A Good Morning at Last

The recent wet and windy weather has delayed the start to our Reed Warbler and Bearded Tit RAS Studies at Leighton Moss RSPB. But today was great, we could only set four nets but we caught 15 Reed Warblers, all except a short tailed juvenile were adults.One of the adults had a Spanish ring. We all thought it was one we caught at the same site last year but IPMR showed it was a different bird. So we await details with interest.

We also caught two Bearded Tits-the first juvenile of the year and an unringed adult male. We rarely catch unringed adults as we are so successful in catching juveniles. in 2016 we caught 41 adults and all were already ringed. Observations over the past few days suggest that the second broods are fledging. The weather looks good for next week so hope we can catch up on our studies.

Pied Flycatchers seem to have survived the poor weather. Went yesterday to a wood which being at a higher altitude than our other woods is usually a bit later and unlike the other sites is mainly alder. Two years ago the four nests in the alder area lost all their young although the two in the oak woodland survived. This year one nest box had dead young but another had already fledged and the remaining five looked Ok.

Pied Flycatchers Record Year

Now got all the data in for our Pied Flycatcher RAS for the 18 woods we survey in the Lune Valley. We have a record 98 occupied nest boxes 19 up on last year and 8 more than our previous best year of 2015.
To date they are doing well.We visited nine nests yesterday all had young and seven were old enough to ring with an average brood size of 7.2 including two with eight young.Have got the first details of the adults that we have caught. They show the usual pattern of adults mainly returning to the same wood in successive years but birds ringed as nestlings mainly move away from the natal wood to other woods in the Lune valley with a few moving outside our area. The two extremes from past years were birds found breeding in Denmark and Germany after being ringed as nestlings in our boxes.
We have many broods yet to ring hope that the heavy rain forecast for early next week doesn't harm them.
John