A pretty decent month, on a par with the last three years. It could have been better if my car hadn’t decided to pack up on me at the beginning of the last week of the month and, after it was fixed, the weather hadn’t then decided to make sure that the last two days were a virtual washout / blowout.
The pullus count should start to increase over the next couple of months (and years). Jonny has had the endorsement for monitoring and ringing hole / box nesting pulli to his licence, after the big catch in May. Subsequently he has taken over a tranche of Tree Sparrow nest boxes for monitoring now and into the future. We are also working to get Swallow added to his endorsement. I still have a number of Barn Owl boxes to check. The Barn Owl situation is a bit different to previous years: although there was some intra-brood cannibalism last year in two of the boxes, in each case it was just one of the young. What was surprising about that was that there was a glut of voles last year and the cannibalism happened in August. This year it has started already in two boxes which, upon initial checking, had four chicks each and, by the time they were ready for ringing, had only two large and healthy chicks in the box. I have seen adults hunting in the daytime: which is never a good sign. I am not taking any risks on putting rings on food so am not ringing any chicks until they are growing primary feathers. In terms of pulli, last month’s report was missing two Stone-curlew that Andy had ringed and overlooked when finalising his data for the month. It will only be a light flogging!
Although we did catch fewer birds from fewer species because these comprised fewer full ringing sessions the actual catch sizes were slightly up. As my catches are resolutely staying below the 30 bird mark this is largely down to some quite astonishing catches at some of Jonny’s sites. Langford Lakes is always strong at this time of year but two of his farmland sites and one woodland site are providing really good catches: if only some of my Braydon Forest sites were performing that well! (Yes, I am jealous.)
Compared to last year, missing from the list of species caught (excluding pulli) are Canada Goose, Grey Wagtail, Meadow Pipit, Siskin, Sparrowhawk, Stock Dove, Stonechat and Woodpigeon. Added to the list are Barn Owl, Carrion Crow, Collared Dove and Jay, One of the Barn Owls and the two Carrion Crows were rehabilitation birds at Oak & Furrows. The other two Barn Owls were a male caught in one box with a solitary egg: possibly an early nest, we will find out when it is checked again. The second was a female caught leaving the box which contained one chick large enough to ring and two others to be ringed in a couple of weeks time.
As a result of this catch we have had our best ever second quarter since the group restructured in January 2013, and just my car and Saturday’s weather prevented it from being our best ever first half year since then:
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 