06/12 Snelsmore Common Feeder

Location: Snelsmore Common Feeder

Session: 06-Dec-2016 07:40 to 11:15hrs

Headlines: The fog was really dense when I arrived and it did not lift much throughout the session. Today’s capture is much nearer the norm and the best capture of the winter so far. It didn’t start very promising with just a Coal Tit on the first round. It really pickup for the next three rounds though with captures of 19, 21 and 9 respectively. Then it stopped and for the rest of the session we had quite long gaps between captures of one and once two each round. Many of the recaptures were of pulli ringed in the spring mostly from nearby boxes. One pulli recapture was of a bird ringed spring 2012 hatched in box CP26 about 200m away so not travelled very far in nearly 5 years. Another pulli was from a box which had fallen between ringing the pulli and checking for fledging. “Outcome Unknown” until today; we now know at least some (one) fledged. Also two pulli from box from box CP22 at the south end of the car park are travelling together with another from a nearby box ringed the same day. As you can see from the table below the bulk of the capture was of 1st winter birds, these have been missing until now so far this season. There are always a few Chaffinch feeding under the feeders that disappear while the nets are up, today we captured one for a change. Although the weather was uncomfortable all morning it is nice to have a reasonable session in what so far has been a disappointing season.

Weather: Very foggy, clammy and unpleasant, calm.

Present: JL, GB, IW

Nets: 12metres 6m net each side of feeder up from 08:00 to 11:00hrs

Lure (feeder): Fat Balls, Black Sunflower, Peanuts.

Capture (New/Recapture) 56(35/21):

Species New Retrap 1stCY Adult BLUTI 14 11 20 5 CHAFF 1     1 COATI 9 1 9 1 GRETI 11 8 15 4 ROBIN   1   1

As for Greenham last Sunday there is no matching early December 2015 visit due to unsuitable ringing weather.

Recaptures:  21
Blue Tit 4y 201d pulli from CP26, 2y 30d, 1y 28d, 354d, 188dx3 pulli from CP15 and 2 from CP22, 181d pulli from CP34, 179d pulli from CP33
Coal Tit 1y 330d
Great Tit 1y 330d, 1y 28d, 333d, 266d, 197d pulli from Mount Hill C02, 192d pulli from WH09, 189d pulli from Boxford Common F6 box
Robin 2y 300d

The Chaffinch captured today an adult male; difficult to get a presentable photo in the conditions

 

Sightings 14 Species: Visibility was poor in the fog so only species recorded are those seen and heard around the feeder.