A quite fantastic month all round: some fabulous nestlings ringed and a phenomenal month for catching and ringing. Let’s start with the summary:
1) We were 9 birds short of last year’s ringing total; 2) 65 more recaptures than last year’s total and 3) 43 more nestlings ringed than last June in 5 fewer ringing sessions than last June.
Processed this month but not last June were: Jackdaw, Kestrel, Little Ringed Plover, Redstart, Reed Bunting, Stone-curlew, Stonechat, Swift, Woodpigeon and Yellowhammer. Missing from last June’s list were: Canada Goose, Carrion Crow and Spotted Flycatcher. I was disappointed with not getting the Spotted Flycatcher in the Firs again. In two sessions in the wood we processed an astonishing 190 birds from 17 species, but missed out on our site speciality.
Of course, the mega species in that list is another of Jonny’s Little Ringed Plover chicks. This one at one one of his sites near Catcomb. He has branched out onto Stone-curlew as well. These birds are not Salisbury Plain birds, which is fantastic. I know that the RSPB reserve on the Winterbourne Downs were also hopeful of them breeding there this year as well.
Ian’s access to Swift boxes on a military base on the Plain continues to yield dividends. This time he took Justine and Mark along to get their first experience in handling Swifts and Swiftlets. Justine sent me a few photos:
She also sent me a picture of this:
A big beastie, compared to the host: it is about the size of the finger nail on your smallest finger.
Another excellent month for Barn Owl chicks, especially when you compare it to this time last year. They have bred so early I would be surprised if we don’t get a number of second broods. In May and June this year we have ringed 85 Barn Owl chicks and 5 adults. In the same period last year we ringed just the 8 chicks and 3 adults in June, none in May.
The Redstarts are definitely worth a mention: these five are the first we have ever caught in June of any year. They were caught in several different sites: one on the Imber ranges, on the Salisbury Plain training area; one on farmland near Hilmarton and three on farmland near Alderton. We catch most of ours on Autumn migration in August and September.
One other thing to mention: an excellent increase in the number of Whitethroat that we have caught compared to last year. In fact, each month of April, May and June this year has each seen the best haul of this species across any of the previous years from 2013 to this year. The 16 in April were twice as much as the next best, which was 8 in 2021. The 45 in May was just about 50% higher than the 31 last year, and the 75 this June is just awesome: the previous best was 30 in 2020. The average June catch, excluding this year is just under 13 birds! So we have caught just under six times as many as the previous average (5.77 to be accurate to within two decimal places).
So a great month, despite the heat interfering in the number of sessions we could carry out. It doesn’t hurt when one of your sites produces 70 birds on the 10th of the month and 120 birds on the 28th of the month, when you have only managed 5 full sessions in the month, one of which was hugely disappointing, with just 9 processed and another was just a couple of hours in my garden, but we processed 320 birds from 26 species.
Anyway, there is a lot to look at, and it really was a remarkable month.