With filthy weather forecast for the next week, starting from Saturday afternoon, I decided to try a session at Somerford Common this morning. I knew it wasn’t somewhere I ring often in September, but I didn’t realise that this would only be my second September visit since I started working there in 2013.
I was joined for the session by the same team as yesterday. Today Rosie didn’t have to leave for work until 9:00, and s0 she managed to get to process some birds after helping set the nets. It was a 6:30 start again and we set the nets at the southern end of the site:
One extremely keen juvenile Great Tit decided to get itself into net ride 4 before we had opened them. Fortunately it didn’t wrap itself in lots of net and was easily extracted. Once the nets were open, at just before 8:00, taking longer than expected thanks to some rather annoying twists and knots in the netting, I set sound lures for a range of migrant species on each of the net rides. The first round proper produced a single bird: a Wren, but after that things did improve. However, as well as some Blackcaps and a Robin, round two did produce the worst Wren I have ever had to extract. Somehow it had managed to crawl through several of the net cells, taking more netting with it, and getting royally enmeshed in netting as a result. In the end, with the bird’s welfare being paramount, I had to cut several strands on a brand new net (a mere £107 investment) to extract the bird. The Wren was perfectly fine, they are tough little birds, and flew off strongly after it had been ringed and processed.
We were regularly catching birds, mainly Blackcaps, alongside the occasional Robin and Blue Tit, and a solitary Goldcrest. However, at 10:00 I decided to change the lure on ride 4 to Goldcrest. The response was almost instantaneous. Over the next 30 minutes we extracted another nine Goldcrests from that net, but Andy, who was monitoring the ringing station and our possessions as most of the nets were out of sight from the ringing station, did tell us that there were at least another ten that had bounced off the nets! I never set lures for Goldcrest in inclement weather, and never before 10:00 whatever the weather, to ensure that they have had plenty of time to feed before being targetted. There were two adults (a male and a female) with the rest juveniles. I am not sure whether this was a fall of early arriving migrants or local resident birds. That there were so many in a flock, I suspect they were migrant birds.
Juvenile Female Goldcrest, Regulus regulus
The list for the day was: Blue Tit [4](1); Great Tit [2]; Wren 1[2]; Robin [2]; Blackcap 1[7]; Goldcrest 2[8]. Totals: 4 adults ringed from 3 species, 25 juveniles ringed from 6 species and 1 bird retrapped, making 30 birds processed from 6 species.
With rain set to arrive at midday we decided to make the 11:00 round the last one. In the event, the nets were empty, and we closed and took them down as we went. That meant we were away from site before midday. Hopefully the weather forecast will change and there will be a chance to get out next week but it doesn’t look hopeful!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 