My winter ringing site at Somerford Common is set up in one quarter of a paddock area, a large chunk of which is being managed as a butterfly glade, in concert with Butterfly Conservation, for the benefit of the Marsh Fritillary butterfly (which ties in nicely with the Marsh Tit being their priority bird species in the Braydon Forest), and the area also happens to be an area where Brown Hairstreak butterflies are found and known to be breeding. The paddock is sub-divided into four sections, with one section having its brush mulched every other year on an eight year cycle.
Section 1 is where our feeding station is set up during the winter months: it also happened to be the last section mulched two years ago. On Wednesday I went and topped up the feeding station and saw that section 2 was in the process of being mulched. The noise was significant, and I didn’t think it would be conducive to ringing there on Friday, as I had arranged. However, they did look like they were getting on with it, so I went back on Thursday and was pleased to find that they had finished. I went to check on the feeders and was rather less pleased to find the state of the main path: hence the reason for the punning title to this piece. They had clearly brought some very heavy machinery in through this end of the paddock to collect up the brush. I don’t quite understand why: there was an access point from the main carpark to the north of section 2. Whatever they brought through left astonishingly deep ruts and massive pools of mud and water, exacerbated by heavy overnight rain last night.
It doesn’t look too bad from here but:
The whole area was like that, apart from immediately around our feeding station and our ringing station. That was still pretty mucky but solid enough to set up the tables and chairs on. Anyway, I warned everybody to bring wellies and be prepared to get very mucky. I was joined by Rosie, Miranda, Teresa & Andy, Laura with Adam & Daniel and, coming for a taster session for the first time, Sarah. We met at 7:00 and set the usual six nets. Birds started arriving before we had the nets fully open: we are going to have to go to 6:30 starts from next week!
It was a good, regular catch. Unfortunately, not a lot of variety. As it is the time of year when we most often see and catch them, I had been hoping that we might see the odd Lesser Redpoll or Siskin, but we didn’t. Well, not until after we had closed the nets and taken down at the end of the session when a small flock of Siskin flew through! Next time!!! We did have a decent haul of Chaffinches and a Nuthatch but, apart from that, and a retrapped Robin as the last bird out of the nets, it was Paridae all the way!
The list for the day was: Nuthatch 1; Blue Tit 22(5); Great Tit 4(13); Coal Tit 3(1); Marsh Tit (3); Robin (1); Chaffinch 4(1). Totals: 34 birds ringed from 5 species and 24 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 58 birds processed from 7 species.
It was lovely to have five Chaffinches, with none showing any signs of disease of their legs, either mites or FPV. Four of the Chaffinch were males, with a solitary female.
Unfortunately, the breeze got up quite strongly at 10:30 and, in the interests of bird safety, we shut the nets and took down. Everything was cleared away and we were ready to leave site by 11:30. Sarah, Andy, Teresa and I started chatting and we finally left at just gone midday. It was a good session.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 