Attenborough CES, Visit 4 - Sunday 10 June

The fourth CES visit of the season was carried out on Sunday by Sue, Mick T, Gary and me. The weather was perfect, a bright start but soon after cloud covered the sun and there was not a breath of wind. In a normal year with conditions like this we should have been on for a good catch. We did get the best catch for this years CES season but it only beat visit 2 by a single bird.

Total catch was 26 including 7 retraps made up of (new/retrap): Blackbird 1/0, Robin 3/2, Dunnock 0/2, Chiffchaff 1/0, Blackcap 1/1, Garden Warbler 1/0, Blue Tit 2/0, Great Tit 5/1, Wren 1/0, Bullfinch 4/1.

The oldest retrap was a Robin from 2016. So closing in on the middle of June and only 3 of today's catch were juveniles: 2 Robins and a Great Tit. The low numbers continue here and around the country. Of note this week was a Wren (the first of the year!) and a Garden Warbler, the first on a CES visit since 2015.

As the photos show there were plenty of invertebrates about to make up for the lack of birds, we also had a brown hawker in the net (successfully extracted) and a hornet which bit through a net strand and extracted itself (thankfully!).

Kev

photos by S. Lakeman