Having had such excellent hauls in the Firs in June, it was time to have a go in Webb’s Wood. It is exactly 680m due south from the ringing station in the Firs to that in Webb’s Wood. I was hopeful that we would find a similar result in Webb’s. Unfortunately, hopes were not fulfilled. It was just a very ordinary session. However, it was almost exactly our average number for sessions carried in July in Webb’s Wood.
I was joined by Pete, Rosie and Ella. Rosie was my regular trainee until she changed job and started working for the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust. However, she still does occasional sessions for the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust volunteers, and this morning was running a pond dipping session for the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s children’s Watch Group at 9:30. When she does that she brings her friend Ella with her and comes along to help us set up and stays. Ella has been out with us once before and is great company: which is just as well as we had plenty of time to chat during the morning. We all met at 5:00. Fortunately, the weather wasn’t too hot and, even more fortunately, most of the boggy area had dried out. We set the following nets:
I didn’t overdo the nets because Rosie was going to be leaving at 9:00, which would leave just me and Pete to look after them as Ella had never extracted Passerines before, nor ringed any before today. when started I training her to do so.
It wasn’t busy but it was a very pleasant morning with some lovely birds. We were pleased to get yet another juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker, our fifth of the year to date. This is our best year to date catch of juvenile Great Spotted Woodpeckers since we started the Braydon Forest project in late 2012.
Another nice addition to the list was the catch of three Willow Warblers: two males and one female. All three were adults undergoing their post-breeding moult, with the females brood patch just starting to feather over. The wings were very definitely in full moult:
The list for the session was: Great Spotted Woodpecker [1]; Blue Tit [3]; Great Tit [8]; Dunnock [1]; Robin 1[6](2); Song Thrush 1; Blackbird [1](1); Blackcap [2]; Chiffchaff 1; Willow Warbler 3. Totals: 6 adults from 4 species, 22 juveniles from 7 species and 3 retrapped birds from 2 species, making 31 birds processed from 10 species.
The juvenile Blackbird did give as a bit of concern: it had a nasty looking, scabby, almost lichen like, area in its lower abdomen, close to the cloaca. I have not seen anything like it before. If anybody recognises what it is I would grateful to know!
As well as a reasonable catch, we did have a lovely morning watching butterflies. Best was a White Admiral, we saw a couple but one spent a good few minutes flying around us at the ringing station. At one point it looked as if it was going to land on me. Alongside that was Silver-washed Fritillary, lots of Gatekeeper, a Marbled White and the obligatory Meadow Browns.
We closed the nets at 11:45 and took down. Rosie was back at 12:00 to pick up Ella and get her back to Hereford for the choir concert she was taking part in Saturday evening.