08/07 Thatcham Marsh LNR CES visit 07

Location: Thatcham Marsh LNR CES visit 2018.07

Session: 08-Jul-2018 05:30 to 10:45hrs

Headlines: Quite a good session with a good capture from the additional nets in the scrub. The capture from the standard nets was slow at first with no early flush and not much sign of acrocephalus activity; the reed bed was very quiet. As the morning progress fledgling Reed Warblers began to head for the scrub and  capture numbers increased each round and included a few remaining adults and the odd Sedge Warbler. Visit 07 is usually when we capture the first substantial numbers of acrocephalus fledglings and for Reed Warbler we had an unexpectedly good capture of 16 juveniles bearing in mind the heavy rains of early spring. Unfortunately it is no surprise that Sedge Warblers fledging is very poor as there are few pairs breeding on the marsh or at least our part of it. The capture of Cetti’s Warbler juveniles this early appears to be about a visit in advance but for some reason not obvious to us, the BTO slipped the start of the CES season by a week so date-wise the four juveniles captured is about right. A 42 total in the standard nets is below the average of 55 for visit 07; range 1993/1995-109 2008-28. The cumulative total up to and including visit 2018.07 is 240, 88% of the average of 273; range 1995-407, 2014-205.

Weather: bright, sunny, hot, calm
Present: JL, IW, JHW, VG, DL
Nets: 246metres, one standard reed bed net ride of 198m and two scrub rides of 30m and 18m up from 06:05 to 10:10hrs
Lure (none): 

Capture (New/Recapture) 55(50/05) VISIT 2018.07 Species New Rtp Juv Adult BLABI 1 1 BLACA 3 2 1 BLUTI 1 1 BULLF 1 1 CETWA 4 4 CHIFF 6 6 DUNNO 2 2 GRETI 2 2 REEWA 17 2 16 3 ROBIN 3 2 1 SEDWA 2 2 SONTH 1 1 2 WREN 8 1 9

Matching 2017 CES visit (02-Jul-2017) 39(25/14) VISIT 2017.07 Species New Rtp Juv Adult BLABI 1 1 BLACA 2 2 BLUTI 1 1 BULLF 2 2 2 2 CHIFF 2 2 DUNNO 1 1 GRETI 1 1 REEWA 8 8 9 7 ROBIN 1 1 2 SEDWA 4 1 4 1 WREN 4 4

Totals for the last ten visit 07 (standard nets)

2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
52	73	73	39	45	38	64	40	32	42

Recaptures: all recent except Blackbird ringed as an adult 04-May-2013 and Song Thrush ringed as 2nd year 26-Apr-2015

Sightings 44 Species: Ian’s list, count numbers may be a bit light as we were quite busy, nothing of particular note except perhaps the lack of Swift activity and no Reed Buntings seen, heard or captured.