A record day

 We decided to swap our usual Wednesday session for one today because of the strong wind yesterday--it turned out to be a great decision--for once!!

We had a short session on Wednesday early evening while doing some maintenance work and ended up with an encouraging 26 birds. The wind dropped overnight, and there was some quite heavy cloud cover. Birds had obviously embarked on migration but must have decided to drop until the cloud cover cleared.

It was a steady but productive morning with plenty of birds about and by home time we had ringed 166 new birds, again mainly migrant warblers, but intriguingly 10 Robins !? The star bird was our second Redstart of the season--a juvenile male.

We also caught a Reed Warbler which was originally ringed in 2017 by another ringer so it will be interesting to find out where--details as soon as we know.

As most of us left for home, the cloud got even thicker and the temperature dropped a little producing good conditions to try to ring some of the many House and Sand Martins over the water. Kevin decided he would stay on and see how many he could catch--ending up with another 33 new birds including 5 Sand Martins and 19 House Martins.

So when things were totaled, we ended up with 199 new birds ringed today, which is a record total ( although relatively modest compared to some group efforts); adding last evening's birds gives a 24 hour total of 225 birds--another record. Within these totals I've already mentioned the remarkable 19 Robins, but 105 Blackcaps was another record.

There is some importance to some of these numbers. For example, last year we caught a record season total of Blackcaps--but as data from around the country came it it became apparent that most ringers were finding the same. It was a great breeding season and it looks like plenty have made it back to the UK this year. One unexpected total this year is Willow Warbler. We are headed for a record total 4 or 5 times more than in recent years. In fact more than in any year since we started at Belvide in 2007. It's going to be interesting to see if this is reflected around the country for a species which has been in steep decline in lowland UK. 

STOP PRESS !! Strong NW wind forecast for Saturday means we are moving the session to Sunday.