With winds gusting to 40+ mph on Wednesday, we put off our visit to Somerford Common until this morning. I had popped out on Tuesday to top up the feeders, which I will be taking down next week.
A slightly weird session: Miranda and I were there for the entire morning, Laura had to leave just before 8:00 to go for physio, and was back by 10:00. Pete had to leave for 30 minutes at 8:00 for a business call (he had to find somewhere with a signal) and another one for 10:00. We set all of the usual nets but this time added two more 18m nets along the inside of the paddock, along Shooters Hill Road:
We have always seen birds along that part of the site, so thought we would give it a go. Next time, probably won’t bother, it didn’t catch a single bird. In fact, the catch was so awful that for the next few sessions we will be moving to a different part of the site.
We guessed pretty well straight away that it wasn’t going to be the busiest session we had ever had. The feeding flocks have very definitely dispersed and the feeders had barely been touched between Tuesday and first thing Thursday. In fact, rides 5 and 6 provided most of the catch for the first time this winter.
It really was dead. The list for the session was: Nuthatch (1); Blue Tit 3(2); Great Tit 1(1); Dunnock 1; Chiffchaff 1(1); Chaffinch 1; Redpoll 1. Totals: 8 birds ringed from 6 species and 5 birds retrapped from 4 species, making 13 birds processed from 7 species.
It didn’t help that the wind strengthened at 10:00 so we closed and took down the paddock nets at 10:00, and then took down the main ride nets from which we extracted the Redpoll and a same day retrapped Chiffchaff. Pete never got back from his second business call, and we were off-site before he returned.
The lull before the migrants reach us in any numbers!
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 