A bit of variety today. It started at 8:30 this morning at Clattinger Farm. I met up with Rosie and we checked on progress to date. All of the nest checking and bird ringing that I do is under licence from the British Trust for Ornithology. The Barn Owl checking I do has an additional schedule 1 licence issued by the BTO on behalf of Natural England and DEFRA.
Last year was a successful first year checking at Clattinger: we had seven Swallow nests in the old stables and woodshed. Two were predated, one was abandoned, but the other four successfully produced twelve fledglings. We also had two successful Blackbird nests, with seven young fledged, one House Sparrow nest that successfully fledged three young and one Robin nest that also successfully fledged three young (it made its nest in a plastic box in the tool shed that used to hold screws).
This year has been a little slower: we checked on one Blackbird nest that was empty and two Wren nests that were also empty. As all nests were intact with no signs of damage, so we are pretty confident that they are first broods that have fledged.
The number of Swallows, so far, and, therefore, the nests, is currently much lower than last year: just three nests established so far. One had two young which were large enough to ring. Another nest had four warm eggs and the third had three young that are too small to ring yet. We will do them in a week’s time.
There does now seem to be far more Swallows flying around the site than the number of nests represent. Hopefully, when we come back in a week, they will have started to nest. Whilst watching what was going on we saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker trying to get at the House Sparrow nests. I suspect it will find it hard, as they are nesting in holes in the building walls. The building is very old but I am still not sure that a Great Spotted Woodpecker bill is designed to be a masonry drill.
We finished up at just after 9:15, so Rosie and her sidekick, Ellie, could get on with their paid work for the Wildlife Trust!
I spent the rest of the morning with one of my new raptor trainees, Justine, helping her get to grips with the online data entry system, DemOn. Once we finished that, we headed off to Waterhay to the farms there to check on the Barn Owl boxes there.
There were three boxes on site and every year between 2019 (when I took over checking the boxes) and 2022, two of those boxes would successfully produce Barn Owl young. In 2022 we put up a fourth box and then in 2023 we had no Barn Owl broods at all, but one Jackdaw brood ringed and the two other original boxes had clearly had Jackdaws nesting there. So I was little trepidacious as to what we would find.
The Chancel box had some nesting material in it, a few Barn Owl feathers as well, but no sign of anything nesting, and the lack of pellets suggest that it is not being used as a roost by them. The next box, in the fields to the south west of the farm, was much more encouraging. When visiting a box, one of us will hold a large hand net over the entrance and exit hole, just in case there is an adult in the box. We were lucky: a female Barn Owl flew out and straight into the net. She had not been ringed, so we ringed her, weighed and measured her, and she flew off around the field before landing in a tree close by. We weren’t by the nest for long: there were three small downy chicks and one warm egg in the box. I will revisit in three to four weeks to check on progress and ring the chicks.
As we approached the next box an adult Jackdaw flew out and, needless to say, inside the box were three Jackdaw chicks. At this age, no matter what the species, the young tend to remain sleepy; if not being fed then why waste energy:
Jackdaw pullus, Coloeus monedula
The last box we checked lies to the east of the farm. This one also had Jackdaw chicks in it. These are much further advanced:
As you can see, it was delighted to get its bit of bling. These will fledge in the next week or so. After they have fledged I will clean out the box and hope that it will be used for second brood Barn Owls.
These four were all that I planned to do for today and I am pretty happy with the results so far. The best thing about this afternoon, apart from the Barn Owl brood, was that the fields have dried out sufficiently for my car to access them. It might be a 4×4 but it is most definitely not an off-roader. No more route marches with all of the equipment and the ladder to get to the boxes! Hooray!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 