Monday 16/01/12 am. Some success, but a familiar problem

We have another go at netting, near the spot where bird 2 spent a lot of time last December. Quite ironically the first bird we caught was a nightingale! Full biometrics were taken but no tag put on this bird – saving the tags for the nightingale study site. After over an hour of trying, however, we actually caught a wood warbler. We were not getting too excited however, as a quick check of the tail showed that there was no way we were going to be able to tag it. Those feathers present were all at various stages of growth, but the central pair was missing altogether. The state of moult in the wing suggested that perhaps it was about half-way through, at about 3 or 4 weeks to go before completion. If all the wood warblers are like this, then will we be able to tag any at all? We put colour-rings on it in any case, as we did the 4th bird in December, seeing as with the latter we were able to relocate it a couple of times without a tag. Perhaps we can do it with this new one.

We spend the rest of the morning surveying the remainder of the site for wood warblers. Not as good as yesterday, with just 5 encountered, but still more than on this same section last December. A particular highlight was the first woodchat shrike that I’ve seen on the study site.

Chris O