Twite update

The RSPB's Twite Recovery Project fieldworker Nick Wilkinson has generously given permission for me to post his update on results so far this year from his and his co workers (Judith?) fieldwork. If anyone has any info on twite locally please forward it onto Nick (via me if you wish). As you can see from their efforts the RSPB are very serious about saving this seriously threatened species.

Several of our core sites appear to be a lot quieter now and have the ‘end of season’ feel about them, especially those that have experienced a high proportion of nest failures, even though there’s still another 10 days or so for new clutches to be started (going by Andre's latest first-egg date). We’ve found a few more nests in the last week, and with several pairs having recently fledged broods it will be interesting to see if many or indeed any of these carry on breeding.

A brief summary of our productivity monitoring so far:
84 nests recorded from c.50 pairs
nest outcomes: 36 fledged, 30 failed and 2 unknown
14 pairs have started second broods after fledging an earlier brood (3 of these 2nd broods have failed); 2 of these 14 pairs have now started their third brood (1 nest building and 1 at incubation)
it is important to note however that there are quite a few pairs for which we have incomplete histories, i.e. we’ve missed earlier or later nesting attempts, or missed the identity of the adults (a few cases) and cannot therefore confidently link nesting attempts
42 broods ringed, of which 40 have been colour ringed, 190 chicks in total
resighted 34 of 69 birds colour ringed in spring 2009, 30 of which we’ve found nesting
resighted 5 of 54 birds colour ringed as nestlings in 2008, 2 of which we’ve found nesting

One recent surprise was discovering a pair that had moved colonies (a distance of 1.3 km) after two failed nests. Another pair at one site moved quite large distances (>0.5 km) between each of their 3 or 4 failed attempts.



Please note some of the report has been withheld by myself due to the (remote?) possibility the specific naming of sites might lead to egg collector pressure, if anyone wants to see the edited section please contact me directly.