I was joined for this morning’s session by Laura, Miranda and, for her second session, Ellie, my newest trainee. It was very cold when we arrived on site, not sub-zero but, unlike some of the sub-zero days that I have been out, it felt colder. I had hoped to get to Blakehill Farm but, although the forecast was for the day to warm up, it also said the wind would gust up to 20 mph, so I had to decide on a woodland site. The Firs is next on the list but the Braydon Bog is just too wet and muddy for me at the moment, so Somerford Common West was next after that on the list. We met at 7:00 and set the following nets:
The white dot in the middle of ride 2 is the feeding station: one 1l peanut feeder and one 1.5l seed feeder.
The birds started arriving as soon as the nets were open. For the first two hours Laura and Miranda processed the birds. To get Ellie comfortable, each bird was handed to her after processing, so that she could release them. Miranda had to leave at 9:30 so I took the decision to start Ellie’s training in processing birds: species identification, ringing or reading already ringed birds, ageing, sexing, including assessing breeding condition at this time of year, maximum chord wing length and weighing. The first bird she ringed was a Nuthatch.
It was a pretty predictable catch: mainly Blue and Great Tits. To be honest, my main motivation for going to this site is that it is where I had my last decent haul of Siskin. That was in March 2022, so I was hoping we might get the odd one. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any. The one finch we did catch was a lovely male Chaffinch. Only we couldn’t ring it. Although its legs looked clean, the back of the legs showed signs of insipient Fringilla papillomavirus: a dull off-white layer. I wasn’t prepared to take the risk, and also thoroughly disinfected my hands once it was released: no cross-contamination.
It wasn’t a busy catch, which worked well for enabling Ellie to work without the pressure of numbers and for me to spend some time with her. In total we caught and processed the following: Nuthatch 2(1); Blue Tit 6(2); Great Tit 3(2); Coal Tit 1(2); Long-tailed Tit 2; Robin 1(1); Goldcrest 2. Totals: 17 birds ringed from 7 species and 8 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 25 birds processed from 7 species. Unfortunately, no Great Spotted Woodpeckers: although there was plenty of drumming going on. We had a Blackbird bounce off the nets as well.
The catch fell away after 10:30 and we decided to start packing up at 11:00. A few more birds got caught whilst we were taking down, so we didn’t get finished packing away and off-site until 12:30.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 