It seems that we share Somerford Common with some rather unsavoury characters. We continually find shotgun cartridges all over the site. Nobody has a licence to shoot wildlife on the site, outside of the deer management team. Whilst topping up the bird feeders yesterday I was approached by a local resident who asked if I knew anything about the tree felling going on. There is none scheduled, so this is clearly illegal. She explained that she had seen lights and the sound of chainsaws at night time over the weekend. When she went to check the next morning, she found several stumps and someone cutting up some of the wood. He got aggressive when asked why he was cutting down Forestry Commission wood. His response was that he was removing dead wood, but it isn’t, it is green oak wood. The presence of his chainsaw and his manner made her decide not to pursue it. She chose not to call the police, presumably worried as she is very local to the site, and they were nowhere to be seen today.
In recent years I have found several Fox carcasses dumped adjacent to our ringing site, and a dead Buzzard outside the stable just over the other side of Queen Street, that runs along the north edge of the wood. This morning, whilst carrying out our session at Somerford Common, I was approached by a young man out walking his lurcher and black Labrador. He asked if I was aware of the dumped Foxes and Buzzards along the by-way that runs through the western part of Somerford Common. They must have been there a while, as he told me that the bodies are now too decomposed for meaningful examination. He forwarded me some photos of one of the dead birds:
He said Buzzard but, with that colouration, it could equally be Red Kite. I did go to try and find the dump site after we had finished our ringing session, to confirm, but was unable to find it. I know that things die of natural causes, but rarely do they do so in a communal area. They look to have been killed elsewhere and then dumped. That looks to me like foul play.
Anyway, onto nicer things. I was joined for the morning session by Laura and Miranda. We met at 7:30 and set the usual nets. We started catching birds as we were opening the nets and, although it wasn’t the biggest of catches, it was certainly interesting.
The first bird out of the net was a retrapped Marsh Tit, the first of four recaptured this morning. The rest of the morning panned out pretty much as expected, although a haul of eight Robins was the best we have had since 28th May 2017, when 10 Robins were part of a catch of 47 birds. Mind, that catch was boosted by the addition of three newly fledged juveniles.
Apart from the Robins, the catch was primarily Paridae. Unfortunately, no sign of any finches! Hopefully we will get some Goldfinch, Chaffinch, Lesser Redpoll and Siskin and, if we are very lucky, some Brambling in the next couple of sessions.
The list for the session was: Nuthatch 1(1); Blue Tit 7(1); Great Tit 3(4); Coal Tit 1(4); Marsh Tit (4); Dunnock (1); Robin 2(6); Blackbird (1). Totals: 14 birds ringed from 5 species and 22 birds retrapped from 8 species, making 36 birds processed from 8 species.
We started closing up and taking down at 11:30, stopping to process the four birds that insisted on dropping in as we were trying to get things packed away. Things were finished by 12:30 and I went off to try and find some corpses.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 