A Few More Reeds

Ian and I had another ringing session in the reedbed this morning and as earlier in the week it was quiet again. The weather conditions were similar with 7 oktas cloud cover and a light southeasterly breeze.

July is shaping up to be a very poor month for ringing and this is probably a reflection of the poor breeding season as a result of the cold wet weather we had in spring. The only species that seems to be doing okay is Reed Warbler and this is probably because it arrives that bit later than other species such as Willow Warbler, Whitethroat and Sedge Warbler for example. This means that when we had the week of cold wet weather in late May a lot of Reed Warblers would still have been on eggs whilst the species listed above would have had small young and the adults would have struggled to find invertebrate food to feed them, resulting large scale losses of broods.

 Reed Warbler

We managed to ring one more bird than Wednesday with eleven ringed as follows (recaptures in brackets):

Whitethroat - 1 (1)
Great Tit - 1
Goldfinch - 2
Reed Warbler - 4 (1)
Sedge Warbler - 1
Blue Tit - 1
Willow Warbler - 1

 Goldfinch

We also controlled a Reed Warbler with quite an old ring on it based on the colouration of the ring and the number on it. It will be interesting to see where it has come from.

Birding was even slower than the ringing if that's possible and all I can report is 1,500 Starlings exiting the roost, 16 House Martins and six Swifts on a feeding circuit and a few Pied Wagtails flying over from their roost site.

The forecast is looking a bit grim for the weekend and into next week. It will be too windy for any ringing tomorrow and too wet for anything on Sunday! As there's a morning tide I'll have a look on the sea as early as I can make it after a few real ales this evening!