A quite exhilarating month in so many ways: starting with our highest ever July catch and the highest average per session. Last July was our previous largest catch, so it is a year-on-year improvement. As with last time, I have excluded pullus ringing sessions from the average catch per session. As usual, Jonny made up the vast bulk of the catch but I was pleased that our team doubled last year’s catch figure (even if it was only from 115 to 240).
We did process fewer species this month, but had some nice additions as well. Added this month were Coal Tit, Magpie and four Skylark pulli. Missing were: Grasshopper Warbler, Lapwing, Meadow Pipit, Moorhen, Woodpigeon and Yellow Wagtail.
The key bird in our catch was the Skylark These are the first four Skylark pulli we have ever processed. It is all down to Jonny’s work with local farming hubs and the way they have bought into conservation of grassland species. The farmer in question has made fabulous efforts. Having found the nest, she marked out a square of 20m x 20m so that the hay cutting went nowhere near it.
Whilst we were processing them we had the fabulous site of a decent flock of Lapwing flying around the bottom of the field: a combined group of adult and juveniles, many of which Jonny has ringed this year, and, hopefully, last year, but we didn’t have our binoculars to look for colour rings.
The Magpie catches are interesting. Since January 2013 the group has ringed 44 Magpies: seven of them this year: four this month, one each in Lower Moor Farm and Laura’s back garden and two in the fields behind the Whitworth building. Last month we also ringed two Magpies in the same field at Blakehill Farm.
Of our summer visitor warblers, we saw a significant increase in numbers of Blackcap, Sedge Warbler and Whitethroat but significant falls in the number of Chiffchaff and Lesser Whitethroat. All others were stable.
Our resident birds showed a huge increase in Blue Tit, Goldfinch, Greenfinch and Robins ringed.