CES project Ooijse Graaf

The Contstant Effort Site Project is an international standardised birdringing progamme during the breeding season that starts in mid April untill the end of July. A number of restrictions of the CES project apply, birds are caught once in 12 blocks of 10 days and from half an hour before sunrise until 6 hours later afterwards, no sound should be played to attract birds. You have to wake up very early in the morning, or better said in the night but the project collects very interesting and valuable data of our breeding species.
By means of the standardised method of the bird project, data is being obtained on survival (recapture of earlier ringed birds), reproduction (percentage first year birds) and monitoring (number of adult birds) . 


The Ooijse Graaf is my ringing site together with some other ringers (Frank Majoor, Holmer Vonk, Stef Waasdorp, Joost Valkenburg and Jeroen Nagtegaal). It is a reedland in an old farland river in the Ooijpolder, a nature area  close to the city Nijmegen in the middel/east of The Netherlands and close to the German border.
During the breeding season we perform the CES project with 160 meter mistnet among reed, rough vegetation and scrub including Willow, Hawthord and Elder.

Luc Meuwissen, Me (with Bluethroat) and Marian Crombach.

Since the start in 1996 we've ringed between 500 and 1100 birds per breeding season. Since that time, more than 60 different species have been caught during CES. The bulk of species consists of Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps, Reed warblers and Marsh warblers.

Reed warbler in mistnet with Luc Meuwissen in the background

One of the nets

Me while ringing a Wryneck

Kingfisher

In some years we have a roost of swallows, yellow wagtails or starlings in the reedland and we can ring them in the evening. In a realy good evening we can ring about 300 Swallows or 70 Yellow wagtails.

Yellow wagtail male

The spring migration is'nt strong and intresting voor birdringing but in the autumn during the autumn migration we can ring a lot of songbirds, up to 600 in a day. Most of them are Blackcaps, Reed warblers, Chiffchaffs, Robins and Reed buntings dependent of the month. We ringed also some rare and scare species including Wryneck, Ortolan bunting, Yellow-browned warbled, Savi's warbler and Spotted crake.

Laura Meuwissen with Wryneck

In autumn we catch quite a lot rings from other contries what is very interesting. Most of them were from Belgium but also from north and eastern Europe. In 2011 only we caught eleven different rings from Belgium, four from Germeny, three from Norway, two from Sweden, one from Denmark, one from Spain and one from France!

1cy Sedge warbler with Norway ring, August 2011

1cy Reed warbler with Helgoland ring, September 2011

Numbers of birds per specie that we ringed the last ten years:

Species	2011	2010	2009	2008	2007	2006	2005	2004	2003	2002
Buzzard	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-
Sparrow-hawk	1	-	-	-	1	-	-	1	1	-
Wood pigeon	2	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-
Waterrail	7	4	2	-	1	-	-	1	-	-
Spotted crake	1	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-
Moorhen	-	-	-	-	1	-	1	-	-	-
Coot	-	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Black tern	1	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-
Jack snipe	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-
Common sandp.	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Kingfisher	16	2	14	11	17	11	21	12	11	13
Wryneck	12	1	2	-	2	2	-	-	1	2
Green woodpec	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	1	1	2
GS woodpecker	4	1	2	-	1	1	2	1	1	2
LS woodpecker	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	1	-
Sand martin	7	13	158	2	-	95	142	15	31	10
House martin	-	-	-	-	-	-	3	-	-	-
Barn swallow	104	115	430	150	31	935	993	209	99	282
Barn x House m	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Tree pipit	1	1	1	-	-	-	1	-	-	1
Meadow pipit	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Yellow wagtail	6	42	237	101	230	14	41	48	-	-
Grey wagtail	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-
Withe wagtail	-	1	-	-	2	-	-	-	2	-
Wren	56	48	45	54	61	40	66	35	50	41
Dunnock	26	29	13	18	23	6	43	30	29	23
Robin	507	283	102	82	123	35	176	67	194	119
Nagtegaal	3	2	1	-	-	1	1	1	2	1
Bluethroat	40	17	31	8	10	8	5	26	16	11
Black redstart	2	1	-	-	-	-	-	1	1	-
Common redstar	13	3	1	2	1	1	6	4	-	4
Whinchat	3	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	1	1
Stonechat	21	3	3	3	-	-	4	3	1	-
Blackbird	20	20	5	13	25	9	38	21	34	21
Fieldfare	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	9	-
Song thrush	39	26	20	25	17	18	32	19	41	27
Redwing	-	15	-	8	13	-	13	4	14	-
Mistle thrush	-	-	-	-	1	1	-	-	-	-
Grashopper war	65	11	7	5	5	9	5	7	11	3
Savi's warbler	6	2	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Sedge warbler	120	52	55	26	29	29	9	13	12	7
Marsh warbler	197	100	119	55	93	181	110	136	91	78
Reed warbler	1745	718	850	641	439	601	373	448	417	366
Icterine warbler	5	-	3	1	3	3	3	2	5	1
Lesser whitetroa	12	5	9	14	10	4	9	10	7	6
Common whitet	246	67	93	36	42	71	43	79	53	30
Garden warbler	185	183	198	113	101	108	169	118	98	112
Blackcap	3265	1335	1101	602	452	432	876	670	669	581
YB warbler	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Chiffchaff	661	371	246	184	152	100	234	393	306	268
Willow warbler	86	26	37	23	21	21	36	35	40	23
Goldcrest	-	5	-	14	15	-	5	-	11	-
Firecrest	6	2	2	6	6	1	-	-	-	1
Spotted flycatch	3	-	2	1	1	1	1	-	2	1
Pied flychacher	1	1	1	-	-	-	-	2	2	-
Bearded tit	-	1	-	6	-	-	-	-	1	-
Long-tailed tit	23	25	12	27	14	3	12	25	24	6
Willow tit	19	17	18	17	8	9	25	13	10	15
Marsh tit	-	-	-	1	-	1	1	-	-	-
Coal tit	-	6	-	2	2	-	20	-	1	-
Blue tit	182	281	120	176	83	34	106	74	85	74
Great tit	127	147	96	151	96	40	134	82	75	61
Nuthatch	1	1	2	1	-	1	2	-	-	1
Tree creeper	17	9	8	8	6	7	3	10	10	10
Penduline tit	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	1	2	15
Starling	75	145	175	49	8	6	11	-	2	-
Jay	-	-	2	1	-	1	-	1	-	-
House sparrow	2	-	1	-	2	-	-	-	-	-
Tree sparrow	10	2	1	2	-	1	2	1	-	4
Chaffinch	5	6	3	6	1	3	5	3	2	3
Greenfinch	-	-	-	1	2	1	1	2	-	4
Goldfinch	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Lesser redpoll	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1	-
Hawfinch	-	2	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-
Ortolan bunting	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-
Yellowhammer	-	-	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-
Reed bunting	435	93	76	96	76	48	182	138	113	165
Yellow-crowned   bishop	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
total	8382	4244	4307	2744	2226	2897	3727	2766	2592	2397