Today was to be a special day: it is exactly 10 years to the day that my first ringing trainee, Jonny, ringed his first bird. He wasn’t my trainee at the time, as I wasn’t a trainer: a mere C-permit holder, but with a training / helper’s endorsement, because my trainer was laid up after an operation and someone had to step into the breach to help his T-permit trainee. Jonny isn’t my trainee now, as he is also a fully-fledged ringer, the first I progressed to A-permit, and has been so for a good few years now.
We agreed to run our session at Webb’s Wood and to meet at 7:30. Rosie was joining us as well. I arrived on site at 7:20, opened the gate, put up my signs, drove up the track – for 100m, just around the corner only to find a very large tree had fallen across the track and there was no way round it. So I backed up, took down my signs and locked up. As the nearest woodland, and also next on my session plan, was the Firs, I texted both of them and changed venue to there.
That worked well for Rosie, as she was scheduled to be working at the Firs today, so she could ring until her trainee, Emily, turned up with their equipment (two shovels and wheelbarrows) and would be on hand to ring if we caught anything out of the ordinary (see below). They were busy working hard on reconstituting parts of the reserve paths with loads of wood chippings.
We set the following nets:
The first net set down from the ringing station comprised 3 x 18m 5-Shelf nets and the second set comprised 3 x 18m + 1 x 12m 5-Shelf nets. Where the nets are set is at the bottom of a 100m hill. It looks innocuous but, after a dozen or more trips up and down, it becomes a very good workout. Since the Firs reopened it has been a very productive site, until this morning! The first round produced six birds: four Long-tailed Tits, a Robin and a Wren.
The next two hours only produced another seven birds! It gave us plenty of time to chat. Not only that, Jonny produced a gift for me: he has gone through the time he spent with me as a trainee, and produced a lovely scrap book of the highlights from photographs posted on the blog on the Wiltshire Ornithological Society site and, subsequently, from this blog, together with a “thank you” card. You never know as a trainer whether you are doing a good job, and I have had a couple of issues in the last two years, but three weeks ago, to celebrate my 70th birthday, a dozen of my team past and present, took me out to dinner and showered me with lovely gifts, a fabulous cake (thanks Ellie), and wouldn’t let me put my hand in my pocket to pay for the meal. I guess I must be doing something right! Personally, I would say that I have mainly been very lucky with who I have had as trainees.
Anyway, we decided that if the next round was poor we would pack up and call it a day. Naturally, the next round we caught a reasonable nine birds but, within that, three of these:
Male Siskin, Spinus spinus
Not only are these the first Siskin we have caught this winter, they are the only Siskin we have caught at any of our sites in the north in the whole of this year! With regard to the Firs, we have only every caught one at this site before, and that was back in March 2013!
As Jonny had to leave at midday, we decided to close the nets and take down at 11:15. There was a single Blue Tit in the nets as we started closing them. We extracted it ready for processing.
We had been conscious that the Vale of the White Horse Hunt were in the area: the hounds had been going into cry regularly throughout the morning. It got louder as we were closing the nets, and the next thing we were surrounded by their hounds. They were totally out of control. It wasn’t until I shouted that the scum on horseback realised there were other people in the nature reserve, and then they started blowing their horns, trying to get them back out. It took them something like 15 minutes to get them back under control. The only good thing: they were clearly after a fox and they, equally clearly, didn’t get it. I do not understand why hunts are not deemed to be responsible for the control of their hounds. The Dangerous Dogs Act makes owners responsible for the actions of their dogs, so why doesn’t the Hunting with Hounds Act make hunts responsible for the actions of their hounds? It is the loophole they exploit every time they break the law and deliberately hunt foxes.
It was a good job that we had the nets closed: goodness knows how much damage the rampaging hounds would have done to them had the nets still been in operational mode. I know from discussions with my old trainer that he has had first-hand experience of the hunts trashing ringing equipment and refusing to replace or compensate for the damage they do. Their arrogance and entitlement is so entrenched.
Anyway, rant over. The catch for the morning was: Treecreeper 1; Blue Tit 1(1); Long-tailed Tit 2(2); Wren 4(1); Dunnock 1(2); Robin (1); Blackbird (1); Goldcrest 1(1); Bullfinch 1; Siskin 3. Totals: 14 birds ringed from 8 species and 9 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 23 birds processed from 10 species.
Although slightly disappointed in the size of the catch, there is no feeding station set up in the wood, the Siskin catch made up for almost everything. It was very quiet, without a lot of bird movement. I will set up a feeding station later this week.
As an afterword: driving home I came across the hunt again: causing traffic hold ups on the B4696 main road to Ashton Keynes, and with all their “followers” parked partially blocking the western road from the Braydon crossroads and with a fox spotter searching on the eastern side for something for them to hunt.
So, a roller coaster: down – unable to access our original planned site (if we had, our encounter with hunt would not have happened, but Rosie and Ellie would still have had the experience); up – Rosie could do a bit more ringing for a bit longer before going off to work, because of the change of site; down – small numbers of birds; up – Jonny’s scrap book and thank you card; down – no birds for 2 hours; up – Siskin; down – the hunt.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 