Second CES session

Post date: May 17, 2016 6:03:32 PM

Today's constant-effort site session was carried out under an overcast sky, weak to moderate westerly winds and temperatures ranging from 7 to 13ºC during the 5-11 am catching period. However, there was an improvement in relation to the first session, with the capture of 13 birds of eight species, including the first Reed Warblers, Great, Blue and Marsh Tits, and a Garden Warbler (in addition to Willow Warbler, Chiffchaffs and a Reed Bunting, which were also trapped in the first session). As usual, the results are detailedly described in the CES sub-webpage, which now also describes the number of different adults and juveniles of each species, thus allowing easy comparison of the number of birds between years.

Today, as there was also a ringing demonstration for the Faunistik students from Lund University, I set up an extra net, in a different habitat (to avoid interfering with the CES), just for a couple of hours, where a Blackbird, a Dunnock and a Willow Warbler were (re)trapped. (These are only included in the Ringing totals sub-webpage.)

Reed Warbler/Rörsångare (Acrocephalus scirpaceus)

An adult male Dunnock/Järnsparv (Prunella modularis), showing signs of ageing? (has a white primary covert)

A low number of birds is quite typical of the beginning of the season, as many individuals spend a lot of time in the nest (the tits, Willow Warblers and Chiffchaffs had well-developed incubation patches) and there are no juveniles yet. There are also quite a few species that just arrived to the area and are still building up in numbers, such as the Icterine and Marsh Warblers among others, so the future is promising, as shown by the results of previous years. It is nevertheless quite frustrating to see the Sedge Warblers and even a Cuckoo flying just over the mist nets!

JMN