West Wilts Ringing Group Review: 2017

It was a significant year for the West Wilts Ringing Group. The year started on a sad note, with Mike Hamzij deciding that he would bring his ringing career to a close. Mike has done sterling work over the years, both as secretary to our ringing group and as the ringing recorder for Wiltshire; both roles he has now passed on to others, with Phil Deacon taking over as Wiltshire ringing recorder and me taking on the role of WWRG secretary.  I am sure that everybody would like to thank Mike for his hard work and for leaving both roles in such good shape.

There has been a welcome expansion of activity within the group this year, as Andy Palmer, Andrew Bray and Jonny Cooper, having joined Dave Hanham as C-permit holders, started developing their own sites and independent ringing activities, alongside the existing activities of the team.

Ian and his team and me and my team carried out our CES projects at Cowleaze and Lower Moor Farm.  After over 30 years of sustained activity, this will be the last CES season at Cowleaze.  It has generated a wealth of data revealing the dramatic changes in fortune for some of our most iconic woodland birds.  There is a report on the work at Cowleaze in Hobby from last year.

The results for the year were:

When referring to sightings, unless otherwise stated, the statistics date from 1^st January 2013, when the North Wilts Ringing Group split from the WWRG.  This is appropriate, as many of the sites managed by the NWRG were the migrant hot-spot sites, in which the majority of the high profile catches were made.  We have subsequently added Blakehill and New Zealand Farms as potential migration sites, and they are developing nicely.

Andy Palmer started the year with his first Firecrest at his Job’s Mill site at Crockerton in early March.  This was only the third Firecrest ringed by the group in recent times  This was followed a week later by my first Black Redstart, at my interesting site at Tedworth House, the first for the group since 2008.  At the end of March, with the help of Rob Hayden and his tree-climbing friend, Paul Thompson, we ringed four Raven chicks, also at Tedworth House.  Paul heroically climbed 130’ up a Cedar tree to get to the nest for us.  These are the only Ravens ever ringed by the group in Wiltshire.

For the third year running, Ian and Andy devoted much of their summer working with the RSPB on the Wessex Stone-curlew project.  Ian, having initially trained the RSPB team and volunteers on how to ring these fabulous birds, and Andy have monitored and ringed chicks every year since. I was delighted to have the opportunity, with Richard Pike, to visit one site with them and even got the chance of a lifetime to ring a Stone-curlew chick.  This was my 100th species ringed in the UK.

My team agreed to take over the surveying of Barn Owl nest boxes in the north of the county in 2017.  We didn’t achieve as much as we would have liked, but we learned a lot from the experience and fully intend to get better coverage in 2018.  In the event, we surveyed 15 boxes, of which nine held owls with signs of breeding.  We ringed eight young from three nest boxes and couldn’t ring three broods, as they had already fledged. The others held roosting adults.

Andy continued his run of good birds, with his first three Grasshopper Warblers ringed at his Battlesbury site in the autumn. Battlesbury Bowl on SPTA West was developed by Rob Turner and continues to be a productive site in late summer and autumn. This is also when the New Zealand farm site is most productive and both can be feeding and roost sites for Scandinavian thrushes in autumn.

The Marsh Tit colour ringing project in the Braydon Forest had its best ever year: with 28 birds ringed in the woodland sites: a 30% increase on last year and continuing a general trend of increase throughout each of the sites.  Hopefully this trend will continue.  Interestingly, the sites showing the greatest increase are Webb’s Wood and Red Lodge. These are both primarily beechwoods which have had significant thinning operations carried out by the Forestry Commission in the last two years.

There were a couple of interesting recoveries.  On 1^st September a Reed Warbler was recovered at Lower Moor Farm exactly one year, to the day, after it was ringed at Coimbra in Portugal.  In October Rob Turner decided to combine two of his passions: golf and ringing by setting up a ringing station at Erlestoke Golf Club.  He was rewarded with a Blue Tit, ringed originally at Hannington on 25^th March this year, recovered at Erlestoke on 6^th November: a distance of 45km in 226 days.   We have had recoveries of Blue Tits before flying 8 to 10km. I have had Blue Tits ringed in the Cotswold Water Park recovered at Somerford Common or Ravensroost Woods but 45km is a big distance for a resident, essentially non-migratory bird.

All in all, it was a good year for the group. We had a lot going on, the teams are developing well, and the value of our projects to the conservation of vulnerable species continues to prove itself.  Here’s to more in 2018.

(Apologies for the table formatting,  I cannot find a way of reducing the line width. Once I do, I will update it to something more readable.)