has been shown to be higher in Britain than Germany. 

Photos and report by Jenny

Marsworth - April 2018- Spring arrives at last!

April ringing 

At the beginning of April we were still suffering with the cold temperatures and lots of rain. On the plus side the high rainfall has filled the reservoir and with the addition of an extra board in the sluice the reed bed is wetter than it has been for three years.  The session on the 6th was quiet with just a few chiffchaff and blackcaps starting to arrive but by the 15th spring was well underway. The site was full of bird song: Blackcap, Sedge Warblers and the first Cetti's Warbler that has been heard for months. A Cuckoo was heard briefly at 6:45am and Common Terns were noisy. We did not put up net "A" because a Blackbird was on 3 eggs in a nest in the Blackthorn halfway down the ride. The nest was not well concealed and sadly when we came back on the 22nd we found the nest had been predated as is the fate of many of the earlier nests before there is more cover available.
Ringing on the 22nd followed a week of exceptionally warm and sunny weather and the Blackthorn was in full bloom.

The first bird out of the nets was a Blackcap with a Paris ring. We also caught three Willow Warblers, one of which had been ringed as a juvenile here last July. Reed Warblers had also arrived, we caught two, both retraps - one was a juvenile last year and the other had been ringed as a juvenile in 2014, so that is three trips to Africa and back already. Our new ringing table was a big success and should give us a bit more of a stable surface for the electronic scales (!).

New Table and new C permit holder!!

A Mallard with her head down led her brood of 6 ducklings quietly through the scrub behind where we sit, unfortunately too small for ringing. A few of the tit boxes had nests half built. Breeding has got off to a late start for many species with only 2 out of 17 out of female birds showing signs of breeding compared 16 out of 16 for the same two weeks last year.

06/04/2018
Blackbird	1
Blackcap	2
Chiffchaff	3
Goldcrest	1
Wren	1
	Total 8
15/04/2018
Blackbird	1
Blackcap	8
Bullfinch	2
Cetti's Warbler	1
Chiffchaff	4
Dunnock	2
Great Tit	4
Reed Bunting	3
Sedge Warbler	2
Wren	4
	Total 31
22/04/2018
Blackbird	1
Blackcap	8
Chiffchaff	1
Dunnock	1
Reed Warbler	2
Sedge Warbler	1
Willow Warbler	3
Wren	1
	Total 18