Today there were only two nests of chicks to be ringed. The final two! We had a really productive season it seems according to the preliminary results we have to wait until next month when we will clear out the nests and check whether there are any dead chicks remaining to finally conclude what the productivity of the boxes were.
But we do know that we had 12 blue tit nests (of which 10 fledged young) and 6 great tits (5 fledged young). There were also two boxes with tree sparrows and one fledged young. This is a very successful occupation rate with 20 out of 25 nest boxes occupied. This suggests that we can put up more nest boxes next year. We ringed 114 chicks from the 18 tit nests.
The earliest great tit laid 8th April with an average lay date of 23rd April, and an average clutch size of 7
The earliest blue tit laid 7th April but the nest failed, the average date of the first egg was 15th April with an average clutch size of 9.
As well as the ringing and collating the data we also did some conservation work in the wood, doing a bit of care for the baby oak trees that were planted in the wood in December 2023. The trees are growing out of their 60cm tree guards and are vulnerable to browsing by the roe deer so we put taller (120cm) tree guards on and bashed the bracken all around them and in a clearing in the woods.
As we were up by the trees, an osprey flew over. |We think that they fish on the nearby loch and have a plan to go and have a look soon. The young people all said they liked the bracken bashing best of all and we cut a huge swathe through the bracken which we hope will give more light to the trees and allow more ground flora to grow that are being shaded out. To bash the bracken we used hazel sticks harvested from a hazel tree close to the house.
Upper Woodburn 