Having missed the only decent day of the previous seven, because I was attending our fourth school reunion (51 years since we left our secondary school – yes, I am that old) in the Portsmouth area, I am finding this weather hugely frustrating. On Sunday all of the forecasters I use (the Met Office, Meteo (both directly and via the BBC), xcweather and weather.com) said it would rain all week until Friday! So I arranged a ringing session for Friday and another for Sunday, because Saturday was also forecast to be wet. On Monday they all changed to say that it would be dry on Wednesday, with light winds, so I decided to head to Blakehill Farm on that day. Everybody in the team was otherwise engaged, although Laura and Rosie were able to join me first thing, but both had to leave by 9:45, as they had other arrangements.
We met at 7:30 and set the following nets:
Ride 1 was set on the track side of the perimeter hedge. Ride 3 was a new net position – and it turned out well, as I will explain later.
The weather was weird: it was dry but there was a lot of moisture in the air for a lot of the morning. The breeze got up more quickly and stronger than forecast but we never got any actual rain. However, I took precautions just in case: putting paperwork and equipment undercover when I went off to do rounds.
We started catching straight away, with a Wren being caught in net 6 before we had managed to open it. Overall we had a nice mix of species. Before they had to leave, we caught Blue Tit, Chiffchaffs, Meadow Pipit, Reed Bunting, Robin and Wren. They got to extract and process 19 birds between them. Unfortunately, (for Laura and Rosie) in the first round after they left, I caught my only Blackcap of the session, and then, more interestingly, in new net ride 3, I caught:
Adult male Stonechat, Saxicola rubicola
In the next round, I caught another in that same net and, in the last round, I caught another, again in that net. It suggests that this blackberry bush is just the right height for Stonechats to perch on. For once my hunch paid off. This takes our 2024 total at Blakehill Farm to nine: our best there to date. Blakehill Farm is the only site that I have where they are found.
The list for the session was: Blue Tit [2](1); Great Tit [7](1); Wren 2[3]; Dunnock [1]; Meadow Pipit 1[4](1); Stonechat 3; Robin [1](1); Blackcap [1]; Chiffchaff [6]; Reed Bunting [3](1). Totals: 6 adults ringed from 3 species, 28 juveniles ringed from 9 species and 5 retraps from 5 species, making 39 birds processed from 10 species.
With wind getting up far more strongly than was originally forecast (sorry, boring!) I was rather pleased that I had had the foresight to set all nets, bar net 5, to the leeward side of the bushes. That meant that I could keep them open for as long as I needed. I started closing up at 11:45, only as I went to close the plateau nets I found six additional birds in them, so I extracted them and closed the nets as I went. However, I had to process them before finally taking the nets down. Eventually, I had the nets down by 13:15 and was off-site soon after. I had forgotten that it is hard work taking down and clearing away the equipment after a few hours of trekking around the plateau and up and down the perimeter track. Usually I have a small team to share the workload. Not today!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 