Quite the most disorganised, staccato session I can remember. Sitting here writing this whilst absolutely wrecked. Having not been able to get out all week, today was a good opportunity to get to Blakehill: low wind speed, with some moderate gusting from 11:00. Laura was coming along to help set up, but would be leaving about 11:30 as she had a work training session this afternoon. We met at 6:30 to set up. First problem: I had packed the car the evening before, only I forgot to pack the guy ropes. It isn’t far to home so I shot back off to the house to collect the ropes. We had decided to set the ringing station out on the plateau, save all of the walking backwards and forwards when we didn’t need to, as we weren’t setting up any hedgerow nets.
We set up the Mipit triangle on the way out to the plateau nets. Second problem: the lure I had been using last time was too quiet, so I sorted out one of my older MP3 players, with a couple of really good speakers. Charged them all fully the night before, and charged a backup battery for the MP3 player, plus a second pair of speakers. Set them going in the middle of the triangle: everything started playing – for two cycles and then stopped. Nothing could persuade it to work again. That was the end of that. We left the triangle in place: you never know what you might catch.
We then most of our usual plateau nets:
It was quite a long process getting the nets sorted, and we didn’t have them open until 8:30. However, as we were finishing off net 8, Laura looked over and said “Birds in the Mipit nets”, so I asked her to go and extract them whilst I finished of net 8. She came back with six Blue Tits, a Chiffchaff and a Willow Warbler from the Mipit triangle; I returned with a Blue Tit, a Wren and a Willow Warbler. Not a bad first round one would have thought. We ringed and released the birds.
Problem 3: we must have extracted each of those same Blue Tits at one time or another from every net we had set out on the plateau: Laura must have done over 50 extractions today and actually ringed just 14 birds. It did teach me something though: I won’t be setting up my ringing station anywhere near any bushes in future! It was the worst session ever for same day retraps in the 16 years of my ringing career.
Despite the lack of a Mipit lure, and the lack of Mipits, that triangle was the hit of the session. At least it had the big hit of the session: this chased a couple of Dunnocks into the net and got itself caught:
This was Laura’s first Kestrel extraction and processing. I showed her the “cuddle grip”: how to hold the bird without getting clawed or ripped by the beak, which she mastered quickly, and escaped with only very minor injuries! As it was Laura’s first experience, we spent a deal of time working out age and sex: thanks to Geoff Baker’s excellent book for steering us in the right direction
The Dunnocks were unharmed and processed as well – and let free long before the Kestrel was released.
We had a couple of small catch rounds after that, and then, at 11:00 a nice fall of Chiffchaff and another two Whinchat juveniles. What was really good about these two was that their median coverts were textbook juvenile male and female.
Soon after we had processed those birds, Laura had to leave, at about 11:30. I thought to leave things open for another 30 minutes but, almost immediately, the gentle breeze with the occasional gust became a full scale blow out and I had to close the nets. Apart from the Mipit triangle which was, thankfully, isolated from any close bramble bushes so, when closed, they were safe. Unfortunately, one of them was badly affected, and I spent over an hour extracting it from some rather annoying, and painfully spiky, bushes. i.e. problem 4!
Anyway, the list for the session was: Kestrel 1; Blue Tit 12; Wren 1, Dunnock 2; Whinchat 2; Blackcap 1; Whitethroat 1(1); Lesser Whitethroat 1; Chiffchaff 7; Willow Warbler 2; Reed Bunting 1. Totals: 31 birds ringed from 11 species and 1 retrapped bird, making 32 birds processed from 11 species. Every bird processed, except the Reed Bunting, was a juvenile.
Having finished the processing I started packing up. With the net extraction issue, plus somehow losing two bungee cords that never left my car, and seemingly having fewer pole tops than bottoms, I was a long time leaving site: getting away at 15:00. Here’s hoping that tomorrow is better organised (on my part) and that we also get a decent catch!
One hopeful sign: finally I saw some craneflies flying around. It seems that Tipulidae are a key prey species for Meadow pipits. At least, the abundance of Meadow Pipits does seem to coincide with the emergence of the craneflies.
One slightly disappointing issue: apparently there has been a large number of Yellow Wagtails associating with the cattle. With no cattle on the plateau today, there was no sign of Yellow Wagtails. However, from next week there will be cows and calves on the plateau, so fingers crossed that there might still be some about!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 