Having seen a forecast for a calm day, starting misty but clearing away to blue skies by 10:00, I decided to have a session in the fields front and back of the Whitworth building at the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust reserve at Blakehill Farm. It is only accessible when the weather is virtually wind free, so I take the opportunity when it arises. As ever, the forecast turned out to be somewhat less accurate than one would have hoped. The key issue was the mist, which started out as freezing fog at 6:00 when I left home, with a temperature of -2oC, which transmogrified into a thick mist by 9:00 and didn’t clear until gone 11:00. In addition, the little breeze that was forecast was supposed to be coming from the SSE, so I set my nets accordingly. Needless to say, when the breeze did get up it came from the NW, so I had a pleasant time extracting various bits of net from a barbed wire fence.
I was joined by Rosie, Miranda, Teresa and Andy, We met on site at 6:30 to find that my favourite hedgerow had been severely cut back. Unfortunately, the generator that supplied power to the Whitworth building had failed (it has been dying for more years than I care to remember) and, to provide power to the building, a power cable had to be laid from the farm buildings to the Whitworth. This necessitated the fairly radical scalping of the hedgerow running between them. On the positive side, it has been nicely laid and will grow back stronger, thicker and better than it was. All that apart, we had a pretty reasonable session.
We set the following nets:
On a whim, I decided to set up a Mipit triangle, to see if there were still any around the site, after last month’s surprise catch. All nets had lures in place for a medley of different species possible at this site, apart from the Mipit triangle which, naturally, just had Meadow Pipit playing.
The first bird out of the net wasn’t until 8:00, and it was a retrapped Blue Tit, ringed last year. Rosie processed that and helped extract the little fall of our second round, but then had to leave for work before processing any other birds. She really is a selfless star! That second catch of the day, 45 minutes later, was another Blue Tit. I should say, we had checked the nets in between and drawn a blank. Mind, this Blue Tit was accompanied by five Wrens, a Goldcrest and a Great Tit. This Blue Tit was also a retrapped bird: and that was the last retrap and the last Blue Tit of the morning.
I am sure it was because of the weather, but there wasn’t much movement until gone 10:00 and even then it wasn’t exactly busy. The mist kept looking like it was thinning, but then it would thicken again. As a result, our rounds after the second were one bird here and one bird there, with the exception of a small flock of four Long-tailed Tits at 10:25, accompanied with a sixth Wren for the morning. The previous largest number of Wrens ringed at this site was four back in October 2017. Our biggest ever catch was of nine, ringed in Webb’s Wood in August 2018. We have had a couple of other sixes and a seven, but they were all catches in the post-breeding flush of Autumn, so this was a notable catch.
We decided that we would close the nets at 11:15, but caught a Goldcrest, which we thought it best to process and release before closing them. I don’t like keeping Goldcrests waiting when the weather is cold, even though it was beginning to warm up I prefer not to keep them hanging around. When you only weigh 5g you don’t have a lot of fat to insulate you from the cold. Delightfully, this Goldcrest had a 50mm wing length and weighed exactly 5g. It is the only species where I get this 10:1 ratio. It always makes me smile when we find it. So then we went back at 11:30 to shut up the nets: only to find a pair of Chaffinch in net 2. I am comfortable in calling them a pair: caught in the same net, within a metre of each other. They were processed and then released simultaneously, and they flew off together. We then went and took down the nets, leaving the Mipit triangle until last.
We did have a couple of Meadow Pipits into the triangle at 10:30 – but they escaped. However, whilst Andy and I were finishing taking down the main nets, Teresa and Miranda noticed a few more Meadow Pipits in and around the triangle. They gave it a bit of a rush and we finished the morning with a very satisfying catch of three Meadow Pipits: one for each of us to ring (Andy doesn’t ring). These are the first three that we have caught on this part of the farm, i.e. not out on the plateau, and the only other time we have caught them in March at any of my sites was two of them on the plateau in 2021. Very pleasing! We then took down the Mipit triangle and were away from site by 12:30.
Meadow Pipit, Anthus pratensis (photo courtesy of Teresa)
The list for the morning was: Blue Tit (2); Great Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit 4; Wren 6; Meadow Pipit 3; Blackbird 2; Goldcrest 2; Chaffinch 2. Totals: 21 birds ringed from 7 species and 2 birds retrapped from 1 species, making 23 birds processed from 8 species.
As well as the birds processed, we had a mammalian treat as well when a Weasel poked its head out from the hedgerow where we were setting up net set 3! At least, Rosie did, as she was the only one who saw it, but that makes up for her dipping out on the Stoat at Somerford Common last Wednesday. We also saw a Hare on a couple of occasions early on in the session.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 