With the intention of getting Miranda to her C-permit next Spring, I arranged to run a session in her garden, to have a look at the potential for her to ring there. This is to ensure that she has a site where she can work without needing landowner permission and so she has somewhere to ring whilst identifying and agreeing other sites for her to work at. We have tried on several previous dates to run the session: all thwarted by the weather. I won’t work in sub-zero conditions, as the welfare of the birds comes first and, in those conditions, they need all the time available to find food.
Fortunately, having cancelled Thursday’s session because of an outside temperature of -3oC, Friday was scheduled to be +6oC, but with quite a breeze from the south-west. I decided to take a chance on the garden providing enough shelter for us to be able to set some nets. The setup was as follows:
Net ride 1 was at 90o to the line of trees within which the bird feeders are set. There were no other feeders in operation around the garden, and nowhere near the other rides. Rides 2 and 3 were set in front of a hedgerow and behind some other scrub trees. We had planned to set ride 4 in the field adjacent to Miranda’s garden with lures for both Redwing and Yellowhammer playing, just to test, but in the event, we were busy enough with the other rides so that we didn’t have time to set them up. Next time!
Miranda’s garden attracts in large numbers of Goldfinch and decent numbers of Greenfinch coming to the feeders. In fact, we could hear Goldfinch wittering on all morning. Unfortunately, they didn’t read the memo and we didn’t catch a single one of either species. We will have to try a different net setup next time. However, that is not to say that the session didn’t work. In fact, as soon as we had net ride 1 open it started catching. It was primarily Blue Tits with a couple of Great Tits in the mix. Whilst Miranda started extracting these birds I got on with setting up rides 2 and 3.
We set up the ringing station just outside the kitchen (handy for coffee and cake, and for Miranda to look after Percy, her new puppy: a gorgeous black Cocker Spaniel. For a youngster, he has the bladder capacity of a 70 year-old man! Actually, that is untrue, I didn’t need a wee all morning, whereas Percy needed several.) and got on with processing the birds. The next round produced a decent number of birds in ride 1 and a few in ride 2. Unfortunately, the wind got up at 9:30 and ride 1 became unusable, so I closed and furled it. I put a couple of lures on rides 2 and 3 and we immediately got result. In fact, we were busy for the rest of the morning. Being the first session at the site, and no other ringers being active in the area, every bird caught needed ringing. It was quite a catch, and bodes well for the future, if we can set it up to catch finches as well.
The list for the session was: Blue Tit 36; Great Tit 14; Coal Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit 13; Wren 2; Dunnock 2; Robin 3; Song Thrush 1; Blackbird 2; House Sparrow 1. Total: 76 birds ringed and processed from 10 species.
We did have two Blackbirds with good long wings: a male with a 138mm wing and a female with a 139mm wing. Out of 1,945 Blackbirds ringed, she is only the tenth Blackbird that we have ringed with a wing of that length. We have previously had two with wings of 140mm, one with a wing of 141mm and one with a wing of 143mm, but none with anything longer.
Female Blackbird, Turdus merula
Back when I started my training as a bird ringer, in 2009, a Blackbird caught with a wing of that length, and a beak with so much dark and so little yellow, would automatically have been declared to be a winter migrant from the European mainland. I don’t know if that is still the case as, anecdotally, I think I see a lot more long-winged and dark beaked Blackbirds these days.
Having reached a good total of birds and the wind getting stronger, we packed away at midday, finishing by 12:30: a benefit of only having four nets in three net rides. So Miranda was home by 12:31 and I was home by 12:45. A good session but much more to do to develop the site to improve the variety of the catch. The potential is definitely there. As well as the teasing of the Goldfinches, Miranda’s garden attracts in Fieldfare and Redwing, coming to a very heavy cropping apple tree, the windfalls plus unwanted / unused crop of which are left for the birds. There are Great Spotted and Green Woodpecker regularly visiting and, backing onto farmland, the possibility of Yellowhammer and Linnet in the hedgerow in their field next door. We will be trying it out some more over the next couple of weeks, hopefully with fewer Blue and Great Tits, and adding a decent number of finches and some other species.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 