Quality birds at rb2 (visit 8)

On Sat 26 July Jerry was back in rb2, and amongst the first birds caught were another Whitethroat (now 7 for the year and a new max), and Stonechat (a 3JJ so not come very far, and a species not caught since way back in 2007). The weather was a little bit better than yesterday - calm with hazy sunshine for most of the session. In total, a reasonable catch of 40 + (3), made up of Wren 1, Stone 1, Reewa 26 + (2), Sedwa 4, Blaca 2, White 1, Wilwa 2, Chiff 1, Bluti (1) and Reebu 2. A good indication of where our year total will end up, is the date when our 1000th bird is ringed, this happened today, so its projected to be a good year. In 2013 (a poor breeding season) the 1000th bird wasn't done until 6 Aug, in 2012 (also a poor breeding season, and no goose roundup) it wasn't until 31 Aug, but in 2011 (a reasonably good breeding season) it was only a few days later, on 29 July.

The record breaker!

Always a pleasure at Llangorse!

Carlton added: 'My original plan was to go to spend Sunday am in the garden. However I had to change my plans and could only manage a short visit Saturday night, Elinor, Ben and myself arrived at 1930 and took the nets down at 2100, when the light began to fade. But we did manage to add a few birds to Jerry’s RB2 visit, and the days total, ending up with  7 + (3) in the evening session – Blaca 1, Wilwa 4, Chiff 1 + (1), Bullf 1, Dunno (2). If we had managed to get there earlier, as we hoped, I'm sure we would have had more as there seemed to be a lot of willow/chiffs about.

This Willow Warbler passage appears to mirror the large passage that has been noted on the likes of Skokholm this week. Slightly further west of course but we may be in for a bumper catch soon!