Cuckoo and Buzzard - A Month to Remember

The last month has been very active continuing to run my two Leith Hill sites as well as my North River Constant Effort Site and the first check of my many nestboxes.

North River continues to show a poor return on the number of birds being caught and only one juvenile has been caught so far, a sign of the poor season so far.  Although highlights were catching a Long-tailed Tit of a good age that I had originally ringed in Dec 2008 and although not part of the CES study also caught two adults and a juvenile Canada Goose!

The ringing on Leith Hill has produced a few birds of excitement, such as a male Cuckoo (above), first to be ringed here, a pair of Linnet (below) and 40 new Siskin including the first juveniles.

adult male Linnet

Checking the nestboxes proved very timely, with a marathon whole day of box checking resulting in two adult and 37 Jackdaw chicks, 3 Stock Dove chicks and an adult Barn Owl being ringed.  Whilst a number of nests have been found and chicks ringed including Dunnock, Pied Wagtail, Grey Wagtail, Wren, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Blackbird, Swallow, but the best being a single Buzzard chick (below).

nestling Buzzard

Birds ringed:
Barn Owl - 1
Blackbird - 4 + 8 nestlings
Blackcap - 8
Blue Tit - 6 + 8 nestlings
Bullfinch - 4
Buzzard - 1 nestling
Canada Goose - 2 + 1 nestling
Chaffinch - 12
Coal Tit - 1
Cuckoo - 1
Dunnock - 3 + 4 nestlings
Garden Warbler - 5
Goldcrest - 2
Goldfinch - 1
Great Tit - 7 + 5 nestlings
Grey Wagtail - 3 nestlings
Great Spotted Woodpecker - 4
Jackdaw - 4 + 37 nestlings
Jay - 3
Lesser Redpoll - 4
Linnet - 2
Long-tailed Tit - 3
Magpie - 1
Nuthatch - 2
Pied Wagtail - 5 nestlings
Robin - 5
Siskin - 40
Song Thrush - 6
Stock Dove - 3 nestlings
Swallow - 1 + 5 nestlings
Whitethroat - 3
Willow Warbler - 1
Wren - 4 + 6 nestlings