A year of change. The core of the group remains as was: with Ellie making the step up from C to A-permit. We added Laura as a new trainee at the beginning of the year. She had been extracting with me for several months before, and is very competent, so I was delighted that she decided to go the whole hog and take on the T-permit.
In March I had a major change when I stepped in to help out the Salisbury Plain Raptor Ringing Group. This involved me taking on a number of C-permit holders, all specialists in monitoring raptor nests. I quickly moved one forward for his A-permit: Ian carried out the assessment for me. Two of the others, Justine and Jon will be assessed for A-permits as soon as they have had their C-permits for long enough. For Justine that will be this raptor breeding season. There was a benefit for me: I got to ring my first ever Little Owl owlet.
So to the numbers:
As you can see, a huge increase in the number of pulli ringed. This is almost entirely down to Jonny’s expanded activity in monitoring nest boxes for Blue and Great Tits plus Tree Sparrows. We also had a better year for Barn Owls.
Of course, this could all just be the result of the number of sessions carried out each year. So I have calculated how many full sessions were carried out each year using mist nets as the primary trapping method, and worked out the average numbers ringed and retrapped per session, excluding the sessions involving pulli:
So, very similar numbers per session. When they are graphed we get the following:
As you can see, the numbers are consistent across the years, with both ringed and retraps showing a slight increase over time, ringed showing a slightly higher incline than retraps.
So, to the birds caught:
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 