As is pretty much a given these days, getting people out into the countryside and involved is known to improve mental health. Involving members of the public in what we do is very important to my ringing activities. A lot of it is ad hoc: explaining to people going past what we are doing and why! Spread the knowledge, reduce the ignorance / antagonism. However, we also carry out a number of scheduled sessions for specific groups.
In the next few weeks I have sessions coming up that will bring people from all sorts of backgrounds into contact with bird ringing. Soon we will be doing a ringing session with the Swindon Wellbeing Group in attendance, and at the end of the month it will be the Malmsbury Natural History Society. Today it was the turn of the Marlborough Men’s Mental Health Group. I had been contacted by my old friend Dave Turner, with whom I worked to run monthly bird ringing sessions at the Help4Heroes recovery and rehabilitation centre at Tedworth House, between 2013 and 2020, when it closed. He is now helping organise other groups and getting them out into nature When he asked for us to host this group, I didn’t hesitate.
I was joined for the morning by Miranda and Ellie. We met at 7:00 and we set the usual nets down the central glade. We had the nets open by 8:00 (I managed not to forget anything this time) and they started catching straight away. Unusually for recent sessions: it was Blue Tit heavy.
Our first round, at just after 8:00, was 10 birds strong. The most remarkable thing about it was that we caught a juvenile female Great Spotted Woodpecker. That is not what was remarkable about it: Ellie extracted and processed it. What was remarkable is that the Great Spotted Woodpecker is the noisiest bird you ever handle when extracting it from a net, handling it to fit the ring, and then to take the biometric measurements. Not a peep from the bird at any stage from extraction to release! I guess Ellie will now be our go to Great Spotted Woodpecker processor.
The Marlborough crew turned up about 9:30, whilst we were working our way through a rather large batch of birds, as we had just taken another 11 birds out of the nets. As ever, the first few minutes was me talking about the ringing scheme, why we do it, how the results are used, etc, and then showing the audience the processing that we carry out. I then asked who would like to be shown how to safely handle and release a bird (okay, I said “Who wants to be bitten by a Blue Tit?”) and several of the group volunteered. Throughout the rest of the session every member of the group got to hold and release two birds. Even the most reluctant of them finally overcame their worries and took part.
The session was busy and we had a good haul of birds: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Nuthatch (2); Blue Tit 26; Great Tit 11(1); Marsh Tit (1); Long-tailed Tit 1(1); Wren (1); Dunnock 1; Robin 3; Blackcap 11; Chiffchaff 15(1); Goldcrest 1. Totals: 70 birds ringed from 9 species and 7 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 77 birds processed from 12 species. Almost all of the birds processed were juveniles, although it is now almost impossible to age Nuthatch and Long-tailed Tit at this time of year, as both adults and juveniles have moulted into full adult plumage, the retrapped Long-tailed Tit was a bird of this year. We also ringed one definite adult each of Blackcap and Blue Tit.
It was great to be able to show so many different species to the attendees and the certainly appreciated it. This just happens to be our biggest September catch in the Firs by some degree, and our second largest ever without the use of supplementary feeding.
One thing that came to my attention last year was the tendency of Great Tit juveniles to moult their tails. Today we had a couple of them in tail moult, one of which showed that recent weather has been a bit difficult for these young birds, with prominent fault bars across the tail feathers: unfortunately, not as faulty as my attempt to photograph it! Too embarrassed to post it!
We closed the nets and took down at 12:30 and were off site by 13:30, leaving the attendees to spend the rest of the day in the wood.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 