With the weather forecast suggesting it was going to rain all day, the Met Office giving a 70% chance of rain, I thought I would have a look at their satellite tracking system. This said that it would rain until 7:00 and would then clear up, so I told the team to meet at the Firs at 7:00, so we missed the rain. Getting up at 6:00 and finding that there had been no rain at all was somewhat galling!
Anyway, Miranda, Laura, Pete and I met up at 7:00 and set our nets down the central glade: 9 x 18m and 2 x 12m nets. Working in two teams, we had them open by 7:45 and started catching straight away.
The catch started quite well, building up to a couple of rounds with ten and nine birds respectively. A high proportion of those birds were juvenile Blue Tit, Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Robin. Much as that was lovely, the highlight had to be three Nuthatch: two unringed females and one retrapped male. We actually caught five Nuthatch during the session. It is not something that happens very often.
Miranda had to leave at 10:45, as she was going over the road to Echo Lodge Meadows to do a bumble bee survey with her Malmesbury & District Natural History Society. It had been planned for Saturday but the weather had been so dire that it had to be cancelled as, indeed, had our planned ringing session for the bio-blitz at Lower Moor Farm.
Soon after she left the Swindon Well-being Team arrived, hence the title for this piece. The Wiltshire Wildlife Trust run a whole series of groups for helping adults and children who have life challenges get in touch with nature. That often involves bringing them along to my ringing sessions, so they can get closer to the bird life. I do know that they thoroughly enjoyed today’s session, Astonishingly, as soon as they arrived we had our two best rounds of the day: 18 and 16 birds in each catch respectively. Even better, most of them were juveniles. However, there had been a lot of talk about Great Spotted woodpeckers, how they loved them but never got to see them close up. Anyway, as we were processing the birds from the last catch, two birds hit the nearest nets: two of the aforesaid Great Spotted Woodpeckers: they were beside themselves in delight. That one was an adult male, and the other a recently fledged juvenile, added to their enjoyment.
The list for the session was: Great Spotted Woodpecker [1](1); Nuthatch 4(1); Treecreeper 1; Blue Tit 1[15](1); Great Tit [2]; Long-tailed Tit [3[(1); Wren 1(2); Dunnock [1]; Robin 2[8](1); Song Thrush [1](1); Blackbird [1](1); Blackcap 2[5](3); Garden Warbler [1]; Chiffchaff 3[3]; Willow Warbler [2]; Goldcrest [1]. Totals: 14 adults ringed from 7 species, 44 juveniles ringed from 13 species and 12 birds retrapped from 9 species, making 70 birds processed from 16 species.
That is a truly excellent catch for this site in the summer months: obviously boosted by the recently fledged juveniles. Perhaps more impressive is the 16 species. That is a lot for a small woodland like the Firs. All of the juveniles were highlights but the stand out for me was this bird:
In all of the time I have been ringing in the Firs, I started in August 2012, we have only ringed 12 Garden Warblers at this site. The first in 2019, then none until 2024, when the wood was thinned and opened up more. Since then we have had three in 2024, two in 2025 and, so far, four in 2026. There has been an upsurge of them in Ravensroost this year as well and looks like it could be a record year for them in the Forest.
We decided to do a last round and close the nets as we went, which we did, having extracted another 16 birds. Once we had processed them we took down and cleared away: leaving the well-being team to their campfire lunch!
One thing that they found in the little recreational and seating area were the remains of a Woodpigeon and a Great Spotted Woodpecker that had clearly been predated by a Sparrowhawk, probably a female, possibly a Goshawk.
So, after a thoroughly enjoyable session, we managed to get away by about 13:30. Rather made up for the lack of action over the last week.
One disappointment for me was this:
Only disappointed because I wanted us to catch an adult Robin looking knackered after rearing a brood of chicks, so I could come out with another of my terrible puns, and put a photograph of it up and title it “Another Ragged Robin”! The plant Ragged Robin is very much a declining species in the UK, so finding several of them in the Firs was, itself, something of a treat.
Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond 