April 3rd and LRGp rings 80K

The "flurry" of visits at the end of March had cleared all cuttings from the CES net lanes, so on Saturday 3rd April, Andy decided to try two of the nets, along with the feeder net, for a short "Spring" session. His modest catch of 11 + (7), included our first migrants of the year, and comprised Dunnock 1, Chiffchaff 3 + (2), Blackcap 2, Blue Tit 1 + (1), Great Tit (3), Nuthatch 1, Bullfinch 2, Goldfinch 1 and Lesser Redpoll (1). One of the recaptured Chiffchaff was ringed in rb2 in September 2020, but the other is more interesting - a female caught in June 2020 during an early June CES visit (with her recently fledged brood), and caught again during a late July CES visit (together with her second brood). The Lesser Redpoll had been ringed on a "roost" visit in November 2019. One of the new Chiffchaff became the 80,000th bird that the Group has ringed. We were expecting to reach this milestone in October or November, but Covid restrictions during the year limited out visits.

80,000th bird had a "pollen horn". Something we rarely see at Llangorse as we don't often attempt many catches in the Scrub in April when they are freshly back from warmer wintering grounds.

Even the three notably "poor" years of the last 18 years (2008, 2009 and 2012) still had higher totals than all but three years of the first 25 years of the group.

The bar chart of our annual ringing totals shows some years that stand out above the "norm" - such as 1979 when we concentrated on catching roosting Sand Martin (which made up over half of the annual catch), and 1985 when George was ringing during most of late July & August (staying in the "old" hut). Not so easy to identify a single reason for 1996, but this was the first year after Anna Lindholm and Rob Thomas "discovered" the gap through the reeds at the jetty (while doing field work for Anna's PhD), and it received a lot of visits for roost and general ringing. It was also a good breeding season with several 100+ catches, and after the farmer had layered the back ditch hedge (of our CES area), this appeared to direct warbler movements towards the nets. There has also been a more general increase in our annual totals from the early years of the 2000's - mainly in the range 1000-1500 up to 2002, but in the range 2000-2500 from 2004. The increase can also be attributed to the more regular use of audio lures (during the post breeding season), and it can't be a coincidence that Jerry started part time working in 2004. In addition, our management work to enlarge/improve the habitat around our CES area, has resulted in increased CES catches from about 2010 (as already identified in a previous post). There is also a reduced total in the years when the annual goose roundup did not take place - reduced by about 200 - 250 in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2012 and 2020.

footnote - a search of DemOn and our spreadsheets shows that 1996 saw our third highest Sand Martin total (over 530), highest ever Sedge Warbler total and (at the time) our second highest Reed Warbler total (6 more years have now beaten it-since we've been using tapes). There were 37 ringing visits at the "new" Jetty site generating 1,550 records.