We had our second Sand Martin session of the year today at the quarry site we usually ring at, our first being on the 8^th July (read about the first session here). This meant a 3am start to get on site well before dawn (approx 04:15am) to open up the nets. It was a beautiful still morning with a lovely sunrise.

It was a much quieter session processing 34 birds including 16 new, 18 retraps (a mixture of birds from the last session a couple of weeks ago and a few more birds ringed in 2024 by us), and 1 control! A control is a bird ringed elsewhere and not by our ringing group, so we’re excited to find out where its come from! We didn’t catch any juveniles this time so it may be that they are already on their way south.

So, in total across the two sessions we processed 130 Sand Martin. A really successful couple of mornings with lots of good data collected that goes to the BTO and will contribute towards understanding how Sand Martin have done this year in terms of nesting success and productivity.

Thank you to everyone for their time in helping and enabling us to run the two sessions. Looking forward to seeing the birds again next year, good luck in sub-Saharan Africa!

Shannon

Sand Martin net set up

Carefully extracting birds from the nets 

Sand Martin camp! Waiting for the next net round