2021 saw another year of Covid disruption to our ringing efforts on the headland (East of the dykes), despite this we still managed almost 170 sessions over 9 sites. We managed to catch just over 3500 birds of 54 species, with highlights being Red-breasted Flycatcher, Storm Petrel, Ring Ouzel and a solitary Yellow-browed Warbler. An amazing 1490 Starlings have been ringed, the majority by Paul & Jenny Butterworth in their village garden, hopefully some of these will be recaptured in foreign lands!
This year also saw us trial our constant effort site at Thornwick, this BTO led project aims to collect data on bird populations-are they stable, declining or increasing, as well as monitoring abundance, breeding successes and survival rates. This is done by ringing over a set date period with standardised mist nets. We managed to complete 9 out of the 12 sessions (some missed due to bad weather) and ringed 169 birds of 27 species. Our surprise of the sessions being a stunning male Ring Ouzel. We were pleased to catch 8 species of Warbler and juveniles of every species too.
Of the 24 species that the CES project monitors we managed to catch 20, which are:
Song Thrush
Blackbird
Dunnock
Bullfinch
Goldfinch
Greenfinch
Wren
Robin
Reed Bunting
Blue Tit
Great Tit
Long-tailed Tit
Chiffchaff
Willow Warbler
Blackcap
Garden Warbler
Sedge Warbler
Reed Warbler
Whitethroat
Lesser Whitethroat
We will be running our CES site again in 2022, hopefully we will recapture some of our birds ringed this year and gather some valuable data.
The ringing team again took part in the annual Migweek event held in Oct, despite the lack of exciting winds to bring us birds we still managed to entertain over 300 members of the public at ringing demos. We were able to explain the importance of ringing, what data we collect and why as well as showing birds such as Red-breasted Flycatcher, Yellow-browed Warbler, Redwing and lots of other species. We will be running daily demos again at Migweek 2022.
Onwards and upwards to 2022! Hopefully we will have good winds, dry weather and lots of birds!
