It is the quiet time: the winter visitors have gone and the summer visitors have just started arriving. The feeding stations are down or, if not, largely ignored by the birds, as there is better food becoming available. I had actually left the feeders up in Ravensroost, topped up on Friday, primarily because I had a small amount of seed left over from the winter and I didn’t want to keep it until next autumn, nor waste it. With Saturday being very windy, even though it was dry and sunny, I scheduled the session for Sunday morning: same sunshine, much lower winds.
I was joined for the morning by David and Ellie at 6:30 and we set the following nets:
It took us a bit longer than usual to get the nets set up and open: mainly because I didn’t want us catching birds until we were good and ready to start extracting, so we kept the nets closed until the last one was set. That was primarily because Ellie has only just started her extracting and I didn’t want to have to stop net-setting to go and extract early birds, nor to leave them in the nets whilst we finished the setting. Once we had the nets fully open, just before 8:00, we soon started catching.
Unsurprisingly, adjacent to the feeding stations we caught Blue, Great and Coal Tits. However, what was good about this morning were the other birds caught. In the second round we caught a Dunnock and two Goldfinch. The Goldfinch are our first caught in the wood since September 2017! Seven-and-a-half years! Not only that, they are the first we have ever caught in April!
We had only actually caught 110 inside the wood in the previous 16 years, with 30 of those on one memorable day: 4th December 2011 (seared in my memory for reasons I will save for another day, but it involves a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and the reason why I had to change trainer soon after), so any catch of them is very pleasing: even if I can do a couple of hundred every year in my back garden!
In that same round we also caught our first Blackcap of the year:
I was somewhat surprised that it was a female. My expectation is that the males arrive first, establish territory and the females come along later and look for a mate! Two rounds later we did catch a male.
In that round we caught a retrapped Willow Warbler. It was ringed in this wood in April 2023, so clearly at least a second calendar year bird, recaptured on the 8th April 2024, and then again today. Clearly it likes Ravensroost Wood! In our penultimate round we caught another male Willow Warbler.
The last bird out of the nets was a female Goldcrest. Unlike every other bird caught today, she wasn’t yet showing signs of coming into breeding condition.
The list for today was: Blue Tit 4(5); Great Tit 3(4); Coal Tit (1); Dunnock 1; Robin (2); Blackbird 1; Blackcap 2; Chiffchaff 1; Willow Warbler 1(1); Goldcrest 1; Goldfinch 2. Totals: 16 birds ringed from 9 species and 13 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 29 birds processed from 11 species. So, although 29 birds is not a huge catch, it is actually better than our average catch at Ravensroost Wood in April: over 20 sessions in the wood, in this month of the year, the average catch is 24.95.
As well as a nice catch of birds there was a lot else to see. Flowers in bloom were Wood Anemone, Lesser Celandine and some early Bluebells! There were a lot of insects about as well: including my first Orange Tip butterfly of the year, and one of my favourite insects: the Bee Fly.
We decided to close the nets and take down just before midday, as the breeze had finally strengthened and the nets were billowing more than is acceptable. With David’s dad, Trevor’s, help, it didn’t take long and we were away from site soon after 12:30.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 