Dismal CES season at Gunwalloe

Having completed Visit 6 on our CES at Gunwalloe this morning (in perfect conditions), the total of just nine birds was incredibly low, as we'd expect 30+ birds by now.

Looking out over the 'dry' ride at Gunwalloe - not so dry though,
still being thigh-deep in mud in places!

So with such a low total hot on the heels of the 13 birds caught on Visit 5, I thought I'd compare the ctch totals for the first half this year to those in 2012.

	2012	2013
Adult Reed Warbler	45	37
Juvenile Reed Warbler	4	1
Sedge Warbler	19	5
Blue Tit	15	1
Cetti's Warbler	3	0
Total all species, all ages	95	53

I was surprised to see so many Reed Warblers in the total, but the lack of species variety is rather worrying! We normally catch good numbers of Blue Tits, Reed Buntings and Chiffchaff but these have all been notable by their absence this summer. Hopefully this is just the effects of a late season, so we'll have to see if it picks up in the last six visits.

Urban gull ringing in Falmouth

This last week we've been out colour-ringing the first Herring Gull chicks on roofs in Falmouth. This project, in conjunction with Falmouth Marine School, with hopefully build up a reasonable colour-ringed population in the town allowing future studies on movements and behaviour. With so much 'pasty-snatching' and bin-raiding in Cornish towns, this is certainly a hot topic at the moment.

Over the summer we'll be ringing as many chicks as we can safely reach and also hopefully catching adults later in the year in a cage trap. Each bird is marked with a blue ring, coded W: followed by three numbers. Coincidentally, the first birds ringed in the project were on the roof of the Marine School, with more to follow there.