Saturday 8 June 2013

Springwatch - Fylde Ringing Group Style

Gail and I were back up the Hodder Valley this morning for another check of our boxes and we expected that most of the P:ied Flycatchers would be ready. The weather has been perfect this week with warm sunny conditions hopefully meaning that adults will have been able to find plenty of invertebrate food to feed their chicks with.

 A box full of healthy Pied Flycatcher chicks                        

In total we ringed six Great Tit pulli, 38 Pied Flycatcher pulli and 17 Blue Tit pulli. We have a further two pairs of Pied Flycatchers still on eggs and three broods that were too small to ring.

 Great Tit pulli

Blue Tit pulli

A pair of Blue Tits were still on eggs and sadly one box had seven dead small young it. We speculated as to the cause and then only a few yards from the box were Blue Tit feathers on the woodland floor, so I suspect that one or both of the adults have been predated and unfortunately the chicks will have starved to death.

There was still plenty of bird song in the woodland from several pairs of both Willow Warbler and Blackcap, and Siskins frequently called flying over heading to the feeding station.

Standing deadwood

3 comments:

Warren Baker said...

Is this a better than average output for Pied Fly's ?

The Hairy Birder said...

It is for us Warren. I would normally only expect about 6 pairs, so it's good to have ten. However, I think the reason for this is the lack of Tits so there is less competition for the boxes. I was out helping a guy last Sunday check 120 of his 380 boxes and he was saying the same, that the occupancy of his boxes by Tits, particularly Great Tits, was very low this year.

Warren Baker said...

Thanks Hairy birder :-) all swings and roundabouts for the birds then