A quite phenomenal July for the Group and for Jonny in particular. He processed over 1,000 birds this month: 861 adults ringed, 54 pulli ringed and 129 retrapped. Oh to be young, fit and agile! The rest of us managed a paltry 254 between us! There are excuses: in the north we have actually had a lot of high wind and rain and some very poor catches. I think the woodlands have been deserted as my catches in there have all been in the low tens, and the open areas are just too prone to the winds, so I haven’t been able to run sessions there. Anyway, these are the results for our best ever July, and our fourth best month ever.
The average catch sizes were much bigger than last year, despite the fact that my catches averaged only 22.8 per session, whilst Jonny’s sessions averaged in at just under 73.
There was a decent increase in the number of species, but there were some not caught this year that were last, as follows:
New this July: Green Woodpecker, Little Owl, Moorhen, Nuthatch, Spotted Flycatcher, Swift and Woodpigeon. Missing compared to last July: Buzzard, Coal Tit and Yellow Wagtail. Of those, the Buzzard was ringed as a pullus at one of Jonny’s farmland sites, the Yellow Wagtail was ringed at Brown’s Farm near Marlborough and the Coal Tit at Green Lane Wood WWT Nature Reserve.
The highlights have to be the Lapwing, Little Owl, Moorhen and Swifts. The Lapwing chicks continue to add to the Wiltshire & Swindon Biological Records Centre (okay, Jonny, Aurora and Jackson’s) Peewit Project. This takes the total for this year to 38 Lapwing chicks ringed and two subsequently recaptured, with Ian catching and ringing one on Salisbury Plain.
The Little Owl was caught by Jonny at one of his Sutton Benger farmland sites. Interestingly, this is only the second ever Little Owl the group has caught: the first being in January of this year, by Andy at one of his new sites near the Imber Ranges.
Not the only July ringed Little Owl for the group: Miranda got to ring her first, coming out with me on one of my Salisbury Plain sessions:
I love how annoyed this bird looks: I don’t think there is another species that can look this cross! When heading off to Salisbury Plain to check on the raptors we all meet up at Westdown Camp. This summer there has been a noticeably decent sized flock of Swifts in and around the camp. The army have provided a large number of nest boxes at the camp. This year Ian, Andy and our friend, the wonderfully named Jack Daw, have been monitoring the nests this year and managed to ring nine pulli.
It was a good month for woodpeckers: four juvenile Great Spotted Woodpeckers ringed and an adult retrapped plus two juvenile Green Woodpeckers, one at Lower Moor Farm, the other at the Imber Ranges.
Amongst the improved numbers in the catch the most pleasing for me was Lesser Whitethroat: eleven in July last year, twenty one ringed and two retrapped this July. That included my first Lesser Whitethroat at Lower Moor Farm since August 2020!
Jonny’s Tree Sparrow monitoring continues to amplify, with adults and pulli caught and ringed and, this time, a good number of birds retrapped.
Rumour has it that the autumn migration is already underway, so our two busiest months could be even busier than normal.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 