January has been a very difficult month. I had planned for ten sessions this month. Thanks to the weather and the forecast for this coming Saturday, it looks as if we will only have managed four of those sessions! I will return to this at the end of the session report.
I was joined for the session at 7:30 by Laura and Pete and we set the nets down the central glade. However, with Pete needing to leave for work at 10:30, and there only being the three of us, I decided to only set the nets from the bottom of the hill onwards, so we had 3 x 16m and 5 x 18m set up and open by 8:15.
Of course, every session this month has delivered firsts for the year. Today’s were: Redpoll, Blackbird and Song Thrush. This was the first bird out of the nets this morning:
It flew into the net before we had a chance to open it. Fortunately, it just sat in the pocket of the top shelf and didn’t wrap itself in lots of net. In fact, I was just able to reach in and lift it out. That Song Thrush is the first that my team have captured and ringed since the 20th August 2025! The Redpoll was the first we have caught since the 20th November 2025 but we caught our previous Blackbird on the 31st December 2025.
The weather was dry with no wind, but that meant that we spent the entire morning shrouded in mist. The sun threatened to break through for about half-an-hour at 10:00, but then disappeared That also has an impact on bird movements and on the nets. They become beaded with moisture, making them more visible, and incredibly wet by the end of the session. My nets from this morning are currently hanging in front of the radiator in the bathroom in the hope they will dry out before I need them again.
The list from this morning was: Blue Tit 14(14); Great Tit (3); Coal Tit (3); Long-tailed Tit (1); Wren (1); Robin 2; Redwing 2; Song Thrush 1; Blackbird 1; Goldcrest (1); Chaffinch 3; Redpoll 1. Totals: 24 birds ringed from 7 species and 23 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 47 species processed from 12 species.
It never warmed up at all this morning and, after Pete left at 10:30, Laura and I agreed to pack up at 11:30. We did our last round then and closed up the nets. There were only a couple of birds, so we left them in the bags whilst we took the nets down: it only took us 15 minutes to get them down, and then we processed the remaining birds. The benefit of that was one less trudge up that hill! It really is the most exercise we get at any of our sites. I need a stick to help propel me up it these days! We had it all packed away and were off site by midday!
To return to the theme that I opened with, it looks as if Saturday is going to be horribly wet, so I think that four sessions is all we are going to get this month. Quite remarkably we have processed 304 birds from 16 species, all in local woodlands of the Braydon Forest – mainly we were restricted to woodlands because our other sites were too exposed to the weather.
As you can see, it is not our largest catch in January, but it is our highest average number processed, our highest ever average ringed but not our highest ever retrap average. All I hope is that February is a lot better weatherwise.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 