Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

Our last session of what has been a quite extraordinary month for our entire Group, more of which in the results round up on Monday. Don’t miss it.

Today we were at Ravensroost Meadows. I was joined by David, Laura, Adam and Pete. We met at 5:30 and set our usual nets for the site.

Ride 1 comprised 2 x 18m 5-shelf nets; ride 2 comprised 2 x 18m 4-shelf nets; rides 3, 4 and 5 each comprised 1 x 18m 5-shelf net; ride 6 comprised 3 x 18m + 1 x 9m 5-shelf nets; ride 7 comprised 1 x 6m 5-shelf net and ride 7 comprised 1 x 18m 5-shelf net. We set the ringing station in the shade blocking the gateway into the site.

The nets were open by about 6:30 and we started catching straight away. Although the sun was out all morning the only rides to be even partially affected were 1 and 2.

Unlike Wednesday’s haul, it wasn’t a huge catch. There were a few highlights though. To start with, we caught our first Lesser Whitethroat of the year:

There is definitely a lot of early fledging going on. Whilst setting up ride 1, a Long-tailed Tit juvenile flew into the net whilst it was still being removed from the bag. David extracted it safely. The rest of its family group were in the hedgerow but, unfortunately for our figures, they all managed to avoid the net in question, so it was the only one that we caught.

Unfortunately, I became somewhat unwell at just after 8:30. As Laura has the appropriate permit I left her in charge and snuck home. She ran the team effectively and efficiently and ended the session at about 11:00. Then she kindly delivered all of the equipment back to my house at about 11:30.

The list for today was: Blue Tit [1]; Long-tailed Tit [1]; Wren 1(1); Dunnock 1; Robin 2[2]; Blackbird 1; Blackcap 1[2]; Whitethroat 3; Lesser Whitethroat 1; Chiffchaff 2; Willow Warbler 1(1). Totals: 13 adults ringed from 9 species, 6 juveniles ringed from 4 species and 2 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 21 birds processed from 11 species.

This year is turning into something quite astonishing. I have summarised the year to date at the end of this piece. It is not something that I would ever have predicted.

We went out to check on four more boxes this morning. These were two boxes we had checked back on the 5th May where the young were too small to ring them and another checked on the 5th, when we ringed three chicks, but there were three more that were too small to ring. We also checked a fourth box which we hadn’t checked before.

It was much cooler today thankfully! I was joined by Laura, Adam and Daniel with a nice leisurely start. The first box, at Drill Farm, had two small chicks and four unhatched eggs back on the 5th, today they had four chicks ready to ring.

We then went to Somerford Farm, met up with David, the owner, and checked the box on his property that we didn’t get too last time. This box is our longest trek so we take all of the kit with us. Upon opening it, we found a Jackdaw nest with five young in it. Then I realised I had only brought Barn Owl rings, so Adam did a run back to the car to get sine E-rings. Unfortunately, I hadn’t told him to bring the right sized pliers!! So Laura did the next trip to get the correct pliers. Eventually we got on with processing! We could only do four of the five: the fifth managed to work its way around a couple of corners to the mouth of the box, which is opposite to where the box hatch is.

From there we went to the box that had 6 small young in last time: this time it had seven healthy looking youngsters! We ringed all of them, and then spent a fruitless half-an-hour looking for a Tawny Owl box along the bridle path. We did find pellets and matted dark feathers, we found white guano splash: lots of signs of activity but no signs of a box.

Next port of call was the box in which we ringed three chicks on the 5th May. The already ringed chicks were beautifully well developed, and their three nest mates were a fair way behind in plumage development, but looking healthy with full bellies.

Adjacent to the Barn Owl box was a Jackdaw nest. I didn’t have my long ladder so it wasn’t reachable. However, we could tell it was a Jackdaw nest as there was a dead chick underneath it.

We then went and checked on a rather dilapidated barn that doesn’t have a box but does have a record of Barn Owls roosting there. Sadly no sign today but a pair of Stock Dove, David is going to put up some more Owl and Kestrel boxes around his farm. He has three wildflower meadows – and they look fabulous. He is heavily involved in a number of local farming conservation groups. We are lucky in the Braydon Forest area: the hedgerows are beautifully maintained. There is very little intensive farming: mainly beef and sheep, with a little dairy and lots of varied wildlife.

This really is the most astonishing year for our team ringing Barn Owls. I am the Schedule 1 permit holder for the species in our group. Jonny Cooper is my agent on that licence. I cover the Braydon Forest and the Wiltshire side of the Cotswold Water Park, including Waterhay. Jonny covers the area around Chippenham expanding eastward to Melksham. Over the years our activity has built up, as can be seen from the following table:

As you can see, we have already ringed nearly twice as many pulli as in any previous year. Whilst that is remarkable in itself, given this is the beginning of the season, what is absolutely remarkable is that, apart from five ringed in May in 2024, we have never ringed Barn Owl pulli in any other year, and yet have ringed 62 in this month! 43 of those are in the Braydon Forest area, and 19 are in Jonny’s sites. Of course, he might add some more before the end of play on Sunday. It will be very interesting where we end up by the ends of the season. The key is the size of the broods. We have ringed three broods of seven, two bro0ds of six, one of four and two of three. Four and three is our usual brood size. An unbelievable start to the season!

With the weather being as hot as it is, and quite strong breeze forecast, I decided to go back to Ravensroost Wood. Our last visit there was on the 25th April and we processed 28 birds from 11 species. What a difference a month can make!

In fact, today’s is our largest ever catch in Ravensroost Wood outside of the months with the feeding stations set up: i.e. April to October inclusive. I was joined for the morning by Miranda, Laura, Adam, Sarah and our newest recruit, 12-year old Dorothy. Miranda had to leave at 9:00 for a prior commitment but, with us meeting on site at 5:30, she helped us get set up and to process a decent number of birds before leaving.

We set nets along two rides in the wood: R38 and R35. R38 had two net sets: one comprising x 2 18m nets and the second comprising 2 x 18m + 1 x 9m nets. R35 had three sets, each comprising 2 x 18m nets. This was actually 2 x 18m nets fewer than we had in our last session. The breeze was constant throughout the morning, but coming from the east-north-east it had a lot of woodland to get through and barely impacted on the nets at all. With two teams setting up it didn’t take long to get going

We started catching before the nets were all open, with Blackcaps, Garden Warbler, Robins and Willow Warbler all hitting the nets whilst we were finishing setting them up. It was a bit on and off all morning, with three biggish rounds and six single figure rounds, but the quality was very good.

There were several highlights:

Our first newly fledged Blackcap of 2026. This was soon followed by:

Our first juvenile Great Tit of the year. This was followed in the next round by another 11 juvenile Great Tits and a tired looking adult! Whilst Laura and Adam were extracting those in ride 35, Sarah and I were extracting 10 juvenile Long-tailed Tits in ride 38. We have had a couple of juveniles of the species so far this year, but this was the first family flock. That was followed by juvenile Robins, another two juvenile Song Thrush and, then, my personal highlight of the session:

Our first juvenile Marsh Tit of the year! It is only the third time in 14 years of study that we have ringed a juvenile Marsh Tit in May. Each time (2017, 2024, 2026) it is just one. We don’t usually catch good numbers of juveniles until August.

We also had our first recently fledged Blue Tit of the year:

The list from the day was: Nuthatch 2; Blue Tit 2[1](2); Great Tit [12](1); Marsh Tit [1](1); Long-tailed Tit 2[9]; Wren 2(2); Robin 1[2](6); Song Thrush [2](1); Blackbird 1; Blackcap 8[1](2); Garden Warbler 7(1); Chiffchaff 1(1); Willow Warbler 1(2); Bullfinch 2. Totals: 29 adults ringed from 11 species, 28 juveniles ringed from 6 species and 19 birds retrapped from 10 species, making 76 birds processed from 14 species.

We had all had enough sun by 11:00, although we did manage to make maximum use of available shade, and all nets were in shade all through the session, one of the benefits of the ride structure in Ravensroost Wood. closed the nets at about 11:20, processed the last few birds, and took down. It was a special session: the company was lovely, the birds were remarkably obliging and the haul was varied and interesting. We left site before midday. I ran a little bit later as my car decided not to start. As much as I love my Mazda CX-30, it does have a very annoying habit: even if the car is switched off, if you open the hatch-back it assumes that you want the car to be ready to go, and it fires up the electrics and, very helpfully, drains the battery! I now carry a portable battery boost, which is brilliant, so it only took a couple of minutes to fire it up, but I would hate to find that the boost had run out of charge at the same time as the car had. Last time I had car trouble, even though I had Green Flag cover, they wanted £450 to “rescue” me from an open field that was harder than the tarmac on the roads, that had softened due to the heat! Apparently they needed to bring special equipment, i.e. a Landrover with a winch, to pull me out so it could be loaded onto their flatbed! I got a local lad out who charged me £150 and drove his flatbed truck out over the field to pick the car up!

Anyway, more Barn Owl checking tomorrow! Hoping there are at least another 18 to ring!

What a calamitous way to start a session! Firstly, I missed two emails from Claire yesterday evening. She was planning to come along, but hadn’t been there before and asked for a pin to where we would be. When I didn’t reply, because somehow I didn’t see it, she assumed that the session wasn’t going ahead. So that left myself and Pete to carry out the session.

We set fewer nets than usual: the T-net set up: one each of 9m, 12m and 18m and then, along the back tree line, two x 18m and 1 x 9m. However, we had a nightmare with the T-net set up: it took us an hour to sort it all out! Cue some pretty ripe language from yours truly. The other reason we set fewer nets, with the temperature scheduled to hit 29^oC, I wanted them to be out of the sun to minimise any prospect of heat stress for the birds. For the same reason, we made sure that the ringing station was well out of the sun for the entire session.

Then we started catching birds. Well, catching is a bit of an exaggeration: we ended up with just 14 birds from nine species! However, for Pete, he got to ring his first ever House Sparrow and, later in the morning, his first Magpie:

So two new for him was joyous, but the reason for the title of this blog piece is that, 20 minutes later, we caught a second! Prior to today we had caught and ringed a total of 11 Magpies since I took on the ringing in the Braydon Forest. We have caught two in a session on two other occasions: the first was in October 2016, on the opposite side of the site, the second was in May 2020, at Blakehill Farm West. In fact, of the 13 we have now caught, nine of them have been caught at Blakehill Farm.

The list for the morning was: Magpie 2; Great Tit (1); Wren 1; Dunnock (1); Robin 1[2](1); Blackbird [2]; Blackcap 1; Goldfinch 1; House Sparrow 1. Totals: 7 adults ringed from 6 species, 4 juveniles ringed from 2 species and 3 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 14 birds processed from 9 species. Not a bad variety from such a small catch.

It was a very pleasant morning to be out. Arriving on site the first bird I saw was a male Stonechat. It is only in the last couple of years since we, and Robin Griffiths and his monitoring team, have found evidence of them breeding at Blakehill Farm.

That was followed by sight of a dozen and more Skylark on the edge of the plateau. During the morning we had Buzzards, Red Kites and a Sparrowhawk taking advantage of the thermals to soar over the plateau area. Also, and the most hopeful sign, a calling Curlew! Hopefully, one day, we will find some well grown chicks!

We had a visit from a lovely elderly couple who were very interested in what we were doing, Fortunately, it coincided with our catching three birds, so we actually had something to show them, explain about the ringing scheme, why we do it and how it benefits our birdlife.

Pete and I shut the nets and took down at 11:30 and were off site soon after midday. It was a small but curiously satisfying session.

I was expecting to be at Webb’s Wood with just myself, Miranda and Laura Friday morning. However, at the last minute, David and Pete wanted to come along and I can never say “No”. So we set an extra 3 x 18m nets but, unfortunately, still ended up with the 30 birds I was expecting. It is that time of year in the woodlands. In another month, as the nestlings fledge and forage through the woods, the numbers will rise significantly.

It was a lovely morning, so I think we all appreciated the sunshine, warmth and lack of breeze. The breeze did get up eventually, but it was after 10:30 when we were all thinking about packing up anyway. Whilst sitting there in between rounds, we could appreciate the sheer volume of bird song, plus a couple of other rather good events. I think the key one was the most enormous flock of Jackdaw flying over the wood heading for Echo Lodge Meadow to the south of our ringing site. It was like a scene from Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. Went on for ages: probably close to 100 if them. Given the stage of the Jackdaws I ringed on Thursday, I did wonder if they were all adults or if there were some recently fledged birds in there. Perhaps mine started breeding later. A little later we had about 20 Carrion Crows fly over in the same direction.

Finally on the Corvid theme: we had the Ravens flying around, cronking as they went, but we also heard this really weird, but loud, shriek on occasion throughout the morning. I came to the conclusion that it had to be a juvenile Raven. It seemed the only logical answer.

Apart from that, we had Muntjac barking all morning: must be their rut.

So to the catch: Treecreeper 1; Blue Tit 2; Great Tit 3(2); Marsh Tit (1); Long-tailed Tit 1; Wren 2(3); Dunnock 1(1); Robin 3(1); Song Thrush 1; Blackcap 5(2); Chiffchaff (1). Totals: 19 birds ringed from 9 species and 11 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 30 birds processed from 11 species.

It was nice to ring another Song Thrush. So far this year we have ringed 17 Song Thrush. The biggest catch we have ever had prior to this in the first five months of the year was 13 back in 2017. Our biggest annual catch was 29 in 2019, hopefully we will pass that this year.

The other thing that stood out was the shear wear and tear on the Blue and Great Tits:

This is what you call “wear and tear” on an the adult Great Tit in the first photo.

Anyway, it was quiet, but a nice morning. It took only a short time to get packed away, with so many of us on hand to do so, and we left site before midday.

I was joined by Max for this morning’s session. Max is a professional ecologist who has just moved to Wiltshire. He is keen to set up a raptor box monitoring group in his local area, so I was happy to give him a taster of what it is like in our area.

We started out at the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust property at Clattinger Farm. Ellie, the northern estates manager, when I contacted her to confirm they were happy for me to do the checking, had suggested that I also have a check on the Swallow activity around the farm buildings.

We checked the Owl box and there was a freshly built Stock Dove nest in situ. No sign of adult or eggs, so I will check it again in a month.

Most of the Swallows were busy nest building in the stables. However, one of the nests contained a recently hatched chick and three warm eggs. Again I will check on that in a couple of weeks.

We went from there to Upper Waterhay to check on our four boxes there. There was worse than a complete blank there last year, with the entire brood of Barn Owls predated between first visit and the return to ring them. The other occupied box last year had three well grown Jackdaw chicks, but they were all dead: probably within two weeks of fledging. No idea what killed them. They looked well-developed, just dead.

This year that box also had nestling Jackdaws in it. We ringed the two that were there. Quite young still, just showing their first body feathers and wing feathers short and in pin. These were very well fed, nice full bellies. Hopefully, when we follow up they will have fledged!

One other box was completely empty, but the last box we checked, although we didn’t find an owl in the box, it had a few pellets and, more interestingly, a couple of dead field mice stored in the box. Hopefully this is the start of a nesting attempt. We will check again in a few weeks, fingers crossed.

From there we went over to the Trust’s Blakehill Farm site, where we have two boxes. It was looking like a very disappointing session, especially when you look at our first session of the year. Our first box was another disaster: someone, for some reason, had removed the access hatch door and thrown it on the floor. The box was completely empty.

So one box to go: the one nearest the farm yard. I was hoping we might have something there: it has been 100% successful since I took over monitoring these boxes in 2017. As we approached the box an adult flew off that was a good sign! When I opened the box, oh my goodness: eight chicks at various stages. The smallest was too small to ring but, by the looks of his bulbous stomach, I expect when we visit again in a month it will be ready to go.

The amazing thing is that I have never had a brood of eight before. In fact, prior to this year I had never ringed more than five Barn Owl chicks in a brood. So far this year we have ringed two broods of seven and, now, one brood of eight. We also have three broods to revisit when they have grown a bit. They were all in the six bird bracket.

Max wanted to take some photos, as references for any future monitoring he gets to do. I had the opportunity to show him many of the features we look out for when processing pulli. Obviously, the standard is to weigh the bird. We also make reference to the growth of their wings. These all fell within the category of feathers short, i.e. coming out of pin but less than one-third of their final length. We measure the length of the exposed feather from the top of the pin on primary feather number 4.

One of the first things we noticed was how the flight feathers grow:

If you look at the feather I am holding, there are two feathers growing out of a single pin. This is how the Barn Owl has its silent flight for hunting over fields. The under feather helps deaden the sound coming from the wings when hunting over the fields.

The next thing I could show him was how you can sex Barn Owls based on their wing plumage:

As you can see, even on this partially grown wing, the underwing black spots identify this as a female owlet. If it were a male, it would look like this:

This was our last stop and very much made up for the previous disappointments. On Monday we are off to check out another seven boxes. We know that one of them definitely has a decent sized brood, as the landowner has been monitoring it via a nest cam. It really looks as if we are going to have our best year so far for Barn Owls. Excitingly, they are nesting so early that second broods are very much a possibility this year!

All photos are courtesy of Max.

The weather forecast was a bit iffy for this morning’s session but on waking this morning it looked clear, and the forecast had changed to rain starting at 2:00pm. My morning started brilliantly: at 5:15 I could hear a Cuckoo calling whilst I was inside the house getting prepared for the morning session. As I left the house to head for site at 5:30 there it was, sitting at the top of the Aspen tree we have in the garden. Purton seems to have a reasonable population each year. I have seen them quite often around the village, but this was the first time I have seen one in my garden. In the event, we heard Cuckoo calling all morning.

I had a biggish team out, we met at 6:00 and set our usual summer period nets but added another ride of 3 x 18m 4-shelf nets to the end of the rides on the main path, in an effort to increase the catch. It didn’t work as well as I would have liked but we had a good session. I was joined by David, Laura, Adam and Pete. Later in the morning, Laura’s friend Gemma joined us and helped us pack away at the end, along with David’s dad, Trevor.

Anyway, it was slow but there was a lot of satisfaction in what we did catch. The main highlight of the morning was this:

This is our first juvenile Long-tailed Tit of the year. The only surprising thing about this bird was that it was on its own, with no sign of a family group. Quite unusual.

It wasn’t a huge catch but we added another two Song Thrush to this month’s total, taking it to 10 so far: five newly fledged and five second calendar year birds, of those: two were males and three females.

One of the slight oddities about the morning were that we did catch a dozen Blue Tits. That is pretty unusual for our woodland sites at this time of year, one or two is usual, until the youngsters fledge. Nine of the dozen were females, all still showing functioning brood patches, as one would expect; all looking terribly worn out and ragged, heads in various stages of baldness, but two of them, and one of the two retrapped Marsh Tits, were undergoing primary feather moulting. That was a surprise to me, as I expect them to undergo primary moult post-breeding: it is an energetic process and, pre-fledging, they need all of their energy for rearing their young.

The list for the morning session was: Nuthatch (1); Treecreeper 1; Blue Tit 7(5); Great Tit 1; Coal Tit (1); Marsh Tit (2); Long-tailed Tit [1}; Wren 1(1); Robin 2; Song Thrush 2; Blackbird 3(1); Blackcap 5. Totals: 22 adults ringed from 8 species, 1 juvenile and 11 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 34 birds processed from 12 species.

We closed the nets and took down at 11:30, processing the last three birds, whilst others in the team started taking down. With the team and David’s dad working on it, it was all done very quickly and we were off site by midday.

In my write up of our session at Lower Moor Farm on Tuesday, 12^th May, I noted that we had a retrapped Cetti’s Warbler, Cettia cetti. What I didn’t realise, until I received a query whilst entering the data into the online record system, as the ring number was not assigned to the West Wilts Ringing Group, that it was what we call a “control”. When I got the notification from the BTO later that day, the benefits of an online system, I was surprised by how far it had travelled.

As a much younger individual, in the early 1980’s I used to travel from Reading to spend the odd weekend at Portland Bill birding. We would go to Radipole Lake in Weymouth as the key place to see and hear Cetti’s Warbler. I saw my first in 1985. I knew they were spreading, as a couple of years later I saw one at the gravel pits to the west of Reading (Pingewood not Theale). However, they are still not renowned for moving around a lot.

Lower Moor Farm is the only place that my team catch Cetti’s. I caught my first in May 2015, having started ringing there in 2013. When I checked with the ringer who had covered the site for a decade or more, up until he gave the site up in 2011, he confirmed that he had never caught one there before. So it was a first for the site. Since then we have caught them in every year, some better than others. We can identify 10 territories between the car park and into our ringing site, just four of them within our area.

Anyway, we retrapped this bird on the 12^th May and the report showed that it was ringed at the bird ringing factory called Icklesham, in the Rye Bay area of East Sussex on the 27th October 2024. It has travelled 201km WNW from where it was ringed in 562 days. I am not pretending that this is any sort of record for the species, the longest movement was 388km from Leighton Moss in Lancashire to my old stomping ground, Farlington Marshes, adjacent to my home city of Portsmouth. However, checking our records, prior to this recapture, the furthest distance any of ours travelled was 79km, most were 3 or 4km from the Cotswold Water Park. Bear in mind that prior to this latest we had only five previous controls.

Anyway, it tickled my fancy and I thought I would write it up!

Normally we would do our midweek session on a Wednesday, but the weather forecast for Wednesday, to and including Friday, is for it to be wet and windy and unsuitable for ringing, so we brought it forward a day. I was joined by Miranda for the session. We met at 6:30 and set 3 net rides: two of 3 x 18m nets and one of 2 x 18m + 1 x 9 m nets. The sun was out but the temperature was 0^oC. As the sun started to warm the site, the westerly breeze got up, and it was incredibly cold until you got out of the breeze. The nets were nicely sheltered, so it was warmer doing rounds than processing the birds. It took until gone 10:00 before the ambient temperature reached what could be called warm!

This was the ringing highlight of our day: our first juvenile Robins of the year. Not just one but three. In the 13 years I have been ringing at Lower Moor Farm, we have only ever ringed a single juvenile earlier, by one day, in 2024. Most of them don’t appear until the last two weeks of the month.

When you add in three juvenile Song Thrush as well in the session, things are looking promising. Out on Mallard Lake we had sightings of the Mute Swan pair with their four cygnets, a female Mallard with a dozen ducklings in tow and, a first for Lower Moor Farm, a pair of Greylag Geese with their goslings!

The list for today was: Treecreeper (1); Wren 1; Dunnock (2); Robin 2[3](1); Song Thrush 1[3]; Blackbird (1); Cetti’s Warbler (1); Blackcap 3(3); Garden Warbler 3(1); Chiffchaff 1(1); Goldcrest (2); Bullfinch 1. Totals: 12 adults ringed from 7 species, 6 juveniles ringed from 2 species and 13 birds retrapped from 9 species, making 31 birds processed from 12 species.

There was a lot going on all over the site: a fabulous morning for Dragonflies! Adjacent to the ringing station is a large oak tree, which was in the sun all morning and it was absolutely alive with Four-spotted Chaser and Downy Emerald Dragonflies.

I had to extract a Downy Emerald that had become entangled in the net. Delighted to say that it came out unscathed:

Whilst we were in between net rounds this rather fabulous Azure Damselfly came and posed on our net bag hanger:

On my last net round around the lower nets I carried out another rescue: this was a more difficult one, but again it was successful:

Talking of immature Four-spotted Chaser, poor quality photograph taken on my phone, but there is a newly emerged immature and, in the red oval, you can see the exuvia.

We had a nice chat with Ellie, the Northern Reserves Estates Manager, and her trainee, Evan, and the volunteer who was working with her (sorry chap, can’t remember your name! Getting old!). Evan came along when taking a break from mowing duties and ringed a couple of birds with us. Both he and Ellie will be joining us to learn some more about ringing in the months to come.

All in all, despite it not being the biggest haul, and the bitterly cold wind for much of the morning, it was a really enjoyable session. We packed up at 11:30, which took rather a long time, because we had to remove a lot of Willow catkins from the nets and, as fast as we were removing them, despite the nets being closed, they were filling up again! I got away from site at about 12:45.

Since the landowner, local waste management firm, Hills, insisted that the Trust, who manage the site on their behalf, remove all of the Ash, to prevent potential accidents for visitors from trees affected by die-back, the bird life there has improved immensely. A key impact has been a much more open woodland and canopy. The fact that we had our largest catches there this winter, and over 23 species recorded in the last year, is testament to the improvement. More on that later.

I was joined this morning by David, Laura, Adam and Pete. We met at 6:00 and set the usual nets, adding a third net to the two adjacent to the ringing station. In total we had 228m of net set. They were open before 7:00 and we started catching straight away. It was an excellent first round: whilst the team were finishing off setting the nets down the central glade, I started opening the nets. There were already birds in. First bird I took out was a Garden Warbler, and then I took out a Blackcap and another two Garden Warblers. This was significant: prior to this session we had never caught more than two in the Firs in a full session, on 29th May 2024. On five other occasions we have caught singles, so three in one session was brilliant. When that finally turned into five, that was outstanding. Before today we had caught seven in the Firs in the period 2019 to 2025, having caught none between 2013 and 2018 inclusive. To nearly double the total to date in one session was a real surprise. Two of those five were females, with well developed brood patches. So hopefully we can look forward to some juveniles in a few weeks time.

The main part of the catch was Blackcap. They were mainly males, but we did have four females, all of which had fully developed brood patches. No doubt feeding their first broods.

The two Blackbirds ringed were newly fledged youngsters. They hadn’t started their post fledging moult yet. Unfortunately, they were both bothered by ticks attached to the side of the gape, in too difficult a position to attempt removal (I am authorised by the BTO to carry out tick removal).

As ever, we did catch a couple of Blue Tits. If anybody wonders jus how hard adult Blue Tits work to rear their broods, have a look at this:

The two we caught were both clearly knackered, this one was the worse of the two.

The list for the session was: Nuthatch 1(1); Blue Tit (2); Great Tit 1(1); Marsh Tit (1); Wren (2); Dunnock 1; Robin (1); Song Thrush 1; Blackbird [2](1); Blackcap 13(2); Garden Warbler 5; Willow Warbler (2); Chaffinch 1. Totals: 23 adults ringed from 7 species, 2 juveniles ringed from 1 species and 13 birds retrapped from 9 species, making 38 birds processed from 13 species.

One interesting thing happened this morning: our ringing tables, equipment, our chairs and we people, were continually having little black bits dropping on to us from the trees above. It took a few minutes to realise: it is clearly a very good breeding season for moths, butterflies and other insects that lay their eggs in the treetops, because it was an absolute bombardment of caterpillar poo!

We kept brushing it off, turn around and there it was again.

Alongside our decent catch for this time of year, we were treated to Green Woodpeckers having a yaffle off from each side of the wood, we were visited by a Great Spotted Woodpecker in the trees above our ringing station. I had a very pleasant 10 minutes watching it hopping up and around the trees close by. The obligatory Raven cronked its way around the treetops, with small flocks of Jackdaw and the odd Carrion Crow flying over. However, perhaps the best sighting of the morning was seven Buzzards, and several Red Kites, taking advantage of the thermals to circle around above the wood and surrounding fields. Like yesterday, when we saw a dozen or more Red Kite whilst out checking Barn Owl boxes in this area, farmer Malcolm and his team were out again today, collecting up the cut grass for silage, which was no doubt what was interesting the raptors.

With the catch dying off after 11:00, we shut the nets and took down starting at 11:30. With the number out, and David’s dad Trevor joining and helping, it was all done and we were off site by 12:15, after a very satisfactory session.