Southern Colour Ringing Group

15 May 2019

We made our second visit to Walthamstow Wetlands today to cover the best period for Egrets. There was a real mix of ages with some large fledged birds and still some nests with eggs. It was also noted that there was a higher than normal mortality with a lot of dead young many quite small. We assume the cold and wet weather two weekends ago probably was a big problem for these small chicks and there were at least 4 full broods with dead young around 3 to 4 days old and three dead young that were quite large and clearly had been blown out of nests or tree tops. Many of the nests that had fledged two to four young also had one dead young (probably the smallest bird in the brood) so in terms of the success for this year despite rigning 29 young Egrets today it is in reality from 30 nests quite a poor total..Huge thanks again to the London Wildlife Trust and in particular Charlie and Nadia who came out and helped ringing Egrets and climbing trees as well as sorting the boat out. Great team effort by all attending.

05 April 2019

We did the first survey for 2019 at Walthamstow today. 44 active nests is good. Although a proper count was not done there were approximately 37 Little Egret nests mostly with eggs so there will be some considerable ringing of these to do in a few weeks time. Due to the mild weather many birds were well advanced and many young were too big to attempt to ring. This colony was clearly much more advanced than the Netherhall colony. Eight birds were ringed of which 7 were colour ringed.

30 March 2019

Today we made our first visit to Netherhall to undertake the Heronry survey. Only 27 nests this year so ten nests down from last year. There are several trees down on the island which has reduced the nests available. However, with the warm spring things are early and there were three or four young that are very close to fledging and were too big to attempt to ring. We also recorded our earliest three Little Egret nests one with five eggs already.