Sand martins on the 4th of July

 A team of six did our second mist netting session in front of the sand martin bank on Friday and followed that with some sand martin nestling ringing to complete our mornings ringing.  It meant an early start, with the nets up at 5 am.  We walk the nets, already set, into place in front of the bank, and as we move in birds leaving their nest holes are caught whilst we are on the move.  We were more efficient in getting the nets out this time compared to last, but as always we learnt new lessons for next time.

The team of six looking cheerful despite the early start!

The catch was very good. We limit ourselves to an hour to minimise the disturbance to the colony.  We are planning to continue this at approximately two week intervals, with this being the second catch.  We caught 83 birds.  One of these was a sedge warbler, only the second one for the year so far.  Of the remaining 82 only 6 were birds that hatched this year.  I have read reports from other colonies of first year birds roosting in the colony, but this does not seem to happen much here.  There are reports from local birders of sand martins roosting in reed beds near the tramway line so this may well include our first year birds.  All six were already ringed. 

 

First year bird showing characteristic paler fringes fringes to feathers.

28 of the 76 adult birds caught were retraps, 27 of them were birds we had ringed previously this year.  The 28th was our third French ringed bird.  

French ringed sand martins.  Just as attractive as all the others.

 We will post details of these three encounters when we have the details for this third bird.  This left 48 new adult birds, so adding 49 to the total of breeding adults encountered this season.

The nets just before we finished.

Having packed up from our mist netting session we turned out attention to nestlings.  It is very busy at the moment behind the bank with many pairs bringing up their second broods with the earlier second broods really coming to the ringing stage over the next week or so.  We dealt with 8 broods of youngsters ringing a further 34 chicks.  

Overall an extremely productive morning!