The weather forecast was for strong winds and cloud but we arrived at HPP to find it calm and sunny. Nabegh came along for a couple of hours first thing to help us set up but mainly to say goodbye, his return to Syria may be as early as Thursday. Once Nabegh had gone it was just Gary and I, rather like old times - can't believe I turned away four possible new trainees in the last couple of weeks because we have too many! No visit had been made to the site for a month and the net rides needed rather a lot of clearing, so it took quite a while to get the nets up, by which time the wind had started to get up. The wind strength increased throughout the morning forcing us to take down just after 11.00. Despite the wind and cloudless skies we managed to catch 52 birds including a Spanish ringed Reed Warbler that we also caught in 2008. There seemed to be a good number of juveniles caught indicating the Attenborough catches of nil juvs (except tits) recently were not showing a generally poor breeding season.
Kev
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