Big day at Nanjizal

It's not often the ringing group has a really busy day netting, but this morning was a bit of an exception. A small group of us headed to Nanjizal, with weather conditions looking good and lots of birds around locally. We weren't disappointed, and the first net round alone must have produced 150 birds! OK, so 50 of these were Meadow Pipits from a V of nets we'd set up, but many of the rest were Blackcaps.

Just one net, full of Blackcaps

We ended the busy morning on 248 new birds, including impressive totals of 96 Blackcap, 71 Meadow Pipit, 32 Chiffchaff and five Grasshopper Warbler. Add to that a scattering of common species and singles of Spotted Flycatcher, Firecrest, Grey Wagtail, Garden Warbler and Wryneck. Rather bizarrely, the Wryneck was in the Meadow Pipit nets, sat right out in the middle of a field!

Whilst we were all out an about, we took the chance to visit a few Barn Owl sites to check for  second broods. We didn't find any, but did have one box occupied by a ready-to-fledge Stock Dove. Interestingly, this is actually a much less frequently ringed bird in Cornwall than Wryneck; the last five years have seen seven Wrynecks ringed, but only four Stock Doves!

Dire CES and productive owls

At the weekend we managed to cover both our third CES visit at Gunwalloe and also a bunch of Barn Owl boxes across the south/west of the county, with varying success.

Conditions for CES were pretty perfect, but the catch of just 11 birds (inc five Reed Warblers) is the lowest yet for Visit 3: previous totals were 19 in 2013 (10 Reeds), 32 in 2012 (18 Reeds) and 54 in 2011 (16 Reeds, but the high total includes 16 Sand Martins). This is perhaps a bit worrying given that it seemed to be a good early start to the season, so it'll be interesting to see how the rest of the season develops. One interesting captures was L494918 caught whilst puting up nets the night before; a bird ringed as a young juvenile at Marazion Marsh in 2001 and not caught since!

We fared better on Sunday, visiting 14 Barn Owl boxes between St Austell, Newquay and Penzance. Of these, most were occupied, which is an improvement on last year, and we captured six adults, four of which had already been ringed in previous seasons. Surprisingly two boxes still had incubating birds which seems very late, and two more had chicks too small to ring. But we did find several boxes with good sized chicks and ringed 18 birds in total.

Some of the smallest chicks, less than a week old

This amorphous blob confused us for a moment, but is a
remarkably fluffy 2-3 week old chick, along with
three unhatched eggs

A bit more like the size we like to find birds to ring,
although we did leave one smaller (doomed?) sibling in the box

A couple of Stock Dove interlopers in the same box
they were in last year, near St Mawgan

First Cornish Stock Doves ringed in 25 years

Yesterday we had a great CES morning at Gunwalloe, with 81 birds caught easily beating just 30 on the same visit last year! Good numbers of juvenile Sedge and Reed Warblers made up most of the catch, with three more very juvenile Stonechats new for some bisitonv ringers from up country. Amusement (for some) came in nearly losing our newest C-permit holder to the marsh...

We then mopped up some remaining Barn Owls, which have been about six weeks late this summer. Many birds have also given it a miss this year, presumably in too poor condition to breed, including this Newquay pair.

Other sites checked included an abandoned clutch of three eggs, one unused for the first time in 17 years and broods of just one or two. The highlight in Cornish terms though, was an adult Stock Dove with two big chicks - the first Stock Doves to be ringed in the county since 1988! In fact, the three birds doubled the total number ringed in the county since the 1970s!