Today, joined by CJH, we worked the farm hedgerows in thick fog for much of the morning. This winter has been difficult as much of the wild bird mix areas have failed, providing less food than could have been expected and providing less cover for siting nets. We believe this crop failure is partly responsible for the reduced numbers of finches and buntings in some farms this winter.
We secreted some two panel nets in some waist high curly kale, one full height net through the hedgerow with more parallel to the hedge boundary. There were some quite large groups of Goldfinch, Chaffinch and Reed Bunting. However our catches were quite modest. We did at least catch 6 Reed Bunting and get the opportunity to mark them with brown darvics, code UW followed by two letters.
Total: 15 (8)
Blackbird - 1 (2)
Blue Tit - 2 (1)
Dunnock - 3 (4)
Great Tit - 1
Reed Bunting - 6
Robin - 0 (1)
Wren - 2