With just Ellie and myself available for today’s session I decided not to set too many nets, limiting it to just seven. I arrived a bit early, at 6:15, and was greeted by this little individual. It actually hopped onto one of my walking boots as I was preparing to put them on.
Ellie arrived at the main carpark at the agreed time of 6:30 and I introduced her to our companion straight away. It stayed around us all session, rarely moving more than a couple of feet away from the ringing table. Ironically, we never got to put a ring on it. We set the nets along the first stage of the main ride:
If there had been more bodies available we would have run rides along the cross path above ride 3 and would probably had a bigger haul but we were very satisfied with what we got. We set the nets, leaving them closed until we had put up the last and then opening them as we walked back to the ringing station, only to find our first bird of the morning already in the ringing station end of ride 1. This is our twenty-first new Marsh Tit of the year. I have mentioned before that it is looking like being a good year, possibly matching the 27 of 2019 or even the 28 0f 2017. That is looking even more possible now, as we actually caught and ringed another two juvenile Marsh Tits during the rest of the session: taking us to 21 for the year to date. It is already our fourth best catch for any complete year, 22 in 2020 being the third best. With 60% of our Marsh Tit ringing catches taking place in the second half of the year things are looking positive.
Like many recent catches, as one would expect, the bulk of the catch were juveniles. Saturday’s catch at Red Lodge was all juveniles, today all birds ringed were juveniles, but this time we did have two adults: a retrapped Treecreeper and Blackbird. The Blackbird was a particularly interesting bird: LJ52371 was ringed as an adult in June 2018. By my reckoning that bird is at least eight years old. It would need to live double that to match the longevity record but it is the oldest that I can find in our records.
Overall, we had a very pleasant morning, with an excellent variety of birds. The largest part of the catch was juvenile Goldcrest:
One thing that I noticed, the Marsh Tits excepted, was the absence of the commoner titmice in the catch (we had caught a Long-tailed Tit but, as we all know, they are not titmice, not even closely related). I voiced this to Ellie, who was, at that time, watching a few titmice in the trees around the ringing station. I really should have known better: next round Blue Tit, Great Tit and Coal Tit! Bitey, bitey!
The total catch was: Treecreeper 1(1); Blue Tit 2; Great Tit 1; Coal Tit 1; Marsh Tit 3; Long-tailed Tit 1; Wren 3; Robin 6; Blackbird (1); Blackcap 5; Willow Warbler 1; Goldcrest 7. Totals: 31 juvenile birds ringed from 11 species and 2 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 33 birds processed from 12 species.
One of the things that I find interesting at this time of year is just how tatty the heads of juvenile male Blackcaps look as they moult their cap:
So, from a birding perspective it was very satisfying. From another perspective it was stunning:
This was flying around at the top of the ride and posed nicely for photos. Naturally, my camera and macro lens were back at the car, so I grabbed this shot on my phone. It is a first for me, and takes my UK moth list to 501 species and my Wiltshire moth list to 467 species. Soon after, I had fabulous views of a male Emperor Dragonfly: so blue, absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, no chance of a photo!
We started packing away at 11:10, taking down ride 3 first, as it had only produced one bird, and then ride 2 and ride 1 in that order, only ride 1 did insist on catching another bird every time we turned around to go and take it down. In the end we had to close the net to stop any more birds dropping in so we could actually get away for some lunch! We finally got away at about 12:15, very happy with our morning’s work.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 