Back to Somerford Common today for the sixth of ten winter constant effort site visits. The same nets were set in the same places as usual. I only got to top up the feeders on Tuesday morning, doing all four of my Forestry England sites, so was expecting there to be some fall off compared with the previous sessions but it turned out okay despite that.
I was joined for the morning by Rosie, Justine, Teresa and Andy. Rosie was doing her usual: helping set up and ringing a few birds before heading off to work. We met at 7:30 and had the nets open by 8:15 and started catching straight away. As expected, it was both Blue and Great Tit heavy, but we did end up with a decent variety.
We had flocks of both Redwing and Fieldfare flying around the site: only one Redwing and no Fieldfare deigned to drop in. The Great Spotted Woodpecker mini-glut continued, with our fourth for the year ringed and another retrapped. That my team has ringed as many in this month as we did in the entirety of last year is quite remarkable (to misquote the late, great David Coleman). Making a nice return to the catch was a solitary Lesser Redpoll. I am so used to them coming in small flocks but the last two captures, both at Somerford Common, have been singles.
The list for the day was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1(1); Nuthatch (1); Blue Tit 3(8); Great Tit 2(9); Coal Tit (5); Marsh Tit (3); Robin 1(2); Redwing 1; Chaffinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 1; Bullfinch 1. Totals: 11 birds ringed from 8 species and 29 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 40 birds processed from 11 species. Comparing to previous sessions, on the 6th January we had 52 birds from 9 species (21(31)); on Boxing Day it was 49 from 9 (27(22)), 22nd November was 46 from 10 (23(23)). Basically, very similar catches throughout. The only one that was different was the very first on the 11th November: 81 birds from 11 species (55(26)). However, the number of retrapped birds was the most consistent factor.
The weather was a bit weird: not as cold as we had expected at the start, which was good thing. If it had been sub-zero we wouldn’t have opened the nets but it felt much better than that: probably because there was a complete lack of wind. At odd times throughout the morning the temperature would suddenly drop for 10 minutes or so before recovering back to how it had started. This coincided with a few light gusts of a northerly wind. At 11:30 we did a final round, processed the last few birds and closed the nets. We did get one last bird just after the nets were closed, just to hold us up a bit. After processing that, taking down and packing everything away, we got away from the site just after 12:30.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 