Today was the first day of checking nest boxes, this should be fairly straight forward as there are the lowest number of nestboxes up on the reserve that we have ever had since nestbox monitoring began 25 years ago. This was due in part to a lot of boxes (nearly half of all that were previously up) being taken down to repair damage caused by Great Spotted Woodpecker during the winter.
During the repair time a "Woodland Walk Project" was begun by the staff at the field station which included some nest boxes, to be created by and put up by volunteers. We decided that our boxes should not go up anywhere untill after the volunteer created boxes had been erected and placed so as to not over crowd any given area.
Even though some of the volunteer created boxes were not put up untill just a couple of weeks ago, some of them have already being occupied which amply demonstrates the clear need of the local population of hole nesting species for suitable holes in the young wood that is "Sykes Farm".
The ringing result from checking today were two lots of nestboxes were ringed including a brood of five and a brood of 10, - both were of the Great Tit variety!
There are plenty to go back to later on.
Also reported on the reserve today were
Montagu's Harrier
Short Eared Owl
Spoonbill
Temminck's Stint
Turtle Dove
Yellow Wagtail
