I have just noticed that I titled the November results as December results, which I have now corrected. Whatever I was on then, I hope that I am off it now! This is the December 2024 results report.
It was an interesting month: 17 full sessions, the same as in December 2023. The weather has been dreadful, as if anyone needs telling and I missed three sessions in the last two weeks due to my car being off the road.
I can’t help thinking that my catch would have been bigger, but I have only feeding stations set up at Somerford Common and Ravensroost Wood so far. Whereas the catches at Somerford Common were not massively increased by adding the feeding station, the catch at Red Lodge was significantly down on the equivalents last December. However, that discrepancy was almost entirely down to reduced numbers of Blue and Great Tits, so is that necessarily a bad thing? So the catch that we actually got was bigger on retrapped birds and lower on ringed birds. Added to last year were House Sparrow, Jay, Siskin and Stonechat; missing from last year were Blackcap, Cetti’s Warbler, Sparrowhawk, Tree Sparrow and Yellowhammer.
Numbers of Blue Tit, both ringed and retrapped, were significantly higher than last year. I am delighted to say that comparatively few were from my sites: Jonny had the pleasure of processing 221 of them! The really astonishing change is in the number of Redwing processed: just nine this December, compared with 129 last December. All sites were down, but especially Andy’s SPTA site on the Imber Ranges: down from 43 to one, Jonny’s Green Lane site, down from 27 to one. His East Tytherton site dropped from 24 to seven and one of his Sutton Benger sites from 17 to zero. Lesser Redpoll numbers were also down: just five caught in one session at Somerford Common. Last year we caught 21 in our one session in Webb’s Wood and this year zero.
Our three Siskin this December were a highlight for me: they were caught in our session at the Firs. This is only the second time we have managed to catch them at this site: the previous one being caught in March 2013. They are also the only Siskin that we have caught in the Braydon Forest in any December.
We have had a nice boost in Long-tailed Tit numbers. They do seem to be on a nice incline: we have had 245 processed in Q4 2024, compared to the previous years:
Having checked the records back to 2013, this is the best Q4 for the species. It has also been our best December for Greenfinch, the only other month coming close was 30 in 2019.
I will be putting the annual report together over the next few days.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 