A very decent month for us. It is our largest April catch to date! I think everybody had something to be pleased with: from Andy’s Long-eared Owl; Johnny and Aurora kicking off their Lapwing monitoring for 2025 with several broods ringed and I am never going to be unhappy when we manage to ring a Firecrest!
We did have five more species at each category: ringed, retrapped and in total.
Added to the catch this year were Bullfinch, Firecrest, Garden Warbler, Grey Wagtail, Jay, Lapwing, Long-eared Owl, Sparrowhawk and Tree Sparrow. Missing from the list this year was Linnet, Meadow Pipit, Redpoll and Skylark.
The outright highlight has to be the Long-eared Owl. This is only the second that the Group has caught: four and a half years after Ian and Andy caught the first: at their Imber Ranges site. This was caught in pretty much the same place at the same site.
Very much a great start to the Peewit Project for this year. Four broods with eight chicks ringed. There have been 15 previous captures of Lapwing chicks since 2013, 10 were done a decade ago. Andy has done three of them, most of which were processed on or around Salisbury Plain, and Jonny and Aurora ringed one each at the onset of the Peewit Project in May of last year. Those two, like these April ones, are significant because have been processed in the north of the county.
As for the Firecrest, it is the fourth that we have caught in the Braydon Forest: the first was in Ravensroost Wood, the next two were in Red Lodge, and the most recent at Somerford Common West. I don’t want to be smug but, of the 12 Firecrest we have ringed, my little group have ringed eight of them, Jonny has done one at Biss Wood and Andy has ringed the other three at one of his Warminster sites.
Chiffchaff numbers were up but Blackcap were down.
One major difference is the significant increase in the number of birds retrapped. I have no idea why that should be the case. A key part was the significant increase in the numbers of Blue Tit and Great Tit recaptured. It is hard to understand what the driver for that was: feeding stations have been taken down long since. It was our largest ever April retrap of both species. That said, they make up just over 50% of the increase in retraps so there were plenty of other contributions.
We have had a couple of nice recoveries this month: a Chiffchaff ringed in Kent in September of last year recovered by Andy at one of his Warminster sites 238km west of where it was ringed, and a Great Tit ringed in Surrey in June 2023 and recaptured by Jonny, having moved 110km west to one of his sites near East Tytherton. A Sedge Warbler that Jonny ringed at Langford Lakes in August 2022 was recovered by the Teifi RG, in Teifi, Ceradigian, 214km West North-West on the 22nd April.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 