Roost mist-netting 10/12/24

A very small team assembled at midday to try and catch Reed Buntings coming in to roost. As it's something that the Group hasn't done for a very long time, it was a bit of an experiment. It was rather windy, so 6 nets were set in the more sheltered areas around the reeds & willows to the west of the Discovery Hut. 

The first Chiffchaff was caught almost straight away and was a control, having been ringed somewhere other than the Wetlands. It turned out that the bird was having a bad day, having been caught and ringed earlier the same day by our leader Mike Tyler at his own site at the Colyton Waste Water Treatment Works further up the River Axe. A short time later another interesting Chiffchaff was caught, this one looking much paler & greyer than normal, so possibly a Siberian Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita tristis).

Possible Siberian Chiffchaff

Possible Siberian Chiffchaff

We caught our first Reed Buntings just after 2pm, but it wasn't until nearer 4pm that they really started to arrive, and we had our biggest round of 8 Reed Buntings at 5pm, taking our total to 19. Some of the birds were quite easy to age, having obviously pointed juvenile tails, but as quite a few Reed Buntings moult their entire tails during their post juvenile moult, a nice rounded adult tail doesn't necessarily mean that the bird's an adult. Sexing the birds is usually done using the shape of the black centre of the crown feathers, and although most could be sexed in this way, a few were a bit ambiguous. The presence of white in the collar around the neck & grey feathers on the rump can also assist in sexing, but there were still a couple of birds that were only provisionally sexed.

The bird below was a male, as shown by the rounded shape of the black feather centre, and the slight white collar. The pointed tail indicates that it's a bird hatched this year ie age code 3. 

Reed Bunting 

Pointed tail...age code 3

Rounded black feather centre & white collar....male

The 'Team' & a row of bagged Reed Buntings 

It had been a successful evening, with 39 birds caught in total. An attempt was made to catch owls after the roost, but unfortunately the only owl encountered during the session was the stuffed one in the Discovery Hut. 

	Ringed	Re-trapped	Control
Blackbird		1
Blue Tit		2
Cetti’s Warbler		1
Chiffchaff	5		1
Dunnock	1
Goldcrest		2
Reed Bunting	19
Robin	3	2
Wren	2
	30	8	1