Brown’s Farm sits at the top of Postern Hill, south of Marlborough. It is the least sheltered of my sites and can only be ringed when the weather is expected to be more or less flat calm. The forecast was for it to become breezy as the morning wore on but I decided to take a risk on a session, as the results from my two Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) visits have been very encouraging, The wind was forecast to come from the north, with nothing to block or mitigate its passage over the Marlborough Downs, so net positioning was important. One of the key things about Brown’s Farm is the fantastic hedgerows they have surrounding the fields. These hedgerows are primarily hawthorn and blackthorn kept trimmed to just above head height and threaded throughout with dog rose, bramble and many other species of wild plant. As well as that, there are plenty of weedy, seedy edges to the fields, as you can see from the photograph below.
This enabled us to set some nets which were a little sheltered from the breeze. I was joined by Jonny Cooper and Henny Lowth (my latest volunteer and, yes, that is spelt as she spells it). The wind did get up earlier than I was expecting and we did have to pack up early, as the wind became untenable at about 9:30. By then we had already caught over 50 birds from a decent selection of species.
It was a good diverse catch: Blue Tit 1[8]; Dunnock 2[3]; Blackbird [1]; Blackcap [1]; Garden Warbler [1]; Whitethroat [1]; Chiffchaff [3]; Chaffinch 2; Linnet 4; House Sparrow 6[12](1); Yellowhammer 3[3](1). 18 adults ringed from 6 species, 33 juveniles ringed from 9 species and 2 retraps from 2 species, making 53 birds processed from 11 species. The only disappointments were that we didn’t catch any juvenile Linnet or Chaffinch, and that there was no sign of the Yellow Wagtail seen on my last BBS visit.]
However, it was lovely to get our first juvenile Yellowhammers of the year:
The surprise catch of the morning was a juvenile Garden Warbler. We catch them regularly at Lower Moor Farm and the Ravensroost complex but this is miles away from what I think of as their normal habitat: scrub and woodland edges. Instead it was on an arable farm with fields full of wheat, barley, oats, oil-seed rape and maize, a couple of horse paddocks and the aforementioned fabulous treeless blackthorn / hawthorn hedgerows with weedy seedy edges to the fields. It was a juvenile so I expect that it was dispersing from more suitable habitat: perhaps the water meadows along the river Kennet running through Marlborough.
All in all a very satisfying session. Henny, on only her second outing with us, has already shown that she can extract birds with enough care to bode well for her future as a bird ringer.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 