It's getting hard not to sound repetitive at the start of these blogs... But, today was another calm and sunny day... Before sunrise, George and Sam had the nets open at Cristin and the Withies, this is the first time the Withies have been ringed in this year, they are are usually better than Cristin for birds such as Sedge Warblers and Reed Warblers. Five Sedge Warblers were caught in the Withies this morning, which is a good total, but there wasn't much besides, so the nets were closed fairly early on.

Up at Cristin, George had caught the first recorded Lesser Whitethroat of the year, along with some Blackcaps, Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers and Sedge Warblers and singles of Whitethroat and Grasshopper Warbler. That's seven warbler species, not a bad start to the day.

Lesser Whitethroat

The nicely patterned under-tail coverts of the Grasshopper Warbler

So far this year, four Grasshopper Warblers have been caught, which has been very nice as only one was caught last year, despite being heard along the mountainside almost all of last Spring!

More Chough monitoring took place later in the morning, this time round, it was the south end of the mountain pairs. Worryingly, one of the previously most active pairs didn't visit the nest site for the whole two hours of the monitoring session. Further inspection of the nest site saw a very un-formed bundle of twigs and grass where you would hope to see perhaps three eggs in a (somewhat) neatly arranged nest. The other pairs were all active as usual, so we'll see what happens in the coming weeks...

The first Shag and Razorbill Eggs were seen near Barcut, so we'll be coming back round to the East Side in a couple of weeks to count nests and eggs of all the seabirds. Come June, we'll hopefully be ringing the chicks of as many as we can!

 Shag nest with one egg, pairs will usually have three in total, but four is not hugely unusual.

Razorbill sitting on an egg, these birds lay (almost invariably) one egg, more often
than not on bare rock!

George kept the nets open until around 16:00, but the pace had started to slow down quite a lot. So the nets were closed and both assistant wardens headed off to the south end to find the Manx Shearwater burrows that will be getting monitored shortly.

George checking one of the South End burrows with an endoscope, this seemed to work well for the shallower monitoring borrows!

On the way back to the Obs at around 18:30, we flushed the Lapland Bunting from the South End track, and yet again it just tamely sat in front of us. More great views of what can be so often very briefly seen birds. A walk over to Solfach produced a Bar-tailed Godwit that has been present for several days, too and roosts with the Oystercatchers.

 Lapland Bunting on the Narrows

Bar-tailed Godwit, these high Arctic breeders can form very large flocks on coastal mudflats, but we usually get them in ones and twos on Bardsey.

Solfach in the setting sun, this photo shows the haze that was present all day, which made the sea and sky merge at the horizon.

The day didn't end there though, as when darkness fell the assistant wardens headed off to the Narrows and the South End to catch Whimbrels, but there will be more about that in tomorrows post!

Other sightings today include: 19 Shags, five Shelducks, one Kestrel, 79 Oystercatchers, 30 Whimbrels, one Little Owl, two Great Black-backed Gulls, 13 Sand Martins, one Robin, four Great Tits and 31 Linnets.

Ringing totals: Blackcap 12, Sedge Warbler 7, Willow Warbler 6, Goldcrest 1, Grasshopper Warbler 1, Lesser Whitethroat 1, Whitethroat 1, Chiffchaff 7, Goldfinch 6, Blackbird (1), Wren (1)

11 Species, 42 new, 2 re-traps.