June was a better month for our ringers with a total of 24 sessions held across 7 sites.
We caught a total of 404 birds caught, with 345 new birds, 59 re-traps and 16 pulli. We ran 3 CES (Constant Effort Site) sessions with a total of 55 new birds and 29 re-traps, the stand out bird of these sessions being a male Whitethroat who we first caught as an adult in August 2020, since then we have caught him every year at CES.
Whitethroats are a summer visitor to the UK, breeding here and then migrating back to the Africa to the dry Sahel region just south of the Sahara. This is a journey of roughly 3,500 miles, meaning our male Whitethroat has travelled at least 38,500 miles (maybe more as we do not the year he hatched).
Whitethroats are on the amber conservation list in the uk, they have an average lifespan of 2 years with the longevity record of a ringed bird being aged at 7 years, 9 months and 5 days. June also saw our first 2 evening sessions at the Thornwick roost site, where we ringed :
39 Sand Martin
2 Swallow
14 Sedge Warbler
1 Reed Warbler
1 Chiffchaff
1 Blackbird
4 Linnet
2 Reed Bunting
1 Whitethroat
1 Wren
1 Goldfinch
Other ringing highlights from across the headland included:
5 Kestrel chicks
2 Magpie
1 Jackdaw
110 Starling
1 Yellow Wagtail
