25th May 2011 - More Siskins, Tits, Jackdaws and a new Warbler

This week started with a trip up to Leith Hill in the evening to try to catch Nightjars, but the weather became a lot windy than forecast, although at least two males were seen and heard.  Before going for the Nightjars, I went up a few hours early to see if an evening session would be any different from my normal mornings here.  Happily, this produced another seven new birds including four Siskin, a Garden Warbler, a Song Thrush and a Great Spotted Woodpecker (latter two being new species caught on the heath).

The following day, a late afternoon visit to Warnham LNR to ring the last two boxes of the nest box scheme which were both Blue Tits and interestingly had two of the smallest broods of just five and six!  Whilst here a quick view of the Common Terns showed two pairs on eggs which the first pair had hatched at least two chicks by the time of writing.

Saturday morning at home produced the first two juvenile Robins of the year (above), and the last nest boxes of Blue Tit (again just five chicks) and Great Tit.  But the best catch was my first Lesser Whitethroat for the garden (below) and surprisingly it had a fairly well developed brood patch!  Because both sexes incubate the eggs (so both get brood patches) it wasn't possible to sex it but shortly afterwards a pair were seen in another part of the garden and a male was heard singing!  Why haven't I seen or heard them prior to this?

Back to Leith Hill on Tuesday morning and nine new Siskin (including many juveniles) and a new Goldcrest were highlights and with thanks to Stephen Menzie for the link to a paper about sexing juvenile Siskins that I will try on my next visit.  The following day I went to do the last two nests of Jackdaws on Leith Hill helped by colleague Ruby (above with one of the chicks).  One of the nests was in a beech tree and was quite interesting as the nest hole had no bottom, but had been filled with stick to make it so (below top) and a lower whole had had two eggs laid in it (below bottom).  I have presumed that as there were just two nestlings these two eggs had been laid by the same female and she had chosen to just incubate the top nest!

Birds ringed:
Siskin - 13
Garden Warbler - 1
Blue Tit - 16 nestlings
Robin - 2
Goldfinch - 1
Lesser Whitethroat - 1
Chaffinch - 1
Great Spotted Woodpecker - 1
Blackbird - 1
Song Thrush - 1
Great Tit - 8 nestlings
Goldcrest - 1
Jackdaw - 5 nestlings