Mid season CES - visit 6

On Tuesday 23rd June, George and Carlton had an early start (05.15 meeting in the car park) for CES 6. South-east Wales was in the middle of a heatwave and it was already 17C, rising to 32C by 13.00 - maybe the hottest CES session that they had undertaken. The sun was already on most of the nets by 07.00, and despite an impressive dawn chorus, relatively few birds were getting caught in the now visible nets. Frequent net rounds were still necessary however, to extract birds quickly and prevent heat stress. Despite the conditions it was still a respectable total of 28 + (4) - though of the lowest totals for CES 6 of the last decade. The mix was Dunnock 1, Blackbird 8 + (1), Robin 1, Wren 1, Garden Warbler 1 + (2), Blackcap 7, Chiffchaff 3, Goldcrest 1, Blue Tit 2, Great Tit 1 + (1), and Treecreeper 2.

Despite the limited catch of session 6, most of our CES visits this year have been amongst the highest we have had for the respective sessions, so that by mid point in the season we have had the third most captures for the first 6 sessions that we have ever had, we had the most after 5 sessions. Apart from the annual survival/productivity differences, the breeding birds will have benefited through natural habitat improvements locally - less intensive management of the garden, churchyard and local pasture in the last 2 decades. In particular this year we have had good numbers of Blackbird and Blackcap, but lower totals for Great Tit and Blue Tit - both of which seemed to have had a poor breeding season in our local nest boxes, although given this happened last year and we ended up with a top 5 total for Great Tit and a record year total for Blue Tit it is probably to early to read to much into this!