More juvs and French controls

The first juvenile Sedge Warblers were ringed on the Teifi Marsh yesterday

Also the first juvenile Lesser Whitethroat and Cetti's Warbler.

Not an easy development for some young. Irregular feeding producing extreme growth bars in the feathers as this tail shows in one of today's juvenile Reed Warblers.

Although this is an old paper, the abstract does explain growth bars nicely.
Ptilochronology, Feather growth bars as indicators of nutritional status.


CES 6 was done last week with  just 48 birds caught compared to 82 on the equivalent CES last year.
The most interesting catch was a juvenile Willow Tit, caught with the adult that we ringed last week. As noted in a previous blog it would be nice to think that these are breeding on the reserve.
Other Tit species were notable by their absence, a different story on our garden feeders where Blue and Great Tit juveniles are present in large numbers.

Regular readers of the blog will remember that we caught a good number of Sedge Warblers on migration this Spring including 1 Belgian, 10 French and 4 UK controls. We have now had details from the BTO of another two of the French birds. Both ringed on Autumn migration last year.
FRP.7828959 was ringed in Sandouville, Seine Maritime on 6th August 2015.
FRP.7843214 was ringed in Mars-Ouest on 21st August 2015.
The latest two have been added to the map of other Spring 2016 Sedge Warbler controls already received. We are now just waiting for ringing details of 5 French and 1 Belgian controls.

We don't catch many Storm Petrels at Mwnt but last night 11 were caught, all new. This was our second highest catch at Mwnt. 13 on 1st July 2014 included 3 controls and a retrap.

Weather permitting, we are planning the next CES for Wednesday 6th July