It has been 12 days since I have managed to get out ringing. The only decent day last week, Wednesday, 22nd October, I managed to go down with a stomach bug. This Monday my wife had the car, doing her good Samaritan thing: the monthly shop for an elderly woman on the outskirts of the village, who lives in a dilapidated old farmhouse at the end of an extremely rough lane, and has no transport. Every other day in between has been wet or far too windy to set nets – and the rest of this week looks like being the same. Today was scheduled for the wind to get up and the rain to start by midday, so the plan was to pack up at 11:30.
Anyway, it was a relief just to be able to get out and do some ringing. We knew it was going to be breezy, so I decided that the Firs gave us the best chance of getting some ringing done. The blackberries have all gone over now, so I wasn’t expecting a huge catch, as I haven’t set up supplementary feeding stations yet. However, I was hopeful of the odd feeding flock of titmice or lotties and any winter visitors that might turn up. Unfortunately, no Siskin or Redpoll this time.
I was joined by Miranda and Ellie for the session. We met at 6:30 and set the usual nets down the central glade. We started catching straight away, with a Dunnock, as we were walking back having just opened the nets.
It wasn’t the most exhilarating of catches, with mainly Blue Tits, but there were some nice birds as well. Five Wrens, and not one horribly twisted, double-pocketed nightmare between them! Four Goldcrest, one a recapture from earlier this year, was nice. The best part of the catch came in the last round at 11:30, as we were closing the nets prior to taking down, with two Chiffchaff.
The catch for the morning was: Blue Tit 10(6); Great Tit 2; Marsh Tit (1); Long-tailed Tit (1); Wren 4(1); Dunnock (2); Robin 2(1); Chiffchaff 2; Goldcrest 3(1). Totals: 23 birds ringed from 6 species and 13 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 36 birds processed from 9 species.
We had some fabulous view of two Sparrowhawks. The first I saw was a male that landed on a branch in a tree about 20m away from our ringing station and I had fabulous views as it spread its tail for a quick preen before flying off through the wood. Unfortunately, it went away at tree top height and not anywhere near the nets. About 15 minutes later a female Sparrowhawk spent a good ten minutes just circling well above the tree tops, annoying a small flock of birds that kept trying to mob her, but she was clearly undisturbed by them. It was almost like a display flight – perhaps it was!
There were lots of calls by other birds we didn’t catch: arriving on site to a Song Thrush just warming up whilst it was still dark. Later Jay and Great Spotted Woodpecker could be heard calling on and off all morning.
Anyway, as we decided to shut the nets at 11:30, as mentioned before, the wind began to pick up significantly: so we spent quite a lot of time extracting leaves as we closed them up. We processed the last five birds before taking down and clearing away and were off-site about 12:30. By the time we were ready to leave the wind was blowing strongly, so we were fortunate to get done what we did.
Not the most thrilling catch, but nice to get out. I did set up a feeding station before we left, the first of the winter, so I expect we will get larger catches but titmouse heavy over the next few months.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 