16/08 Greenham Common

Location: Greenham Common Western Enclosure

Session: 16-Aug-2017 06:30 to 10:20hrs

Headlines: Following yesterday’s session as weather conditions were ideal we did another session today. I intended to put up five nets but the fourth net came out of the bag in a tangle and took a while to sort out. This plus the capture mentioned below cause the abandonment of erected anymore nets. Apart from one species the numbers were similar to yesterday but with equal numbers of Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff. The species that bulked up the capture was Long-tailed Tit. Nine were captured while putting up the nets and included one from a flock of which 23 were ringed on the 31-May. The other capture of 11 arrived around 08:15 and included all 5 ringed on a 14-June session. I saw the first capture go into the nets and as far as I could see we captured all of the flock so I think they were from different flocks. All the birds were in primary moult and all had moulted into adult plumage. All the retraps had juvenile plumage when ringed. Long-tailed Tits are one of a few species where juveniles have a full moult Aug/Sep in their first summer; most juvenile passerines species keep their flight and tail feathers until the following year. Another Green Woodpecker captured, this time a younger bird than the one captured last week; its mustachio stripe was barely visible. Yesterday there were several Whitethroats in the scrub that did not react to Whitethroat song. Today the scrub was comparatively quiet and the presumably one Whitethroat nearby that was captured came to song.
A busy enjoyable session today.

Weather: mostly overcast, cooler than yesterday, calm all morning.

Present: JL, IW, EMH

Nets: 66metres in four rides of 18M, 18M, 12M, 18M up from 06:50 to10:00hrs

Lure (audio): Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Goldcrest, Firecrest, Whitethroat, Willow Warbler intermittently

Capture (New/Recapture)

39(33/06)	15(14/01) matching visit 16/08/2016
Species New Rtp Juvs Adults BLACA 2 2 CHIFF 5 4 1 GOLDF 1 1 GRETI 1 1 GREWO 1 1 LOTTI 14 6 Indeterminate ROBIN 2 1 1 WHITE 1 1 WILWA 5 3 2 WREN 1 1	Species New Rtp Juvs Adults BLACA 3 3 CHIFF 1 1 GOLDF 1 1 GRETI 1 1 WHITE 2 2 WILWA 6 6 WREN 1 1

Recaptures: 6 Long-tailed Tits: 1 from a capture of 23 on the 31-May and 5 from a capture of 5 on the 14-June.

Todays juvenile Green Woodpecker

Sightings 25 Species: Ian's bird list, less activity than yesterday and we probably missed a few