With the weather forecast for it to be very wet and windy for the rest of the week, we took advantage of today being forecast to be fine to get out. The idea was that we would meet with the Swindon Wellbeing Group at Ravensroost Wood. Having got my diary wrong and ringed at Ravensroost Wood the previous Tuesday, I decided to test out a different part of the site today: Ravens Retreat. Ravens Retreat was a grazing meadow for many years. When the Wildlife Trust decided to upgrade the wildflower content of the Ravensroost meadow area, by spreading seeds gathered from other wildflower meadow reserves, this part was left unseeded. That was because the Nationwide Building Society had offered, as a part of their investing in local conservation projects, to plant this area with native woodland species. In 2016 (I think) Nationwide staff spent several weeks planting a mix of native broadleaved trees: Oak as the canopy species, mixed with Hawthorn, Blackthorn, Crab Apple and a number of other, what I consider, understorey species. The Blackthorn is there to encourage the expansion of the Brown Hairstreak butterflies that are found in the main wood. From the number of markers we saw this morning it is going to be a significant site for them. There are also two Willow pens, fenced off and growing wood for other Wildlife Trust projects, like screens for the paths leading to hides, etc.
I set up a feeding station there last Thursday, on the off-chance that it would help attract in some birds for this Tuesday. When I checked on the feeders after Sunday’s session at Webb’s Wood, the seed mixture had hardly been touched and the peanut feeder had been one-third emptied. That did rather indicate what we were going to be dealing with come Tuesday.
I was joined for the morning by Laura, Adam, Daniel and Sarah. It was very cold when we arrived on site at 7:00: -2oC. We set the following nets and, by the time we had them open, the temperature had risen several degrees above freezing. It meant we would be monitoring the nets more frequently than the usual every 20 to 30 minutes, every 15 minutes, or whenever we saw a bird in the nets, but it was entirely manageable with the team that I had out.
We set the following nets:
The white dot is the peanut feeder, the yellow is the seed feeder.
We started catching at 8:15 and, as suspected, it was Blue Tit heavy. We caught a good first round and then two or three each round thereafter.
Unfortunately, although the air temperature had improved, a very cold easterly breeze started up. By 10:00 we were all chilled to the bone and I decided that the team’s welfare was as important as that of the birds. The decision was made easier by the fact that the breeze was getting stronger and blowing the pockets of the nets out and the number of birds had fallen right off. Unfortunately, we had also started to retrap birds that we had already processed in the session. We recaptured one for a third time, which is anathema to me, and a “time to stop” indicator – particularly when the weather is itself marginal. So we started taking down at 10:30 and cleared site by just before 11:00. I contacted the Wellbeing team to let them know. They were running behind and were not going to make site until gone 11:00. I hate letting people down, but we are only a peripheral part of their day, and they had plenty of other things to do.
The list for the session was: Blue Tit 8(7); Great Tit 8; Long-tailed Tit 1(1); Robin 1. Totals: 18 birds ringed from 4 species and 8 birds retrapped from 2 species, making (a paltry) 26 birds processed from 4 species.
I should emphasise: no birds showed any signs of cold stress, unlike the team.
We were accompanied all morning by two Robins. The ringing station, set up at the picnic table provided by the Trust, must be close to the border between two territories. There was a minor amount of argy-bargy between them. Although it was also clear that the table is definitely in one of their territories, as it spent the morning moving around us. We put a handful of seed on the table and it was happy to hop around us to grab a snack or two.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 