With the weather forecast for the weekend being rain, rain and more rain, I decided to move Saturday’s scheduled session back to Friday. Fortunately, David, Teresa and Rosie could come along to ring, and Andy to help set up, take down and scribe, as usual. Rosie was actually working at LMF today, so could stay pretty much up to 9:00, before setting off to do some cleaning and maintenance on the bird hides.
We set the following nets:
Rosie had noticed that there were large flocks of both Redwing and Fieldfare around the site. Fieldfare are notoriously difficult to catch, unless you happen to have a well-established orchard with plenty of windfall apples to set your nets in. Redwing are a lot easier to catch, particularly with the use of a superb sound lure that migrated to the UK from Latvia a good few years ago, and is known colloquially (okay, by me) as the “Latvian Love Song”. We did see a lot of Fieldfare over the course of the morning, all flying overhead. There weren’t so many Redwing around, but we di catch a few.
I set the Mipit triangle as at our last Lower Moor Farm session, on the 30th September, we managed to catch eight of them. Although we did see one of them sitting atop one of the poles, we didn’t catch it. In fact, net rides 2 and 3 did not catch a single bird.
The first round proper was rather good: we had 22 birds from eight species. The highlight had to be our first Kingfisher since September 2022. It was a juvenile female:
Juvenile Kingfisher, Alcedo atthis (photo courtesy of Teresa)
She was happy to sit on the hand for a short while before flying off strongly. Andy clearly has warm hands!
The second catch was a decent 16 birds, but then the catch died away to just three or four birds every other round. Mind, that did give us plenty of time to appreciate the Otter that was swimming around on Mallard Lake, giving excellent views from the side of the lake adjacent to our ringing station.
The list for the day was: Kingfisher 1; Treecreeper (2); Blue Tit 6(2); Great Tit 2(1); Long-tailed Tit 13(9); Wren 1(2); Dunnock 1(2); Robin (2); Redwing 4; Song Thrush 1; Goldcrest 6; Bullfinch 1. Totals: 36 birds ringed from 10 species and 20 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 56 birds processed from 12 species.
As you can see from the list, we had a really good catch of 22 Long-tailed Tits. Both the 13 ringed and the 9 retraps are the best ever in a single session since I started working there. Interestingly, the previous best was the previously mentioned session on the 30th September 2023. Interestingly, all of the retrapped birds were ringed as juveniles earlier this year.
As things had died off significantly after 10:30, we started taking down at 11:15. Shutting and taking down rides 2 and 3 first, leaving the others to catch, processing what was caught in the remaining open rides, shutting and taking down ride 1, whilst leaving 4 and 5 open until the end. We had everything packed away by 12:50 and everybody left. I finished tidying up, got into the car – and it wouldn’t start! Flat battery! Of course, getting a phone signal at Lower Moor Farm is a nightmare. I walked out of the site until I could get a signal and get my friendly local mobile mechanic to come and get me started. He did, and then me and his little helper had to push his van off the grass as its wheels just kept spinning and it couldn’t get traction! I tend to forget that my troublesome vehicle is a 4-wheel drive with hybrid tyres. Anyway, I got away at 13:45!
It was an excellent session, car problems notwithstanding!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 