I was joined this morning by Miranda, Steph, Ellie and Pete, and the morning’s entertainment, 7 year old Bea. We met at 6:00 and set about putting up our nets. Our last trip to Red Lodge was back on the 15th July and it was pretty disappointing: 18 birds ringed and 3 retrapped. For today I decided to change the net setup, so that we were adjacent to the large pond near the entrance to the site. Having made that decision, I came to site yesterday with my brush cutter and strimmed out the vegetation for rides 1 and 3 below. Before the next session I will get the other two sides of the pond strimmed. Over the winter we are going to need a big session to clear a lot of the Reed Mace and various rushes that are taking the pond over. There were still areas of open water, but not many.
Having mentioned for Sunday’s session the lack of Blackcaps, I was pleased to catch a few this morning. As seems to be par for the course as the moment, the catch was not massive, but it was reasonably diverse. This time last year we caught 100 birds more from another eight species than we have achieved so far this year. That was in eight sessions, whereas this year we have only managed six. The weather doesn’t look as if it will help us fill that gap, with rain forecast for the rest of the month!
It was, as seems usual, a slow morning, but we did get birds in just about every round. Between 8:00 (we had as much fun today as we had on Sunday getting the nets sorted out and set up. Just like Sunday, one 18m net in ride 2 proved impossible to sort out, as though the loops had gone through holes and were really tangled. After 15 minutes of trying, we replaced it. In another remarkable similarity to Sunday, during a quiet few minutes I took the net out and it opened just fine! (Perhaps I should do all of the net setting!)) and our final round at 11:30, when we closed the nets, we did 12 visits to the nets to extract 33 birds!
The list for this morning was: Blue Tit 3[4](1); Great Tit 2[1]; Wren [2]; Dunnock [1]; Robin 3[2]; Song Thrush [1]; Blackbird [2]; Blackcap [6]; Chiffchaff [3]; Willow Warbler [1]; Goldcrest [1]. Totals: 8 adults from 3 species, 24 juveniles from 11 species and 3 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 33 birds processed from 11 species. So, considerably better than our last session here.
Song Thrush seem to be doing well this year. Another five in the next four months and we will have had our best haul since 2016. It is, currently, our best number since 2021, with the total for the years in between being 19 or less.
I have said before about how great my team is. On Wednesday last, my clothes dryer, for hanging the bird bags on, fell over and one of the three arms snapped off. This morning I went for a walk, to set up the lures, and on my return I found a parcel by my table. It was a superb, high quality replacement: a present from Miranda. Just so thoughtful.
Anyway, with all of us available to take down, it took us just half-an-hour after we had processed the last two birds, so we were off-site by ten after midday.