I was joined for the session today by Teresa, Andy and Justine. We met at 7:30 and set the same nets as last time, adjacent to the feeding stations. We did add one extra 18m net to the east of the ringing station, on the main path. It only caught one bird: our only Goldcrest of the session. Talking of feeding stations, I went to all of my sites yesterday to top up the bird feeders I put up during the winter. I provide a premium seed mix (no wheat, oats or barley) and peanuts. Arriving at Red Lodge I found that some vandal has cut through the chain holding the padlock in place. It is totally mindless: it still doesn’t give them vehicular access, presumably for some fly-tipping. At least, unlike last time, they haven’t (yet?) taken a chainsaw to the gate supports to get in.
We had all of the nets open by 8:30 and were extracting birds straight away. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and again and expecting a different result. Last time we were there, on the 15th December, we caught 61 birds from 8 species: today we caught 62 birds from 8 species! This is how they compared:
So, a little variation in the species: Great Spotted Woodpecker and Nuthatch this time, Long-tailed Tit and Treecreeper last time. One similarity between this session and the session before last, the 15th November, was catching another Great Tit with well-developed avian pox. This was definitely a different bird: there were just two pustules, a huge one behind the right eye and a large one in front of that eye. We didn’t ring it. It has been so many years since I have seen it in my local birds, and now two in three sessions at the same site. I wonder why.
Although the numbers of Blue and Great Tits are similar, it is quite surprising how little overlap there was in the actual individuals caught. Take Blue Tits: only four of the Blue Tits caught today were caught in the previous session and they were all ringed in that session. Amazingly, that is exactly the same for the Great Tits: four recaptured today were ringed at the last session. None of the other Blue or Great Tits caught today were caught in the previous session. The two Coal Tits caught today were the two ringed at the 15th December session. So, the 123 birds caught cross two sessions comprised 113 individuals.
The Chaffinch story continues to be a bit depressing: we did catch eight of them, but three were showing signs of FPV, one very badly (it’s leg looked like a particularly spiky pineapple, although the other leg was absolutely clean).
Teresa got to extract and process her first Great Spotted Woodpecker – and she has the wounds to prove it.
Female Great Spotted Woodpecker, Dendrocopos major (photo courtesy Teresa Farr)
Justine, on only her third session out with us, ringed her first Coal Tit and Nuthatch.
Although the ambient temperature was okay, especially when the sun broke through on occasion, there was a very cold northerly wind and we began to get very chilled, so we cleared and shut the nets at 10:45, ready to take down. Unfortunately, whilst we were processing the few birds we had taken out, another three decided to get themselves entangled in the closed nets! I mean, why do they fly into a solid black line in broad daylight? So I extracted those and we got on with taking down. As I was just finishing my second net Andy came down to say that another two had landed in the closed nets! Teresa extracted them whilst we continued to remove the nets. It shows how well her extracting is developing: taking birds out of closed nets is not something we do for fun. In the end, we didn’t get away until just before midday.
It was a decent session, reasonable catch and plenty of time for training on ageing and moult patterns in juvenile birds: primarily looking at great coverts, primary coverts, alula and tail.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 