With the mini “Beast from the East” forecast for this weekend, rain all day Saturday, Sunday was the only possibility. It was the reverse of Thursday, not as windy as forecast when we arrived on site. Kick off time was 7:00 and I was joined by David, Laura, Adam, Emma and Rosie. Rosie had to leave for work at 8:00 – she was going to be running a workshop for a local Scout troop at Lower Moor Farm and needed time to get set up. Thankfully, we managed to get her one bird to process before she left, even though it was yet another Blue Tit. Emma is our newest member of the team and is still getting comfortable with handling the birds, so is not processing or extracting the birds yet, but is making herself very useful helping with everything else and is keen to learn.
We set the following nets:
I only set the feeding station up last Wednesday. Last year the feeders were stolen from the site, so I held back from setting one up until now. Both feeders were empty this morning, so we replenished them first thing. Funnily enough, the majority of the birds caught were not caught at the feeding station but in the other nets.
It wasn’t a hugely busy session: we caught regularly throughout the morning, three or four birds at a time. As expected, it was Blue Tit heavy, but there was a reasonable spread of birds. The highlight for me was another two Marsh Tits to colour ring. This is the first time since I started the Marsh Tit project that we have ringed five Marsh Tits in the first two months of the year – and we still have another three Braydon Forest sessions to go before the end of the month. We usually catch the bulk of them in July and August, once the youngsters have fledged.
The list for the session was: Nuthatch 1; Blue Tit 15(5); Great Tit 5; Coal Tit 2(6); Marsh Tit 2; Wren 1; Robin 1; Goldcrest (1). Totals: 27 birds ringed from 7 species and 12 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 39 birds processed from 8 species.
By 11:00 the wind had begun to get up and it was a bitterly cold easterly, so we decided to end the session and take down. With the five of us to take nets down and pack away, it only took just over 30 minutes to get ready to leave site.
Yet again, I was disappointed that there just seems to be no sign of Lesser Redpoll or Siskin at the sites that are usually our regular catching areas. Hopefully there will be some sight of them before the end of the winter!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 