Being election day, I was hoping for a large turnout in the bird electorate. I had a quorum of helpers: Rosie, Miranda and Laura, joining me for the session. After some discussion on how quiet the wood has been this year with Robin Griffiths, the Ravensroost warden and organiser of wildlife surveys for the site, I have decided to try sessions in different areas of the wood, to see whether there has been a significant change. To give some background, over the last couple of winters there have been some significant forestry operations within Ravensroost: the volunteers have carried out their usual coppicing activities in section X of the woodland. Alongside that, there has been considerable Ash dieback mitigation work in the wood plus the coppicing of the 25 year coppice cycle in the north of the wood. I know that, following significant forestry operations at both Red Lodge and Webb’s Wood, catches can die right off before making significant recoveries often, as is certainly the case at Webb’s Wood, with a change to the species profile.
The first surprise I had was turning up to find that the site has a newly resurfaced carpark, gates at the entrance to the car park so it can be completely closed off, and new gates at the entrance of the reserve itself. All looks very good, and so much easier to open the new gate than having to drag the old one across on its dropped hinges.
Today we set our nets in this area of the wood:
and we set the following nets:
The weather was strange: despite the sun it was very cold. That was almost entirely down to a cold breeze blowing through the site. The breeze did strengthen over the course of the morning and, by the time we were ready to pack up, was beginning to make the nets billow.
Unfortunately, the catch was slow and low. Over the course of the morning all we caught were 15 birds from six species. There were no retrapped birds and the list was: Blue Tit [1]; Great Tit [2]; Wren [3]; Robin 1[3]; Blackcap [2]; Chiffchaff 2[1]. Totals: 3 adults ringed from 2 species and 12 juveniles ringed from 6 species, making 15 birds processed from 6 species.
It was very quiet, with very little birdsong: what we caught was what we heard, with the exception of the Nuthatch that spent time calling above our heads at the ringing station, and the small flock of Long-tailed Tits that, again, were circling around our heads but never got near the nets.
There was a good number of butterflies around. In the majority were Ringlet, but they were accompanied by Speckled Wood and Meadow Brown and, somewhat more spectacularly, some Silver-washed Fritillary and a couple of White Admiral. However, this was probably the star of the show:
Immature male Southern Hawker dragonfly, Aeshna cyanea
It was flying around, near the long line of nets, nearly all morning. We packed up at 11:30 and were off site fairly soon after midday.
A brief Barn Owl update. Rosie, Ellie and I checked on the boxes at Upper Waterhay Farm on Friday. The two Jackdaw broods have successfully fledged but the Barn Owl brood, which we had planned to ring, has been predated. There were a couple of fresh pellets in the box but no sign of the youngsters that were there three weeks ago. We had a first visit to Swillbrook Farm and checked three boxes: we ringed two good sized young in one box, another had clearly been occupied by Jackdaw and the third, despite the ancient barn it is in having collapsed, with just the roof remaining intact, was still showing signs of the adults roosting there. Finally, we went to check on the box in Allotment Field at Blakehill Farm. Last time we looked we caught and ringed the male on the box and there were a couple of eggs there. This time there were four young: three were large enough for us to ring and the fourth looked like it might end up as food for its siblings, so we left it unringed.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 