Saturday 30 May 2015

CES 3 - Kenfig 30/5/15

Taking advantage of the single day, this CES session, predicted to have reasonable weather Dave and Chris were greeted by the call of a Cuckoo as the usual CES nets were set up.
Additional pair of 18m nets were also set out but the lack of birds seems to be a continuing theme this year. Over the three sessions so far less than half the number of birds have been caught compared to last year (33 vs 68).
A Whitethroat was the first for the season so was obviously deserving of a picture.

After a disappointing morning (for both us and the Cuckoo) it was still checking all corners of the site for a possible mate, and we left for the day.



Totals for the day:


Saturday 23 May 2015

CES 2 - Kenfig 23/5/15

Not a lot can be said for the results of CES 2 today! The second lowest total of birds since the CES was started in 1997.
Cedwyn, Wayne and Chris had the nets up by 06:05am with what on arrival seemed like the most perfect conditions that could be asked for. Absolutely no wind and very misty. By the time the nets were up though the sun had burnt it all off and we had clear blue sky.
Six hours later it was a fairly weary trudge back to the car park after catching a total of 14 birds and only 6 of those were caught in the CES ride. We do have to thank Dave for making that trek a lot easier by giving us a lift half way in the new and very comfortable Toyota.

Totals for the day:

Sunday 10 May 2015

CES 1 - Kenfig 10/5/2015

The weather at last allowed us to get in the first session of the year, though it did at one point seem as though we might fail, with the weather for the coming week looking decidedly dodgey.
Cedwyn, Phil and Chris met at 05:30 and the day looked perfect, overcast and completely calm.
We had the CES nets up by just after 06:00 and had 4 birds in before we had actually cleared the site.
After processing the first birds we set up a further 2 x 60' nets in the West Pool Slack.
The first rounds up until 09:30 yielded a good selection though small numbers , but thereafter we only had 2 new birds, though we had to extract a number of same day retraps.
The extractions though small in number were made a little  more entertaining as we had to constantly convince a family of swans that we meant them no harm, but did need to

Swans in residence at the CES ride
 get past them each net round. A little hissing accompanied each retreat they made, but were very quick to return once we left the ride..
As always it's a pleasure to be at Kenfig as there were large numbers of orchids around the ringing table.
Is this an Early Purple Orchid without leaf spots?
Totals for the day:

Monday 4 May 2015

Big Birding Day - Ringing Demo 26/4/2015

As part of the Big Birding Day, Dave and Heather held a ringing demonstration which as you can see from the results table was a pretty successful morning, with a good spread of species and total number of birds.

Total for the Day: