I had planned a solo trip to Ravensroost Wood this morning. Unfortunately, due to my wife becoming ill, being a dutiful husband, I changed tack. I had decided just to abandon the idea and try and finish my Lower Moor Farm report for the Wildlife Trust but, whilst getting breakfast this morning, looking out at the bird feeders, I had the unpleasant site of a Grey Squirrel helping itself to the birds’ food. Clearly it had found a way around the baffle on the pole. I drove it off but 10 minutes later it was back. This time I watched as it used my storm-furled net to leap across to the feeding station. I decided to take down the nets to remove its launch pad. On going out to take them down, I noticed that the first broods of the neighbourhood Starlings had fledged. They were in all of the trees surrounding the garden and the neighbours’ gardens. So, instead of taking the nets down, at about 9:45, I opened them in the hope of catching a couple of Starlings.
Funnily enough, despite their numbers around and about, the first bird into the net was a Woodpigeon. In my ringing career I have ringed 28 Woodpigeons: 24 of them have been caught and processed in my garden. I am always astonished at how strong they are: a real couple of hands full. This one was a second year female. I love them: they can poop on my car whenever they want to! It will clean! Alongside that was a second year male Blackbird.
Over the next hour I took at least one bird out every 10 minutes: but just the one Starling. So I decided to do a bit to attract them in: not sound lures, they have been put away until the end of the breeding season, but a rather large mound of mealworms, a few additional fat balls and filled the coconut shell with minced peanuts and lard. It took a couple of hours but, eventually, they arrived. The first three that I caught escaped the nets as I approached, much to my frustration. I realised that there was too little pocket in the nets, so I adjusted them and, within 15 minutes, I had my first two juvenile Starlings of the year, plus an adult.
Juvenile Starling, Sturnus vulgaris
Talking of Starlings, like with Woodpigeons, the vast bulk of my catch of this species has been my back garden. I have processed 250 of them since I started as a trainee in 2009. Of those, 5 pre-dated my semi-independent / independent ringing. Of the remaining 245, 229 have been processed in my garden.
As usual, I was catching the odd Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Robin and Dunnock. I did catch a retrapped Blue Tit: a female that I ringed as a second year bird in the garden in April 2018. That makes it over seven years old! The oldest known from date of ringing, is just under nine years, so it is quite a venerable bird. It has been caught multiple times in my garden, despite the fact that I don’t provide nest boxes for titmice.
The list for the session was: Woodpigeon 1; Blue Tit (1); Dunnock 1; Robin 2; Blackbird 1; Starling 5(1); Goldfinch 3; Greenfinch 3. Totals: 16 birds ringed from 7 species, 2 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 18 birds processed from 8 species.
At 14:15 I closed the nets and, after stopping for tea and sticky toffee cake, took them down and packed them away. This was to give the birds a few hours of feeding without interference, and to spoil things for the squirrel. I have left a treat for the squirrel: a live trap baited with a few peanuts, put up off the ground away from the bird feeders, on top of the feed bins that the damnable thing has tried to eat its way through. If it works, it will not be able to cause me any future problems.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 