Today was the final session for this year’s Constant Effort Site. It is highly likely that I will retire the CES next year. Working the same site every 10 days is tiring. When that site has declined year on year for the last four it is dispiriting: especially when you know that the bird numbers in the area are as strong as they ever were, but habitat change in the CES areas has made other parts more attractive to the birdlife. For example, Garden Warbler numbers have declined precipitately in the CES area but are doing well on other parts of the reserve. Lesser Whitethroat used to be regular in the catch, but the last one in the CES area was caught in 2020: ironically, the year we couldn’t carry out the CES due to Covid restrictions.
One of the issues is that, being a nature reserve owned by the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, I cannot unilaterally make significant changes to particular areas of habitat. The Trust are very receptive and helpful, but resources are limited and they have a huge list of priorities. They have scheduled, and started, some remedial management already, and plan to do more over the winter, and I certainly intend to test out the impact of those changes, as they are the changes that I requested from them. For next year I am thinking of doing monthly sessions, moving around the site, including elements of the CES set up, to identify the busiest areas at different times of the year.
Anyway, to today. I agreed to do this on the Thursday because the Trust were running a children’s activity day, and bird ringing is always a draw for the children, as they get to see the birds up close, and some get the opportunity to learn how to hold a bird safely and release it.
I was joined for the morning by Rosie, doing her usual of helping set up before heading off to work for the Trust, Miranda and Justine. We arrived just before 7:00 and had the first ride open 10 minutes later (so easy when you can find the post holes). It was a very slow start, with just two birds until 9:00 when we suddenly had a small influx of six birds. Then, at 9:30 we had 13 birds. Unfortunately, we then had a long gap until 11:10, with 4, and 11:30 with 6. This meant that we were not in a position to show anything to the children for quite a long time. I did, though, have a bag of owl pellets I had collected for the event, so they could toddle off back to base and investigate those whilst we waited for some birds to arrive, i.e. at the times mentioned above.
When we did have some birds to show them the children were hugely enthusiastic and several got the chance to be taught how to safely hold and release a bird. One youngster will be going to school for the first time at the end of next week, and had been asked to produce a “book” on what she did during the summer: she now has two nice photos to add to her book of her releasing a Goldcrest and a Chiffchaff.
After the children left we had another hour long lull in the catching until, as usual, I said that we would make this the last round. Having said goodbye to the children we were joined by a somewhat older (okay, much older) trio who were keen to know all about it. Luckily for them, the “this will be the last round” magic worked and we extracted another six birds. They were every bit as enthusiastic as the children had been and also were given the opportunity to learn how to safely hold and release a bird.
The weather was truly weird, and I suspect that had something to do with the variability of the catch. The first couple of hours were very cool (sub 10oC) and then warmed up, which is when we caught most birds. Then the wind got up and had the nets billowing for about an hour, and then it dropped right away, and we caught birds again.
The list for the session was: Blue Tit [1](3); Wren (1); Robin [1](1); Song Thrush (1); Cetti’s Warbler (1); Blackcap [13]; Chiffchaff 1[7]; Willow Warbler [1]; Goldcrest [6]. Totals: 1 adult ringed, 29 juveniles ringed from 6 species and 7 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 37 birds processed from 9 species. Of the retrapped birds all bar the Song Thrush were also juveniles. Two of the juvenile Blue Tits and the retrapped Robin are not birds that we have ringed. Unfortunately, whomsoever has ringed them hasn’t entered the details into the database yet: one of the frustrations of ringing is that there is a large cohort of ringers who like to save up their data for a mammoth data entry session at a later date. That is the way the old recording system worked: they haven’t yet accepted the benefits of the on-line data entry system we have now! (That’ll wind a few ringers up!)
This session does compare well with last year’s CES 12: 24 juveniles ringed from 7 species (17 of them Blackcaps) and 4 retraps from 4 species (3 juveniles and 1 adult), making 28 birds processed from 9 species.
We had everything packed away and ready to leave site by 13:45 after a satisfying, if erratic, session. Now for Saturday: I will be trying out a site that is new to me: Gospel Oak Farm. I monitor the Barn Owls there but will be exploring the other birds that they have on the site. There is a large pond with good surrounding vegetation, hay meadows that are managed traditionally (i.e. they were not cut until the first week of August), a large wildflower area, separate to the haylage, and excellent hedgerows.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 