Ten days ago, to help with the bitter weather that had moved in, I set up a feeding station in the Firs: two one litre seed feeders and a one litre peanut feeder. On Tuesday I stopped off to top up the feeders, only to find that the peanut feeder was half empty and the seed feeders had not been touched. I assumed that this was simply a case of adjusting to them being there / finding the feeders. I was joined by David, Mark, Adam, Daniel and Emma. Laura did come to help us set up before heading off for a day of French Horn playing!
The first thing I did was to check the feeders: the peanut feeder had been wrecked, no doubt by an irate Grey Squirrel. Just the lid and its hanger remaining. Despite looking all around, no sign of the cage and the base. It brought to mind an image of a squirrel running around with it stuck around its head and body. One of the seed feeders contents had been reduced by about two inches, the other hadn’t been touched. I did wonder if we would actually catch any birds.
We set the following nets:
As we walked down the hill there was just one bird in ride 1 and nothing in ride 2. However, while Adam extracted the first Blue Tit of the morning, as we watched, a small flock flew into the furthest away net in ride 2: five Blue Tits. Having extracted them, we found a few more birds had flown into the nets: a Dunnock, Long-tailed Tit, Blackbird and a Wren. Ten birds proved to be the best catch of the session. Thereafter it was just one or two birds each round.
It really was a quiet morning. The only highlight was our sixth Goldfinch at the site. The first three were caught in a session in December 2013. After that, there was one in March 2017, one in August 2024 and this today:
The list from this morning was: Blue Tit 9(1); Great Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit (1); Wren 1(1); Dunnock (1); Blackbird (1); Goldfinch 1. Totals: 13 birds ringed from 4 species and 5 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 18 birds processed from 7 species. This is our worst January catch in the Firs ever. The previous worst was 32 back in 2019.
We kept the nets open until we all decided we were too cold to continue. Mind, that was at midday. There was quite a lot of Great Spotted Woodpecker drumming going on all morning: they were too busy with their territorial percussion to come down to the nets.
One actual bonus: David’s dad, Trevor, was clearing out his loft (roof repairs going on) and found a rather fine, solid four-seater picnic table. Surplus to their requirements, so we tried it out as a ringing table and it is perfect!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 