2015 - CES 2

Due to unforeseen circumstances Carlton was unable to undertake CES 2 so Peter covered the session for him on Friday the 22nd of May. It was a productive day with a good catch for this early in the season, although not quite on a par with Gareth's catch of a couple of weeks ago. There were no real star birds until the last net round, when a Cettis Warbler was caught. This bird was an old male that had in fact set a longevity record for the group on it's last recapture in July last year. Thus, this capture added another 10 and a half months onto his record, which now stands at 4 months, 10 years and 1 day! Not a bad effort, especially considering that his first two winters at the lake were particularly harsh.

Jerry also visited to do another check of the nest boxes and had quite a productive day, with at least 4 Piefl and 4 Redst in our boxes this year. The Greti were by far the most advanced species and with the vast majority having young at a ring-able age a Day Total record was set ringing the chicks. Other than Greti only a couple of broods of Bluti were ready to ring so there are still lots more chicks to ring in the next few days and weeks. Andy visited for an hour or so and with Jerry checked a nearby Red Kite nest (that Andy had previously found when doing his WBBS) and a bird looked to be brooding small young. A potential new species for the Group to ring, if all goes well.

Totals for the day were:

Species	CES 2	Boxes	Totals
Wren	(5)		(5)
Treec	(2)		(2)
Lotti	(1)		(1)
Piefl		2 (1)	2 (1)
Blaca	2 (1)		2 (1)
Garwa	2		2
Sedwa	2 (1)		2 (1)
Reewa	2		2
Cetwa	(1)		(1)
Bulfi	(1)		(1)
Redst		3	3
Dunno	2 (5)		2 (5)
Sonth	1		1
Blabi	(1)		(1)
Greti	(1)	(1) + 32p	(2) + 32p
Nutha	(1)		(1)
Bluti		1 + 10p	1 + 10p
Totals	11 (20)	6 (2) + 42p	17 (22) + 42p

The CES catch was very telling with only one female of any speices in the first 20 birds, and although a few more trickled through towards the end of the morning, the catch was massively male biased. I think it would be fair to assume that this is because most of the females were sitting on eggs somewhere! A local barn was checked on the way home by Jerry and Peter for a Barn Owl pair, and although none were seen, it looks promising for the future with pellets everywhere inside the barn, with an awful lot more than last time it was checked suggesting the barn was being used as a roost more often than not.

Male and Female Sedwa caught together, the male was around the nets in the scrub all morning (along with at least one other male).