I have to be honest, I am seriously thinking that I will have to either abandon my woodland sites for the time being or else set up my feeding stations much earlier than I would normally do so. After so many quiet sessions, so much effort and so many hours put into gathering fairly paltry numbers of data, it seems I have to make a choice. It would have helped if the weather hadn’t been so windy, so I could run sessions at Blakehill Farm and pick up the usual autumn migrants. we are there, to carry out a ringing session for the Swindon Wildlife Group, and the weather is, for once, looking hopeful. I have seen Meadow Pipits around the site, so fingers crossed. Anyway, to the source of my depressive introduction.
I was joined yesterday by Laura, Ellie, Claire and, after she had dropped her daughter off at breakfast club, Steph. Good people and good to spend time with, which is just as well. We met at 6:30 and started setting up. Because it was a large team, we set quite a few more nets than usual:
249 metres of nets set, five experienced ringers – all we needed was some birds. The first mishap: only two of my lures wanted to work. I fiddled around and managed to persuade another two to actually start working. I suspect that I have inadvertently put a .wav file on the SD cards, rather than .mp3.
To be fair, there were no further mishaps just very few birds: Blue Tit 4; Great Tit 5(2); Wren 1; Robin 1; Blackcap 5; Chiffchaff 2; Goldcrest 1. Totals: 19 birds ringed from 7 species and 2 birds retrapped from 1 species, making 21 birds processed from 7 species. All of the birds processed were juveniles except for the Goldcrest and one of the retrapped Great Tits.
So, because I processed one of the Chiffchaffs, that was five birds per ringer! Putting it another way: 0.084 birds per metre of net! The only consolation: our awful session in the Firs produced only 0.071 birds per metre of net.
Why did I process the Chiffchaff? I actually extracted the bird and it went very quiet on me, almost playing dead. So I tickled its tummy, blew into its mouth and put it in a bag and slipped it down my front, between my undershirt and my body. It works pretty much all of the time: after 15 minutes in there I could feel it wriggling against my body: I am never sure if it is the warmth or the smell that gets them active: all I know is that it works. Anyway, I processed the bird and it flew off nice and strongly, so I am happy with that outcome.
Anyway, we were amused for a good 20 minutes by an elderly woman who was power walking up and down the track: it was the way she looked like she was on a mission and span on her heel to turn just before she reached us. First time we thought she was coming to give us an ear-bashing about how cruel we were and how unnecessary it all is, but she didn’t, thankfully. They can be as rude as they like but I have to remain calm and polite! Mind we did have explanatory signs up everywhere around the net rides and at the entrance to the wood.
The gentle breeze turned into a much fiercer gusting wind at about 11:00, so we shut the nets and took down. We were off-site by midday.