Garden Ringing update

Paid our third visit this summer to Jerry and Barbara's woodland edge garden in Silverdale. With only one 40 ft net we caught 80 birds. Our main interest in this garden is a colour ring study of Nuthatch, so we were pleased to catch two unringed young birds which brings the total so far seen in the garden since the end of June to twelve.Since we started this study in 2015 we have amassed 2402 sightings.

Blue and Great Tits seem to have done well with 56 and 23 respectively, almost all juveniles. Coal tits though at only four are low. This species breeds locally in only small numbers and our ringing has shown that many of our birds come from Lakeland so will be interesting to see if numbers pick up at our next visits.

The most surprising species was Bullfinch with 22 caught so far this summer. This compares with just 21 in the period July to March last year. Even more interesting is that we have caught only four juveniles. On this last visit we caught six adult males all just starting to moult. Perhaps the juveniles have not discovered this easy source of food yet.

John

Reed Warbler & Bearded Tit RAS Update

The last two days has seen two good catches to bolster our returns for our Bearded Tit and Reed Warbler RAS at Leighton Moss RSPB reserve.

A male Bearded Tit first ringed as a juvenile  in 2014 was retrapped five years and 50 days after ringing. This is our second oldest Bearded Tit ,(the oldest was seven years and 93 days). Interestingly this bird had been sighted ten times on the grit tray between 2014 and 2016. It was retrapped in 2017 but not recorded at all in 2018 so it was  great to catch up with it again. To date we have identified 10 adults but it is early days as we get most sightings from the grit trays late September to December.

In the two sessions we caught 55 Reed Warblers, mainly juveniles suggesting a good breeding season. But the most interesting was an adult male first ringed as a juvenile in June 2011 , eight years and 43 days ago. Interestingly it has been retrapped most years since in the same area of the reed bed but on 28th July 2018 it was caught on the south coast at Titchfield Haven Hampshire on its way to the African wintering grounds. It was a bit late setting off this year, but it was getting ready  for it had a fat score of two.
John