With the forecast being for it being windy with the chance of the odd shower we headed for the relatively sheltered confines of Ravensroost Wood. It can be gusting up to more than 30 mph outside the wood without it impacting on our net rides. Our feeding station area has just been coppiced, so the bird table is sitting out in a big clear space and pretty useless for bird catching. Nevertheless, we put a triangle of nets around it, just in case. It only caught a couple of birds so the table will be moved before the next session. I had set up a couple of peanut feeders in the ride opposite, and they did their job.
I was joined by Ellie, Jonny and Steph for the session. Early on we set lures for Redwing and Lesser Redpoll. There are often good numbers of them in and around the wood. Today we only caught the one Redwing but we did catch our first two Lesser Redpoll of the year:
The weather was better than forecast between 6:30 and 11:00 but almost on the stroke of 11:00 the blue sky blackened and the heavens opened. We got soaked but, fortunately, no birds were in the nets at the time and we got them closed and taken down in record time.
It was a reasonable catch under the circumstances: Nuthatch (2); Blue Tit 9(4); Great Tit 2(3); Coal Tit 3(3); Marsh Tit (1); Long-tailed Tit 4(1); Wren 1(1); Robin (1); Redwing 1; Blackbird 1; Goldcrest 3; Chaffinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 2. Totals: 27 birds ringed from 10 species; 16 birds recaptured from 8 species, making 43 birds processed from 13 species.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 