With the way that catches have been going at Lower Moor Farm recently: small catches, the bulk of them early in the morning, and then just the odd bird thereafter, I was more than a little concerned about the likelihood of a successful ringing demonstration today, particularly as it had a 9:00 start time. I was running it in conjunction with our Constant Effort Site session 5, so we were on site before 5:30, with the first nets open by then. In order to try and increase the catch we did set up an extra net set. In the event, it picked up just a single bird: the last of the session and worth the effort. More of that later.
After a week of high temperatures and dry weather the Met Office and Meteo / BBC were forecasting similar temperatures to Friday (26oC) and less than a 5% chance of rain. I took a large garden umbrella to give us protection from the forecast hot sun. As I arrived on site I noticed a few rain spots on my windscreen. I didn’t panic.
I was joined by Rosie, Miranda, David, Laura and Adam. A special shout out to Laura and Adam for coming to site at 5:30 knowing that they would not be able to stay once the demonstration started (as ever, it was already sold out). Adam first, and then Laura, did me the great favour of cutting a new net ride for the extra nets that I wanted to put up. As he had played his part, Adam got to ring several birds this morning before they wandered off just before 8:00 – and just before the heavens opened. Throughout the morning there had been a few short, very light showers, which didn’t require us to shut the nets. But at 8:00 we had a downpour! We shut the nets and huddled under the umbrella waiting for it to stop. At 8:30 Robin Griffiths, from the Swindon Wildlife Group, on whose behalf we were running the demonstration, arrived, swathed in waterproofs and looking seriously concerned. Robin had to go back to the car park to meet with the attendees arriving for 9:00. As it was still chucking it down, at 8:55 I decided to go over to them and cancel the event (no mobile phone signal on the site). As I was walking over, the rain began to ease and, by the time I had got there, it had stopped! Whilst we chatted and agreed to give it a go, the sun came out, which was a clincher.
Between opening the nets and the start of the demonstration, we had a decent haul of birds: massively helped by a family group of three newly fledged Great Tits and a larger family group of Dad Blue Tit plus seven of his offspring. A nice early surprise was our first juvenile Wren of the year! In fact, by the start of the demonstration we had processed more birds than in any one of the previous four sessions! Obviously I was worried about the usual falling away of the numbers, but I need not have worried as we continued to catch throughout the morning.
The attendees were treated to a procession of different species: Wren, Blackbird, Long-tailed Tit, Dunnock, Robin, Garden Warbler and, finally:
The star bird of the morning! Thanks to Robin Griffiths for the photo, I was a bit busy holding on to her! A female, as you can tell from the completely black malar stripe. She also had a well-developed, well-veined brood patch which also showed a few small eczema type patches. Hopefully that won’t compromise her brooding ability! Another lovely bird to catch was our first Garden Warbler juvenile of the year.
The list for the session was: Green Woodpecker 1; Blue Tit 1[8]; Great Tit [3]; Long-tailed Tit [5]; Wren 2[1](2); Dunnock 1[1](1); Robin [3]; Song Thrush (2); Blackbird 1(1); Cetti’s Warbler (1); Blackcap 1(2); Garden Warbler [1]. Totals: 7 adults ringed from 6 species, 22 juveniles ringed from 7 species and 9 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 38 birds processed from 12 species.
If I am surprised at all, it was that there were no Chiffchaff in the catch whatsoever: we could hear them pretty much everywhere but they never hit the nets. Anyway, we ran the session until midday before closing the nets and taking down.
I got a lot of thanks from the audience as they left, which is always gratifying, but I did make a point of asking them to thank the team who did all of the grunt work that made the demonstration possible. From me, a big thanks to my entire team for their help today. They did all of the processing before the demonstration began, but very little more than monitor the nets and extract birds for the rest of the morning. Then, also with thanks to David’s dad, Trevor, we got the nets down and everything packed away just before 13:00.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 