More Linacre chicks ringed.

Last night Jayne and I went around Linacre to check on the nestboxes. We were there for 3 hours and found 60 young birds in the nestboxes that were big enough to ring: 38 Blue Tits and 22 Great Tits. This brings the year's total to 184: 128 Blue Tits and 56 Great Tits so far.Given the cold, unsettled weather in May I'm pretty pleased with this number. All records of course, go to the BTO's Nest Record Scheme.  There were another 2 active nests in the boxes, which I'll pop back to ring in a few days time

As well as these birds we also checked the Wren's nest. It contained 5 warm eggs again, so it appears to still  be going strong. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the Blackbird's nest that was empty, with broken egg shell on the ground. It appears to have been predated, but I'm not too surprised as predation is very high for most bird species, and this nest was on the woodland floor!

Away from the nestboxes everything was quite quiet. A Coot was sitting on a nest on the top reservoir, which is the first and only nest I've seen here this year. There weren't any other young birds seen and so far I've only seen 1 brood of Mallard ducklings and 1 brood of Mandarin Duck ducklings as well.  There were 4 Swallows feeding over the water and  a couple of Chiffchaffs, 1 Willow Warbler and a Grey Wagtail singing.