I have seen enough mud to last me a lifetime so today I decided to have a session at Lower Moor Farm, knowing that it would be firm underfoot. Having spent the week with a stinking cold and a sick car, I was pleased to be able to get out: cold has more or less cleared and the car, with its new starter motor, is back on the road again. Mind, on my way to site, it was nearly off the road again, as I misjudged an S-bend, got into a mud skid and just managed to keep it out of the ditch. Not an auspicious start!
David joined me for the session. We met at 7:30 and set the following nets:
It was a slightly unusual session, starting with finding this when setting up ride 3:
We couldn’t think of what might have killed the deer. It is a long way from any roads, I suppose it could have died from illness or old age. Regardless, it has been stripped by the scavengers in the area. I contacted Jonathan, the farm manager, to find out if he knew anything about it. He was aware of it but had no idea how it had ended up, ironically, in the Wildlife Refuge! Nobody has noticed any White-tailed Eagles flying around!
Anyway, we did manage to catch a reasonable number of birds adjacent to the carcass: including our first two February Nuthatch at Lower Moor Farm. In over 10 years of ringing there we had only ringed eight at this site, and those were all caught in ride 1, adjacent to the woodland.
It wasn’t our biggest ever catch by a long way, but we seemed to be active constantly. A lot of it came from the fact that each round produced at least a couple of birds. We also had a lot of visitors interested in what we were doing, so I spent quite a lot of time explaining about ringing, why we do it, how we do it and the results and feedback we get from our activities.
The catch for the morning was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Nuthatch 2; Blue Tit (1); Great Tit 4; Long-tailed Tit 1(3); Wren 2; Dunnock 1; Robin 1; Redwing 1; Goldcrest 1(1). Totals: 14 birds ringed from 9 species and 5 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 19 birds processed from 10 species. Not bad variety for just 19 birds.
The Redwing was the first that we have caught since 19th November: a very long time between catches for this species in the winter.
We have only caught seven Great Spotted Woodpeckers at this site before: the last in 2021, so it was good to catch another one. We should have caught more: I even noted an occupied nest site last breeding season. That was because you could hear the youngsters demanding to be fed. I might have tried to ring them if the nest hole hadn’t been facing over the stream that runs through the reserve.
Anyway, it was a nice, relaxed session. We closed the nets at 11:30, processing the last few birds, then took down and were off site just before 12:30.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 