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Wednesday, 24 July 2019

No signs of migration yet

Our last two regular sessions at Belvide have resulted in exactly 100 birds of 15 different species. That's about par for this time of year except for the smaller numbers of sedge warblers as previously mentioned. Better news on this started appearing though in the form of recently fledged chicks of presumably adults which have had another go at breeding having probably had their first attempts washed out.
Reed warblers continue to show strongly with many fledged chicks in the reedbed--with 31 new birds ringed this week. By contrast sedge warblers totalled only 13. Blackcaps are starting to build with12 and most encouraging were the 5 garden warbler juveniles ringed this morning.
Combined warbler totals for the two sessions are:-
Reed warbler 31, sedge warbler 13,blackcap 12, garden warblers 5, whitethroat 1, lesser whitethroat 1, willow warbler 1, chiffchaff 9 and goldcrest 2.
Kingfishers are always a delight and this morning we had another, making 4 new birds so far this season--they have obviously bred successfully somewhere nearby.
As for the title of this post--it looks like we are catching only birds which have bred at or near the site, but as we move into August we are likely to see bigger numbers of some migrant species coming through the reserve as they stop en route to make the most of the very good feeding opportunities afforded by the habitat.

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