Deepdale Farm - 8th August 2025

 A bit on the windy side and with no takers for the session, we switched to a smaller site that would afford some shelter from the stiff breeze. 

Only 21 birds captured, although a large flock of Long-tailed Tits that completely missed all nets could have swelled the total quite a bit. Whitethroats were particularly interesting as the mainly young birds made up almost half of the catch. Pleased to get a Lesser Whitethroat as this is the site where we are most likely to encounter them.

Lesser Whitethroat juvenile

One of 8 juvenile Whitethroat on the day.

Total: 18 (3)

Blackbird - 1
Blackcap - 1 (2)
Blue Tit - 1
Dunnock - 1
Lesser Whitethroat - 1
Whitethroat - 9 (1)
Wren - 4
 

Barn Owl boxes - 7th August 2025

 A last visit of the season to two boxes where owlets were too small to ring on the first visit. There were still 3 and 4 in the two boxes. Weights were good and feeding seems to be going well.

Four siblings, youngest to oldest.

Total: 7

Barn Owl pulli 7

This brings our total on this large estate to 25 ringed young from 15 boxes in use. A further 6 young had fledged prior to our visits earlier in July. The owls here seem to be doing okay, unlike so many other areas in the UK.

Sculthorpe Moor - 6th August 2025

 The first of the Sculthorpe Moor Discovery days in August. It was rather windier than we would have liked, but we went ahead and completed our usual monitoring of birds using the beaver enclosure. It was rather quiet, possibly due to the strong SW to NNW winds yesterday, and the adult Reed and Sedge Warblers had already moved on. A recently fledged Cetti's Warbler was the best bird of the day.

Team of CL, DKL, PWL, EGB & LC.

Total: 29 (3)

Blackcap - 4
Blue Tit - 2 (2)
Cetti's Warbler - 1
Chiffchaff - 6
Great Tit - 1 (1)
Reed Warbler - 4
Sedge Warbler - 2
Wren - 6

An evening return for swallows attracted a small group that ultimately roosted away from our netted area. Only one Swallow was captured with a few, mostly juvenile Reed Warblers in the early evening.

Total:     (1)

Reed Bunting - 1
Reed Warbler - 9 (1)
Sedge Warbler - 5
Swallow - 1

Sculthorpe Moor - 2nd August 2025

 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.

Juvenile Swallow

Total: 55 (1)

Sand Martin - 1
Swallow - 36
Sedge Warbler - 4
Reed Warbler - 14 (1)