Ringing at Ashleworth Ham
Visit 11 on 21 August 2018
The conditions for catching birds were perfect, slightly overcast, and only a light breeze. The trouble is that, in order to catch birds, there need to be birds present. The complete absence of bird sound whilst putting up the nets, soon materialised into the second lowest catch of the year. Whilst not totally unexpected, it is always disappointing to have fears confirmed. The catch of 30 birds was well below the averages (48 for last five years, and 52 for the full twenty previous years). The hedgerows are full of fruit, and a few insects are around, but for the time being, the birds appear to have left the site, a feature that has been noted in previous years. Numbers pick up again in mid- to late September, and good catches are obtained in October.
Whitethroat topped the list with six birds caught, closely followed by Blackcap and Redstart with five of each species. All five Blackcaps were re-traps, of which two were adults in full annual moult. Two each of Redstart and Whitethroat were re-traps, one of the Whitethroats being an adult in annual moult.
The Redstarts were all juveniles at different stages of their post juvenile moult. Two were females fully moulted out, but still recognisable as juveniles by the orange fringes on the greater coverts, the other three were males, one obviously so as it was nearly through its moult, the other two were only just recognisable as males, as their moult had just reached their heads, and a few white feathers were just beginning to show through their protective sheaths. It is this opportunity to see these intimate details of a bird’s life cycle, that is one of the major appeals of ringing. For the scientists studying populations, the data from Ashleworth show that in this area, Redstarts have had a successful breeding season, with 22 of the 31 individuals handled this year being juveniles.
Chiffchaffs on the other hand appear not to have done so well locally. Most years at this time, the sound we hear most frequently is the disyllabic call note of the young birds keeping contact with each other. This year there is little or no sound of them, and the catching figures reflect this, each visit yielding an average of just over one bird per visit, compared with last year when each visit yielded 8.4 birds per visit, and 5.8 birds per visit in 2016. It will be interesting to see if visit 12 (the final CES visit) does anything to change these statistics, but it is doubtful if it will.
Mervyn Greening