Normally we would do our midweek session on a Wednesday, but the weather forecast for Wednesday, to and including Friday, is for it to be wet and windy and unsuitable for ringing, so we brought it forward a day. I was joined by Miranda for the session. We met at 6:30 and set 3 net rides: two of 3 x 18m nets and one of 2 x 18m + 1 x 9 m nets. The sun was out but the temperature was 0oC. As the sun started to warm the site, the westerly breeze got up, and it was incredibly cold until you got out of the breeze. The nets were nicely sheltered, so it was warmer doing rounds than processing the birds. It took until gone 10:00 before the ambient temperature reached what could be called warm!
This was the ringing highlight of our day: our first juvenile Robins of the year. Not just one but three. In the 13 years I have been ringing at Lower Moor Farm, we have only ever ringed a single juvenile earlier, by one day, in 2024. Most of them don’t appear until the last two weeks of the month.
When you add in three juvenile Song Thrush as well in the session, things are looking promising. Out on Mallard Lake we had sightings of the Mute Swan pair with their four cygnets, a female Mallard with a dozen ducklings in tow and, a first for Lower Moor Farm, a pair of Greylag Geese with their goslings!
The list for today was: Treecreeper (1); Wren 1; Dunnock (2); Robin 2[3](1); Song Thrush 1[3]; Blackbird (1); Cetti’s Warbler (1); Blackcap 3(3); Garden Warbler 3(1); Chiffchaff 1(1); Goldcrest (2); Bullfinch 1. Totals: 12 adults ringed from 7 species, 6 juveniles ringed from 2 species and 13 birds retrapped from 9 species, making 31 birds processed from 12 species.
There was a lot going on all over the site: a fabulous morning for Dragonflies! Adjacent to the ringing station is a large oak tree, which was in the sun all morning and it was absolutely alive with Four-spotted Chaser and Downy Emerald Dragonflies.
I had to extract a Downy Emerald that had become entangled in the net. Delighted to say that it came out unscathed:
Whilst we were in between net rounds this rather fabulous Azure Damselfly came and posed on our net bag hanger:
On my last net round around the lower nets I carried out another rescue: this was a more difficult one, but again it was successful:
Talking of immature Four-spotted Chaser, poor quality photograph taken on my phone, but there is a newly emerged immature and, in the red oval, you can see the exuvia.
We had a nice chat with Ellie, the Northern Reserves Estates Manager, and her trainee, Evan, and the volunteer who was working with her (sorry chap, can’t remember your name! Getting old!). Evan came along when taking a break from mowing duties and ringed a couple of birds with us. Both he and Ellie will be joining us to learn some more about ringing in the months to come.
All in all, despite it not being the biggest haul, and the bitterly cold wind for much of the morning, it was a really enjoyable session. We packed up at 11:30, which took rather a long time, because we had to remove a lot of Willow catkins from the nets and, as fast as we were removing them, despite the nets being closed, they were filling up again! I got away from site at about 12:45.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 