Where are they coming from?

That's the question we're asking ourselves about these Blackcaps. It was a pretty wet and windy day yesterday--and it continued through the night so not a particularly good night for migration. However, it eased off just after dawn so we were able to open nets in conditions that weren't as bad as we had expected.
We ended up with almost 60 birds of which guess which species formed almost half of the catch. Pretty easy question--Blackcaps. Which prompted the title question -- where are they coming from--because all other ringing stations are also reporting big numbers of this species. It seems like there are only really two possibilities and probably both are operating. First it looks like they had a great breeding season-and judging by the look of some recent young birds there could have been lots of second broods hatched successfully. It's also possible of course that there has been a strong passage of continental birds passing through Britain. We  might get some idea of this if there are any recoveries of birds ringed elsewhere earlier this year.

The only two other things of note were 2 Sedge warblers-one new one a re-trap; because this is getting quite late for them not to have set off for Africa.
Second, we caught 10 new Long Tailed Tits today suggesting that a flock from somewhere else ( probably quite near) has moved into the site, because we are pretty sure that apart from the odd one or two we have ringed all of the Long Tails on site over the Summer.
Generally the team are feeling that we might as well continue so long as there are birds migrating through the site--can't argue with that.......