A busy morning

Post date: Jul 14, 2015 2:24:39 PM

As promised, today I carried out the 8th session of the Constant Effort Site. The weather was perfect: mild, almost no wind and with some scattered clouds. The Cuckoos were still singing, a pair of Cranes dropped by, and there were Wood Sandpipers and Kingfishers calling near the stream. Hence, and as expected for this time of the year, I had the busiest session so far, with 93 birds caught of 14 species. The highlight was easy to elect: the capture of a juvenile Penduline Tit, my first for Sweden. There was also a juvenile Robin, which was the first of the CES this year.

Juvenile Pendulite Tit /Pungmes (Remiz pendulinus)

Otherwise, there were quite a lot of Sylvia warblers (except curruca), mostly juveniles, and the Reed Buntings seemed very busy feeding nestlings and fledglings, so I trapped quite a few of them (see the Results table). There were also the first juvenile Reed and Sedge Warblers, though incubation patches clearly indicate that these species still have nests with young nestlings or even eggs. A recovery of an adult Marsh Warbler was quite nice, as this species has been much less abundant than last year, but they are late breeders and should be more prominent in August.

Chiffchaffs and Willow Warblers were also quite abundant today, again mostly juveniles, with the former decreasing in relation to previous sessions and the latter increasing, as expected by their slightly later breeding phenology. Adult Chiffchaffs are obviously busy with second broods, whereas adult Willow Warblers are now moulting their flight feathers quite intensively, some having at least five primary feathers growing simultaneously.

With so many birds to handle on my own and net rounds every half an hour, I did not have time to collect very many samples, but had another Great Tit with ticks, which should be good news for my friend and colleague CN!

Until next time!

JMN