Today I was getting together with a friend, and one-time ringing trainee, Annie for a chat and a bit of ringing. Annie had to step back from her training for very valid reasons (motherhood (twice) and pressures of work) but will, hopefully, be able to take it up again in the future. Anyway, I don’t need an excuse to meet up with her, she’s a good friend. The only other member of the team I invited was Rosie, as I knew she would help us set up and then head off for work, leaving us to natter.
I chose to go to Somerford Common West, as it is usually one of my quieter sites and should give us plenty of opportunity to catch up and chat. We met at 7:30 (ish) and set up the following nets:
As Robbie Burns put it: “The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry!”. Although we held off setting up the nets by the feeding station until last, and didn’t start opening the nets until all were up, we had birds start hitting them straight away. For once Rosie got to process a reasonable number of birds before heading off to work, to take down some trees that have become dangerous following the astonishing winds we had last week. The star bird she got to ring before leaving was a juvenile female Great Spotted Woodpecker. This made up for last Saturday where she extracted her first but had to leave before processing it. This is the first time that I can remember us catching and ringing at last one Great Spotted Woodpecker in three consecutive sessions! To put that into perspective: we ringed only four of them in 2023! However, on checking my records I found that back in February / March 2017 we actually ringed nine of them in five successive Braydon Forest sessions, with four of them in one session at Webb’s Wood. How did I forget that?
As we were processing the first tranche of 11 birds we couldn’t help but notice the birds flying into ride one. It was busy. Annie and I set about extracting the birds as efficiently as we could, and we closed each net ride as we emptied it, as we decided that we would have more than enough birds for one session. It was hard work and way beyond anything that we were expecting. That second round yielded 71 birds! So much for a nice quiet and relaxed session!
So why Somerford Blues? We processed 43 Blue Tits this morning! Anyone who has ever ringed Blue Tits will understand just what that means: enough to give anyone the blues! (Not to mention very sore fingers!).
The actual list for this morning was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Treecreeper (1); Blue Tit 40(3); Great Tit 9(6); Coal Tit 5(7); Marsh Tit 2(3); Long-tailed Tit 1; Goldcrest 4. Totals: 62 birds ringed from 7 species, 20 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 82 birds processed from 8 species.
It was great to get our first two Marsh Tits of the year ringed, and another three recaptured.
Once we had extracted and processed everything it was gone lunchtime, once we had taken down and packed away all of the kit, it well after lunchtime. It was a very busy session. If we hadn’t closed the nets when we did we would probably have smashed the 100 bird mark. Given that our average catch at that site, over eight previous sessions, was just under 28 birds, that is a phenomenal result.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 