The Lincolnshire Bird Club

is it just me or has there been another serious decline in greenfinch numbers, not seen many this breeding season. my resident blackbirds have been mating all day ( lucky sods ) on and off if you see what i mean. think this female is a bit of a slapper myself, go on dip your bread in.

terry whalin

Terry.

I am seeing a lot more Greenfinch and other passerines around and on the airfield at Waddington with around 30/40 greenfinch around the fence, massive amounts of House sparrow(300 in a flock), Linnet(150), good numbers of goldfinch with smaller amounts of the regular others. Have not been able to find the Tree sparrow nursery yet, but will keep looking.

Around, where I live NE corner of Lincoln, I try not to hit the House sparrows/Blackbirds that try to commit suicide by flying in front of the car whenever the day is quiet!!. Goldfinch/House sparrow etc appear to be doing decently and am seeing Greenfich in reasonable numbers as well.

Can we please have a snapshot view from the regulars on what is happening on there patch in the breeding season in the light of " Common birds " and we can have an vox populi instead of The Garden Birdwatch which seems to overly concentrate on Winter!! and let us have more an idea on local breeding success or not!

Cheers

Brian

Brian,
From a couple of ringing sessions I would say it has generally been an excellent breeding season. At my woodland edge site, Whitethroats are everywhere and there are good numbers of Tit species, Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps and Bullfinches. At a garden feeder site juvenile House and Tree Sparrows have done well and Chaffinches were more prolific than ever. I will know more when our Ringing Group has collated all our records. For information, the BTO has been running the Constant Effort Ringing Scheme since 1983.
This involves ringing at about 120 woodland/reed/scrub sites (not gardens) throughout the UK which has provided invaluable information relating to demography and population dynamics. I took part from 1988 to 1997 at Occupation Lane (TF1291) which amounted to 720 hours of ringing!! Clear felling by the Forestry Commission meant that the habitat change severely affected the constancy so I had to give up. More information can be found at http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/ri ... urveys/ces
Stuart

Hi Brian,
Your request for information on the success of breeding birds locally and my response hasn't produced a single reply in 3 days!! I think the only way to get a response would be to head the thread with something like " Mega at RAF Waddington". At least the vast majority of readers of the Forum who are totally rarity orientated might deign to read it and possibly respond? Or perhaps not!!
Stuart

This years Saltfleetby nnr CBC revealed the highest ever totals of whitethroats and great tits
sadly turtle doves remain at low levels, very few greenfinches seen on the coast this year, and blackbirds are mainly breeding in local gardens, 3 pairs house sparrows have each reared 2 broods in coastguard cottage, and 2 pairs local swallows have reared broods of 5, only 1 juv cuckoo seen this year, cannot comment on nnr breeding success as no means of assessment . regards John.

thats the reason for the original posting greenfinch nearly nothing, no song thrushs though swallows have done very well around the farm buildings on my tetrad. small number of both house and tree sparrows. as john says lots whitethroat. cuckoos also down on previous years. had a couple of late turtle doves otherwise nothing.

terry whalin

We still seem to have quite a few Greenfinch at Saltfleet, they are the main species that come to my sunflower feeder in New Inns caravan park.
Geoff

during the early/mid nineties Mike Boddy was regularly bird ringing and feeding in his large garden near the theddlethorpe dunes and ringed over 2000 greenfinches in 7 winter/spring months !!!,
i had 2 at my garden feeding station this winter. regards John.

john no matter which way you look at it eg bad winter, population fluctuations, local factors those figures reflect an absolute disaster for the greenfinch and probably to a lesser degree passerines in general, a truely shocking set of figures.

terry whalin

On the surface, Terry it doesn't look good but I am for ever the optimist. When 4 ringed Barn Owls were found dead in one week in January at Stainton-le-Vale I was not confident for this breeding season. Yet Bob Shepherd and Alan Ball report one of their most productive years and I have ringed several healthy broods of four. Populations can recover rapidly so I hope your dearth of Greenfinches is a temporary blip - we shall see.