One of our own ..

Day 188 #365DaysWild

Garden bird ringing this morning. Comparatively few birds about.

A blue tit ringed in garden nest box #8 in May 2020 was 

caught & released today close by the kitchen bird feeders.

Three years seven months old. That’s a reasonable  age for a blue tit.

Another blue tit caught as a juvenile in November 2019.

Intriguingly, no juveniles ringed at all today.

Disappointingly, we were unable to check bird boxes in the garden and in the farm in the spring 2022 and so can add little about whether birds failed to nest, lay or rear young. If young were reared, was there especially high mortality when birds fledged?

Is this a local issue? Or could there have been a more-widespread breeding failure in 2022?

And what impact could a missing generation have on bird populations?

We wait to see.