After several days of bad weather, and this weekend looking like a washout, it was great to get out today. I went to Red Lodge because it is some six weeks since I was last there. The forecast was for dry but to be breezy, which is why I went for a woodland site. In fact, the site has been rather neglected, as the catch numbers seem to have declined rather more than most when there is no supplementary feed on offer. In fact the last proper session yielded just 17 birds and one evening session just six. For the effort required the return has not been good enough to warrant more visits.
In terms of numbers, today was still well below what one would like to catch in a session with the following nets set:
I was joined for the morning by Miranda. We met at 7:30 and set the nets. The nets were open by 8:30 but we didn’t see our first bird until 9:15: a retrapped Goldcrest. At 9:45 we caught a Chiffchaff and another retrapped Goldcrest. It wasn’t looking good but, at 10:15, we did another round and whilst Miranda was extracting a Great Tit, I extracted another Goldcrest and this:
Juvenile male Firecrest, Regulus ignicapilla (Photo courtesy of Miranda)
I used to catch them fairly regularly when I was doing my Help4Heroes sessions at Tedworth House back before it closed but, until today, there had only been two caught in the Braydon Forest. The first was not only the first ever caught in Ravensroost Wood but, I was told by the warden, Robin Griffiths, was the first ever sighting record of the species in the wood. Several people twitched it and got to see it. Because I am a kind individual, I let my then trainee, now fully qualified, ringer, Jonny Cooper, process it. To be fair: he was the one who found it in the net and extracted it, so it would have been churlish to do otherwise. That was back in November 2015. The second was in Red Lodge in November 2019. On that day I was assessing a trainee from the North Wilts Group for his C-permit, and it was nearly the last bird we caught. It was certainly the first Firecrest he had ever processed. My most recent capture of a Firecrest prior to this was at Lower Moor Farm in January 2022. That prompted quite a few local birders asking exactly where it had been caught. I think that shows just how uncommon they are in this area of Wiltshire.
Today’s catch was Miranda’s first ever sight of one, let alone being given the opportunity to process the bird. After that we caught a couple more Goldcrest, a couple of Great Tits, a Long-tailed Tit and retrapped a Nuthatch. To be honest, if it hadn’t been for the Firecrest I would have been more than a little frustrated by the session by the time that Miranda had to leave at just after 11:30, as she had the plumber coming to fix the central heating.
However, the very next round I caught not one but two juvenile Marsh Tits! That is 15 ringed so far this year: on track for our regular 20 ringed each year. Not spectacular but remarkably consistent for such a threatened species.
The list for the session was: Nuthatch (1); Treecreeper (1); Blue Tit 3; Great Tit 3(1); Marsh Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit 1; Chiffchaff 1; Goldcrest 5(2); Firecrest 1. Totals: 16 birds ringed from 7 species and 5 birds retrapped from 4 species, making 21 birds processed from 9 species. That is a pretty good variety in such a small catch, plus a star bird.
I did try a lure for Redwing: pretty standard at this time of year but there was no sign of them anywhere.
I started closing and taking the nets down after I had processed the last two birds: a Goldcrest and a Marsh Tit. That was just after 12:30, and I got away from site about an hour and a quarter later, having removed several hundred leaves from the nets! That’s autumn: great birds, annoying trees.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 