With the weekend looking wet and windy, I decided upon two early mornings in a row: yesterday at Red Lodge and today we went to Somerford Common. I was joined by Laura, David and Rosie. We met at 7:30and set the following nets:
Rosie had to leave for work at 8:00, so we quickly put up net ride 5 with a lure for Redwing, as there were a lot flying around. Unfortunately for Rosie, the only bird out of the net before she had to leave was a Wren, which she got to process.
Given that we only caught 21 birds all morning at Red Lodge yesterday (even if one was a Firecrest), I was hoping for a better catch today. Yesterday we didn’t catch our first bird until 9:00: today we had caught 19 birds before 9:00 and 28 by 9:30. I had hoped that we might catch some Redwing this morning, having narrowly missed our first of the Autumn at Ravensroost Wood back on the 24th September. I have never caught one as early as that and the one escaping the net before we could extract it was disappointing. The earliest we have caught them in the autumn was the 9th October 2021 at Blakehill Farm. We did catch our first of this Autumn this morning:
Redwing, Turdus iliacus
We caught seven in total: two adults and five juveniles.
The list for the morning was: Blue Tit 11; Great Tit 3(2); Coal Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit 12; Wren 1; Dunnock 1; Robin 1; Redwing 7; Chiffchaff 1; Goldcrest 8(1). Totals: 47 birds ringed from 10 species and 3 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 50 birds processed from 10 species.
It was a decent catch given that we are not supplementary feeding yet. Not unusual for this site at this time of year but, given how sparse some of our catches have been this year, something of a relief to have 50 birds.
There were a couple of interesting things. The first was this Blue Tit:
The wings are shot to pieces, the alula is also very old. The primary coverts are blue but there is no sign of wing moult. I don’t think that it can be a juvenile, the wear is just too great, but possibly a second year bird that hasn’t started its post-breeding moult. Any suggestions, I would be grateful.
The second point of interest: I found one of my bird bags, empty and open lying on the path up where we set nets 1,2 and 3. It had clearly been there since our last visit on the 10th August: it was soaking wet and covered in crud. Having taken it back to the ringing station I noticed something odd sticking up from the top edge of the bag:
It took a while to work out what it was:
A pair of mating millipedes! I have never seen anything like it before. One more to add to my collection of different animals mating seen whilst out bird ringing, following on from the pair of slugs at Ravensroost Meadows and the Caddis Flies at Lower Moor Farm. (Apologies for the quality of the photo: not a great macro function on my phone.)
With the catch having died away we started packing away at 11:40 on 49 birds. We took down rides 1 to 4. It took very little time with four of us (David’s dad, Trevor had arrived and joined in to help take down) and at 11:55 we went to take down rides 5 and 6 – to find a final Blue Tit in ride 6, giving us a nice round 50 birds from 10 species for the morning! We were all packed away and off site by 12:45.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 