An evening session before bad weather sets in tomorrow. We put up three single 18m nets hoping to get some Reed Warblers and perhaps even encourage a few Swallows to roost in the reeds around the old scrape area. We tried this last year and not a single hirundine turned up.
We started at around 7pm and before long were catching Acrocephalus warblers. As the light began to fail we played for Swallow and birds began to accumulate. Many seemed more interested in making low sweeps, possibly feeding, over the wet scrape than forming up into a pre-roost flock, some even settling loudly among the stems before the main drop in. We were fortunate to get quite a few birds in one of the nets well before the birds that were following the usual behaviour of gradually descending pre-roost circuits dropped in for the night. We decided to push that early catch net together to avoid catching too many birds with just the two of us to process them. Later there were 10 or so birds in the final net so not too may and they didn't need overnight roosting as it was not dark when they were released, although there wasn't much light as we took in the last two nets. Of all the Hirundines captured, there was just one adult Swallow and adult Sand Martin, so captures were predominantly inexperienced young birds and that may explain their behaviour. We were right to have shut the nets as we found rather a lot of bats feeding along the ride, probably attracted to insects that we were disturbing, as we took down.
To top off the evening we also saw a Barn Owl fly through the ringing area.
Total: 55 (1)
Sand Martin - 1
Swallow - 36
Sedge Warbler - 4
Reed Warbler - 14 (1)