So it was Brack Wars, Season 13, Episode 1. In other words, Kev and I making the first visit to NTU’s farmland bird winter supplementary feeding site at the Brackenhurst Campus yesterday. These visits are often an early indication of how some of our resident breeding bird species have done in the last year. Normally we’d expect to handle 50/60 birds at this time, but totalled 123.
With the exception of the ‘yammers we had good numbers of most species. Some key results:
Greenfinch – 11 new birds was a major and pleasant surprise. Previously, since 2008, we have only ringed seven Greenfinches here, and none since 2014. Is it possible they’re coming back from their trichomonosis driven decline in the noughties?
Lesser Redpoll – a new species for us here.
Blue & Great Tit – at 58 processed, probably the most in a single session here at Brack. The adult/juvvie ratio can be an indicator of how successful the preceding breeding season has been? The 33 Blue Tits were split 12 adults / 21 juvvies and Great Tit 16/9. It suggests that perhaps Blue Tits were more productive than Great Tits this year.
Coal Tit – we only have getting these regularly over last three years.
Previously ringed birds (retraps) – other than birds from last winter. The oldest birds were Great Tit (2013), Blue Tit (2017) & Robin (2014).
Handling totals by species were 123 (106 new / 17 retraps): Blackbird (1/0), Blue Tit (27/6), Chaffinch (10/0), Coal Tit (1/1), Dunnock (6/0), Goldfinch (1/0), Great Tit (18/7), Greenfinch (11/0), House Sparrow (8/0), Lesser Redpoll (1/0), Long-tailed Tit (12/1), Redwing (7/0), Robin (1/2), Treecreeper (1/0), Wren (1/0).
Jim
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