With Wednesday being extremely wet and windy, we pushed the session back to this morning. I had set feeding stations up at Somerford Common on Saturday afternoon and hoped the birds would find them before we got there today. As I mentioned in my last post, the paddock area where we set our feeding station has been mulched again. It is done every four years, but it does seem to have come around very quickly. I wondered if it would impact on the catch. What I can say is that any impact was positive. However, as usual, the biggest impact was in attracting in Blue and Great Tits.
I got to site a few minutes early so went to check on the feeders and was delighted to find that they were all empty: a good omen for the session. At 7:00 I was joined for the morning by Miranda, Laura, Ellie and Peter. We met at 7:00, and went to set all of the usual nets, but the work they have carried out meant that we had to change the layout somewhat:
The feeding station consisted of two seed and two peanut feeders positioned between nets 3 and 4.
We were opening them by 8.00, when something quite surprising happened: the first five birds out of the nets were Marsh Tits. One was a recapture but four of them were new and needed ringing, taking our total for the year in the Braydon Forest to a best ever 30. During the course of the morning we caught and ringed another two! If things carry on like this we could possibly hit 40 by the end of the year! Bear in mind that last year in the whole of Wiltshire only 44 were ringed. We have caught and ringed six in a session before (Webb’s Wood in July 2018) but never caught seven in a session before today. There has been a couple of other sixes, but those were one or two ringed and the others being recaptures.
The morning was extremely busy: so busy that I didn’t manage to drink any of my coffee and only got to eat one biscuit! Keep this up and I might be able to lose some weight!
As expected, the catch was dominated by Blue and Great Tits. Our list for the morning was: Nuthatch 1; Blue Tit 40(7); Great Tit 11(2); Coal Tit 5; Marsh Tit 6(1); Long-tailed Tit (1); Wren 1; Dunnock (1); Robin (1); Goldcrest 3; Chaffinch 2; Redpoll (1). Totals: 69 birds ringed from 8 species and 14 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 83 birds processed from 12 species. This is our second best ever catch in Somerford Common. The previous best was 97. The key difference is that was on the 12th December 2020 and that catch included 17 Redwing, whereas we have not caught any yet this year.
Highlights of the catch were, obviously, the Marsh Tits, but two female Chaffinch, both with clean legs and eminently ringable, was a nice to have. Our best catch of Coal Tit at Somerford Common this year, only Webb’s Wood in October has had an equivalent number ringed. The rest have been mainly singles, with some twos and threes. In fact, it is our best haul of unringed Coal Tits at Somerford Common since March 2020, i.e. over five-and-a-half years ago. Also, our retrapped Redpoll was ringed at Somerford Common in December 2024 so, as they are no longer resident in the Braydon Forest, it is interesting to note that it has returned to its previous winter site.
We had to cut the session short as the wind started blowing hard and the nets were billowing, so we did a last round at 11:00, closing the nets as we went. Processed the last 11 birds then packed away. With a full team today it took very little time to get sorted and we were off-site by midday, apart from Ellie, who stayed behind to go exploring.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 