That title is not too surprising: it is our first visit to this part of the reserve this year, having had to abort the previous attempt due to a seized padlock. I resolved that issue on Friday and planned for Saturday. Unfortunately, Friday night put paid to that, so I had to move it to this morning. That meant that Ellie, who was working until very late Saturday night, couldn’t join us until 7:30, and then had to leave by 10:30 to get back to work! In the event, she didn’t miss much, as we caught all bar one of the birds in that timeframe! Pete and I arrived on site at 5:30 and we had one helluva time sorting out the nets: never before has it taken me an hour and a half trying to erect just six nets! I have no idea what went wrong, all I can say is that the nets I packed away at the end of Wednesday’s session, all came out okay. It was the other nets. Unfortunately for Pete, he was in the firing line for the miserable old sod trying to sort them out! One of them steadfastly refused to untangle itself so I had to replace a 12m with a 9m. Not ideal.
This was the layout:
I took one bird out of the net whilst Pete was pushing up the rest of the nets: a Wren. Ellie arrived soon after, and we did our first round. It was a decent round as well: we started with 10 birds, four of which were Stonechat! Four is our largest catch of them at Blakehill Farm East. We have had several threes, but they are usually ones and twos. These were our first one of the year:
Also, in that first haul was our first Linnet of the year: a juvenile:
It is over 10 years since we caught good numbers of Linnet at Blakehill Farm: it is usually just one or two per session, although we did have five in March of 2025.
Our third first for the year was this:
This was the highlight of the session. After the first two rounds, a total of 17 birds, the whole thing died a death. We didn’t catch another bird between 8:30 and 10:00, then two at 10:00. This was when the sun came out and the place went from 9oC to 20+oC, and the birds just disappeared. The two at 10:00 enabled Ellie to leave, having finished her session with a bitey Blue Tit. Pete and I agreed to take down the nets at 10:30! We did catch and process one last Chiffchaff. One thing, whilst we had time to spare, I decided to have a look at the net that had defeated us when setting up. Guess what? It came out absolutely fine, no sign of the tangle that we encountered first thing!
The list for the session was: Blue Tit [3]; Great Tit [1]; Wren 2; Stonechat 1[3]; Whinchat 1; Whitethroat 2[2]; Chiffchaff [3]; Willow Warbler [1]; Linnet [1]. Totals: 6 adults ringed from 4 species and 14 juveniles ringed from 7 species, making 20 birds ringed from 9 species.
The most surprising thing about this morning’s session was the complete absence of Blackcaps. At this time of year, with a lure playing, they usually are the main part of the catch. I suspect it is the absence of hedgerow nets that has led to that but, with just the two and a half of us available for the session, it would have been too much to manage. We need two groups: one to manage the hedgerows and the other to manage the bushes, as there is a heck of a lot of walking involved. I actually set the ringing station where we usually set the Mipit triangle. There was no sign of Meadow Pipits and, also, no sign of the usual irruption of Craneflies that brings them in. It is a shame that they don’t seem to be attracted by Small Heath butterflies, because there was a load of them flying around all morning.
We were off-site by 11:40. Happy with what we caught, just a shame there weren’t a few more!