As a trainer, I spend most of my sessions advising, supervising and scribing for the team. If it is just me and one other, then we might share the processing but, even then, biased in their favour, as they are learning. By a twist of fate, I spent this morning working solo at Lower Moor Farm. Today I planned on a quiet session and set just six nets: 5 x 18 + 1 x 9m nets. Easy to set up and take down and get a manageable catch size.
The last time I did a solo session at Lower Moor Farm was back in August 2014. Wanting a quiet day I only set 3 x 18m nets. This was the list from the session: Kingfisher 1; Blue Tit 20; Long-tailed Tit 21; Wren 2; Dunnock 1; Robin 4; Song Thrush 1; Reed Warbler 2; Blackcap 36; Garden Warbler 8; Whitethroat 2; Lesser Whitethroat 7; Chiffchaff 26; Willow Warbler 5; Bullfinch 1. Totals: 2 adults ringed from 2 species, 20 unaged ringed from 1 species (Long-tailed Tit) and 115 juveniles ringed from 15 species, making 137 birds processed from 15 species. In fact, I just released 20 Great Tits without processing them as it was just too busy. My biggest ever solo session, and I never want another one like that.
We had a couple of 100 bird catches in August of 2015, but nothing like that since. Fortunately, this morning I had a very pleasant session, with a good, and highly manageable, catch. It was also somewhat unusual. The first bird out of the net was a female Warbler, followed immediately by a Wren. Wrens exist for one reason: to torment trainees! Needless to say, with no trainees in attendance, the two Wrens that I extracted came straight out: no spinning, no multi-pocketing, no crawling through the mesh of the net. Anyway, it was a very easy morning, particularly the extractions. As any ringer knows: Blackcaps are generally one of the easiest birds to extract and, as the list shows, there were a lot of them this morning.
The list for the morning was: Wren [2]; Robin [2]; Blackbird [2]; Reed Warbler 1; Blackcap 1[24](2); Chiffchaff [1]. Totals: 2 adults ringed from 2 species, 31 juveniles ringed from 4 species and 2 retrapped birds from 1 species, making 35 birds processed from 6 species.
It is pretty unusual to have one species making up 77% of the catch: Blue Tits can frequently dominate a catch, but never to that extent.
The wind got up at 9:30 but, fortunately, it did not affect the nets. However, the catch dropped away at 10:15 and I gave it two more rounds, at 10:30 and 10:45, both were empty. At 10:45 I closed ride 1 and took it down. Then, at 11:15, I went to take down net ride 2, whereupon I found another five birds in the net: four Blackcap and one Blackbird. I closed the nets and then processed the last five birds before taking the rest of the nets down and clearing away. I left site at about 12:15, very happy.