The plan was to go to Blakehill Farm west today. However, when we were on site there on Good Friday we found a very large bull sitting in the middle of our main netting area. Although the Wildlife Trust’s bulls are as docile as can be, I am not keen on setting up around a one tonne potential net destroyer. That said, it was a good Friday: I had Laura and her boys with me to check on the Barn Owl boxes and we found that both boxes on the west side of Blakehill Farm were each occupied by a pair of Barn Owls. No sign of any eggs yet, but a good sign regardless.
Instead of heading to Blakehill, I decided to have a first go at my breeding season net set up at Somerford Common. This is at the other side of the paddock area where we have the winter feeding station, heading down the ride from the main car park, where we set our ringing station. I was joined for the morning by Laura and Adam. We met at 6:00 to set up the nets and the ringing station:
These are all rides of 3 x 18m 5-shelf nets, plus one single 18m 5-shelf net. Arriving on site we, unfortunately, found that the wind was blowing from north-north-east, and funnelling straight through where the yellow net rides are on the diagram. As you can see, there is a lot of open area at this site, and the only sheltered area were we could set the nets were the two rides in white. So we set considerably less netting than intended.
As we only had the six nets up, we were pleased that they started catching straight away. It was never a heavy catch, two or three birds each time and, to be honest, it died a death at 10:00. Not only that but the wind was getting stronger, and the nets were beginning to billow. I decided that we would give it another 30 minutes, but we caught nothing, so we packed away at 10:30 and were away soon after 11:00.
One of the other considerations was that each net set was clearly in the territory of a male Willow Warbler. We caught the same two Willow Warblers several times each during the session, and I decided that we needed to give them a chance to get on with their lives. I don’t like catching the same bird multiple times in a session.
It was a nice little catch though: Coal Tit 1; Robin 2; Blackcap 3; Chiffchaff 4; Willow Warbler 2(3); Goldcrest 1(1). Totals: 13 birds ringed from 6 species and 4 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 17 birds processed from 6 species.
Two of the three Blackcap were female. They must have been fairly recent arrivals as neither was showing any signs of starting to develop a brood patch, unlike the male, who had a well developed cloacal protuberance.
The retrapped Goldcrest was ringed in October 2022 and has been caught in Spring of 2023. 2024 and 2025. The oldest of the retrapped Willow Warblers was ringed as an adult in April 2023, and has been recaptured in the following two springtimes, having over-wintered in sub-Saharan Africa. Quite a feat of endurance for a bird weighing only seven or eight grams, with a wing length of around about 70mm / wingspan of approximately 155mm.
One of the highlights of the morning for me was this:
What is good about it is that it has been an excellent Spring for Primrose and, at Gospel Oak and Blakehill Farms, the fields are alive with Cowslip, so this completes the set for me. That they have appeared in an area that was covered in trees, until it was cleared for pulping in winter 23/24, without additional human intervention, is testament to the enduring resilience of so many plants. There were multiple clumps across the cleared area. Of course, I was lucky enough to be the one who found the Greater Butterfly Orchids after they widened the rides running north to south, along which I set my nets:
The weather is looking a little unsettled for the next week but hoping to get out again on Thursday.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 