The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Whilst checking the Mid-Lincs RG totals for 2012 I found that only 3 Willow Tits had been ringed at traditional sites in the Market Rasen/Newball/Donington on Bain areas. This compares with 15 in 2009 and 12 in 2010 and 2011. I went through past records going back to 1974 to find that 350 had been ringed between 1974-1994 and only 150 from 1994-2012. The amount of ringing effort has been reasonably constant over this period. There are too many variables to make these observations statistically significant but I think it adds weight to the increasingly worrying lack of sightings of Parus montanus.

I don,t recall a single record of montanus over the past 15 or so years on Saltfleetby nnr
they were a regular sight in the seventies and eighties.
regards John