Having been unable to get out on Wednesday due to my hip problem, I was rather determined to get out today. Somerford Common is the site for my winter CES, and the sessions were scheduled to start after the 2nd November, so today was my first session for this year. I arrived on site to find this:
Fly tipping is epidemic in this area. It might look relatively harmless but under that foliage are large lumps of stone and asphalt. The criminal that did it was clearly not as au fait with his tipper truck as he thought, as he managed to smash into the large granite block that Forestry England put in place to stop unauthorised vehicular access, leaving this behind:
I shall put this up on the various social media platforms to see if anybody in the Cricklade / Purton / Brinkworth / Braydon area know of anyone with a tipper truck missing its rear brake / indicator light cover, see if we can find out who this criminal is.
I was joined for the morning at 7:00 by Rosie and Laura. Rosie had to leave at 8:30 to get to work and Laura at 11:30 to make a pre-arranged appointment. That meant that we had a full team to set up, and just me to take down and pack away. Not a big deal: getting the nets open as soon as possible is the key thing. Taking down just depends upon how desperate you are to get your lunch. Fortunately, it did mean that Rosie got to process some birds before she had to leave!
It was pretty clear very quickly how the session was going to pan out: we started catching Long-tailed Tits straight away. They were the first birds out of the nets and the last birds out of the last net that I took down. To explain, when taking down solo, I will do a round of all nets, close a net ride, process any birds and then take down that net ride. Repeat, closing a ride each time, processing any birds in between. As it was, I had no birds when taking down the first two rides, but when I went to do the third I extracted two of my favourite birds: Nuthatch. One was a retrap, the other a newbie. When we had the astonishing catch of 15 in August none were from this site. The retrap was ringed in December of last year. I processed them and went to the last net to find a Goldcrest and a further three Long-tailed Tits.
We were busy: we carried out 13 extraction rounds between 8:00 and 12:45 and processed a total of 48 birds. Some were just a single bird, the biggest was nine birds (twice), the lowest was one (four times).
As much as I loved my Nuthatches, the star bird of the morning was a Lesser Redpoll. This gave Laura her first opportunity to ring the species. It was a stunning male.
Male Lesser Redpoll, Acanthis cabaret
The list for the day was: Nuthatch 1(1); Treecreeper (1); Blue Tit 1(2); Great Tit 3(3); Marsh Tit (2); Long-tailed Tit 13(5); Wren 2; Dunnock 1; Robin 2(1); Blackbird 3; Goldcrest 4(2); Lesser Redpoll 1.
The Long-tailed Tits, as well as being the biggest part of the catch, provided an interesting perspective. Over the course of the morning we recaptured birds PKJ586, PKJ588 and PKJ601 at 8:30, and PKJ87 at 11:30. They were all ringed at Somerford Common, in a session in February 2023. That three of them were recaptured together 20 months later makes you wonder about their social structure and interactions.
Whilst we were on site, there were two small flocks (7 and 8) of Raven that flew overhead, croaking to each other. Towards the end of the session I saw, and heard, two large flocks of Fieldfare (they never seem to come down) flying over, several smaller groups of Redwing and the obligatory squalling, shrieking Jays.
After finishing processing and packing everything away, I left the site at about 13:45.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 