We were scheduled to be at Somerford Common this morning but I woke up to find it was blowing hard, so I contacted Laura to say “Sorry but..” only she replied that it was nice and calm in her garden. So we agreed that I would head to hers and we would get set up. We have been trying to do so for a while but, like my garden, it does need calm conditions. It was a good job that I sent the message when I did, as they were just getting into the car to leave for Somerford.
We set the following nets:
All nets are single 5-Shelf nets. Nets 1, 4 and 6 are 12m, nets 2 and 5 were 9m and net 3 was 6m. Inside the open triangle of nets 1, 2 and 3 were several seed feeders with variously, nyjer seed, mixed seed, peanuts and water.
With my arriving a bit later than we intended to start we had the nets open by 7:30 and started catching straight away: with a juvenile Blue and Great Tit at 7:45 and, five minutes later, an adult Dunnock,
We were never inundated with birds, but one or two pretty regularly throughout the morning. There were some notable first for the year. Our first first was this beauty caught at 9:00:
I have had plenty in my garden but it has just been too windy to set nets there, so this was a lovely first for the year.
That was then followed 30 minutes later, by this stunning addition to the list. Again, our first for the year:
The wind started to get up at about 10:40, so we closed the nets (a delicious bacon bap (thanks Mark), fabulous coffee) and a couple more birds later, at 11:20, took down and packed away. I was home before midday.
The list for the morning was as follows: Adult [Juvenile]: Great Spotted Woodpecker [1]; Blue Tit 1[4]; Great Tit [8]; Coal Tit [1]; Dunnock 1; Robin 1[1]; Chaffinch [1]; Goldfinch [2]; Bullfinch 1. Totals: 4 adults ringed from 4 species and 18 juveniles ringed from 7 species, making 22 birds processed from 9 species.
Now to what might have been. We had multiple birds, mainly Chaffinch and Goldfinch avoid the nets altogether as, although we moved one of the nyjer feeders into the open triangle, where it had originally been positioned the messy little what names had dropped more than enough on the floor to keep them fed all morning and put of the nets. We also had a Pied Wagtail, Collared Doves, another Great Spotted Woodpecker and other birds bounce off the nets and avoid the pockets. Flying over or flying through were Carrion Crow, Jackdaws and a Sparrowhawk.
To make it worse, we had these two unringed birds that we couldn’t ring:
Both of these birds were suffering from Fringilla papillomavirus and so could not be ringed. However, their suffering is nothing compared to this poor soul:
This youngster is not suffering from illness but looks to have had a close encounter with the neighbourhood Sparrowhawk: not while it was in our net, I hasten to add, just in case anyone thinks that’s how it got caught by the Sparrowhawk. Laura watched it fly into the net and immediately extracted it. We didn’t ring it.
I made the mistake of looking at the forecast for tomorrow and, apparently, it is going to be pretty calm in my garden tomorrow, so I guess the lie in is out of the question: I quite fancy some juvenile Greenfinches!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 