I Didn’t Expect to Find a Zebra: Friday, 20th June 2025

With Laura’s two boys being off school today, and busy at the weekend, I agreed to run an extra session at Lower Moor Farm this morning. Because of the possibility of extreme temperatures and, later, rain, we started a bit earlier (at 6:00) and planned to finish at 11:00, with nets set in shaded areas. We set the following nets:

We caught our first bird straight away: a Garden Warbler, which was quickly followed by three Blackcaps and this:

Another first for the year for my team! Always nice to catch.

The next round produced another decent haul and by 7:40 we had 13 birds processed from six species. Adam and Daniel were quite excited, Laura and I were rather trepidatious as this almost exactly mirrored what had happened on Wednesday! Our trepidation increased as time ticked on and we caught nothing else. I did say that if things had not improved by 10:00 we would give it up as a bad job. Then, at 9:00, we caught another two birds and, for the next eight rounds we caught at least one bird in every round, ending up with 24 birds processed, as follows: Blue Tit [2]; Great Tit [2]; Wren [2]; Dunnock [1](3); Robin [3]; Song Thrush 1; Blackbird (1); Cetti’s Warbler [1]; Blackcap 3[1](1); Garden Warbler 2; Chiffchaff [1]. Totals: 6 adults ringed from 3 species, 13 juveniles ringed from 8 species and 5 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 24 birds processed from 11 species. Not the biggest or best catch but a pretty enjoyable morning.

So to the reason for the hyperbolic title:

I fell in absolute awe of this little fellow: jumping from bag to bag, across cracks in the table, and being hugely entertaining for a good five minutes before he disappeared. These were the last 30 seconds before he toddled off!

There was a lot of bird song all morning, Merlin was having a lovely time (we never did find the Redstart) but the loudest and longest was a male Song Thrush. Why they are called Song Thrush and not Cacophony Thrush I do not know! Anyway, he did not shut up all morning, until we caught him in one of the nets at 11:00: our penultimate bird of the session. He then remained strangely quiet until we had everything taken down and left site at 11:40.

There was some nice other stuff going on: a Little Egret over the other side of the lake – still fairly uncommon at Lower Moor Farm. A male Cuckoo still calling around the site. We had a Black-tailed Skimmer land on Laura’s packet of custard creams before flying off. Then we had the pleasure of watching a pair of them copulating as they flew around the ringing station. As ever, there were hundreds of blue damselflies. I didn’t take the time out for speciation today although, when taking down the last net, I saw the smallest bright blue damselfly I have ever seen. It looked half the length of any others around.

We saw quite a few froglets, and were exceptionally careful to ensure that we didn’t step on any.

One particularly nice sighting though was a large number of these lovely butterflies:

By 11:00 it was getting hot and oppressive and there were a few spots of rain, it was very humid and uncomfortable, so we got on with taking down after a very pleasant, if not very busy, session. It does support my decision to not continue with the Constant Effort Site there.