Monday- Saturday 13th – 18th Feb: Brong Ahafo surveys

After the sad departure of Bee and Vicky back to the UK, we continued with a couple of mornings carrying out a full site survey, the first hour or so of each morning spent once more trying to catch a woodie again, but with no luck. During the survey, however, we spotted one of our previously-ringed birds, now in its 80th day since capture on November 25th. On the Tuesday pm we headed Northwest to join the nightingale team to leave them with a few extra nets, as the nightingales were proving almost as tricky to catch as the wood warblers, and with less time available. Meanwhile the wood warbler crew set about surveying more potential wood warblers sites in the Brong Ahafo region. We surveyed a total of 9 sites over the 4 days, and most of those followed the model of predicted presence or absence.

We returned to Pepease with renewed hope that come the Monday morning we’d have a better chance of catching a wood warbler. Surely the birds must be approaching the end of their moult? Also, it was about this time last year that we started hearing the wood warblers calling, and very soon after they were singing. I’m of the opinion that more vocalisation equals greater likelihood of capture!