Late September

The last few days of the month saw no significant change at Billinge and, like the month as a whole, can be summed up as disappointing. The ringing totals below tell the story with the only highlight, although it is not much of one, being the 15 Goldcrests caught on the 27th; their highest day total in what has been an exceptionally poor month for that species. I know I have gone on about the low numbers of Goldcrests in recent posts but that is because their numbers have been very low compared to previous years. The total for this September ended up at 71 which is very poor when compared with previous September totals of 258 in 2015, 237 in 2016 and 269 in 2017. They will bounce back in time but how quickly will depend on the severity of winter weather going forward.

September	26th	27th	28th	30th	Total
Goldcrest	12	15	4	7	38
Blue Tit	4	2	5	3	14
Great Tit	2	2	3	3	10
Long-tailed Tit	12	-	-	2 (1)	14 (1)
Chiffchaff	4 (1)	2	4	2	12 (1)
Blackcap	3	3	3	-	9
Treecreeper	-	-	-	1	1
Wren	-	-	-	1	1
Song Thrush	-	-	-	1	1
Dunnock	-	1	-	-	1
Chaffinch	3	1	-	-	4
Lesser Redpoll	-	1	-	-	1
Reed Bunting	1	-	1	-	2
Total	42	27	20	21	110

Lets hope we get some easterly winds to help improve things in October and looking at some of the long range pressure charts there is a chance, and it is only a chance, that there will be a brief spell of easterlies this coming Saturday and a longer period around the middle of the month.