CES 12 Finished and Another Survey Year Completed

Dave, Heather, Cedwyn (who also took photos below) and Gale attended the reserve on 2 September to carry out the final Constant Effort Site ringing for the 2014 season. In addition to the usual 360' net run we erected two nets in 'West Pool Slack' and three in 'Glaucous Reed'. There seemed to be few birds about as we erected the nets at dawn and this was borne out by a general lack of birds caught in the nets. However, a steady trickle of captures through to the end brought us up to 46 birds for the morning.

Dave was particularly pleased to get to ring a jay, a species he hasn't ringed for several years on account that he usually hands them over to trainees to learn how to handle species more than capable of inflicting pain!

This individual was a bird that has fledged this year. The bird was aged by counting the dark bars on the outer-most greater covert. Matching up growth bar-like patterning on the primary coverts did not work as well as it appears in Svensson.

The easiest way to see Cetti's warblers at Kenfig is to put up a mist net. Two new birds were ringed and one was re-trapped. All were aged as birds fledged this year. In the next month or so all Cetti's will have completed their post juvenile moults and become much more difficult to age so we were pleased to catch two new birds.

Species	New	Re-trapped	Total
Tree Pipit	1	0	1
Wren	1	0	1
Robin	4	1	5
Cetti's Warbler	2	1	3
Sedge Warbler	3	0	3
Reed Warbler	5	3	8
Whitethroat	2	0	2
Blackcap	7	0	7
Chiffchaff	2	0	2
Willow Warbler	1	0	1
Goldcrest	1	0	1
Long-tailed Tit		1	1
Blue Tit	3	0	3
Jay	1	0	1
Blackbird	1	0	1
Great Tit	3		3
Bullfinch	2	1	3
Total:	39	7	46