Author: Braydon Forest & Beyond

As is pretty much a given these days, getting people out into the countryside and involved is known to improve mental health. Involving members of the public in what we do is very important to my ringing activities. A lot of it is ad hoc: explaining to people going past what we are doing and why! Spread the knowledge, reduce the ignorance / antagonism. However, we also carry out a number of scheduled sessions for specific groups.

In the next few weeks I have sessions coming up that will bring people from all sorts of backgrounds into contact with bird ringing. Soon we will be doing a ringing session with the Swindon Wellbeing Group in attendance, and at the end of the month it will be the Malmsbury Natural History Society. Today it was the turn of the Marlborough Men’s Mental Health Group. I had been contacted by my old friend Dave Turner, with whom I worked to run monthly bird ringing sessions at the Help4Heroes recovery and rehabilitation centre at Tedworth House, between 2013 and 2020, when it closed. He is now helping organise other groups and getting them out into nature When he asked for us to host this group, I didn’t hesitate.

I was joined for the morning by Miranda and Ellie. We met at 7:00 and we set the usual nets down the central glade. We had the nets open by 8:00 (I managed not to forget anything this time) and they started catching straight away. Unusually for recent sessions: it was Blue Tit heavy.

Our first round, at just after 8:00, was 10 birds strong. The most remarkable thing about it was that we caught a juvenile female Great Spotted Woodpecker. That is not what was remarkable about it: Ellie extracted and processed it. What was remarkable is that the Great Spotted Woodpecker is the noisiest bird you ever handle when extracting it from a net, handling it to fit the ring, and then to take the biometric measurements. Not a peep from the bird at any stage from extraction to release! I guess Ellie will now be our go to Great Spotted Woodpecker processor.

The Marlborough crew turned up about 9:30, whilst we were working our way through a rather large batch of birds, as we had just taken another 11 birds out of the nets. As ever, the first few minutes was me talking about the ringing scheme, why we do it, how the results are used, etc, and then showing the audience the processing that we carry out. I then asked who would like to be shown how to safely handle and release a bird (okay, I said “Who wants to be bitten by a Blue Tit?”) and several of the group volunteered. Throughout the rest of the session every member of the group got to hold and release two birds. Even the most reluctant of them finally overcame their worries and took part.

The session was busy and we had a good haul of birds: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Nuthatch (2); Blue Tit 26; Great Tit 11(1); Marsh Tit (1); Long-tailed Tit 1(1); Wren (1); Dunnock 1; Robin 3; Blackcap 11; Chiffchaff 15(1); Goldcrest 1. Totals: 70 birds ringed from 9 species and 7 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 77 birds processed from 12 species. Almost all of the birds processed were juveniles, although it is now almost impossible to age Nuthatch and Long-tailed Tit at this time of year, as both adults and juveniles have moulted into full adult plumage, the retrapped Long-tailed Tit was a bird of this year. We also ringed one definite adult each of Blackcap and Blue Tit.

It was great to be able to show so many different species to the attendees and the certainly appreciated it. This just happens to be our biggest September catch in the Firs by some degree, and our second largest ever without the use of supplementary feeding.

One thing that came to my attention last year was the tendency of Great Tit juveniles to moult their tails. Today we had a couple of them in tail moult, one of which showed that recent weather has been a bit difficult for these young birds, with prominent fault bars across the tail feathers: unfortunately, not as faulty as my attempt to photograph it! Too embarrassed to post it!

We closed the nets and took down at 12:30 and were off site by 13:30, leaving the attendees to spend the rest of the day in the wood.

For issues that might become public in the near future, depending upon a couple of responses I am waiting on, got me back onto my favourite hobby horse: the Marsh Tit population of the Braydon Forest.

We have had a good year so far. Some recent correspondence got me thinking, once again, about the actual status of the Marsh Tit in the Braydon Forest and how that compares with both a local and a national profile. Having been studying them since I started ringing in the whole of the Braydon Forest in late 2012, it is rather important to me. Having persuaded Forestry England to make the Marsh Tit their priority bird species for management of their areas in the Forest, it is doubly so. So I had a look at the available records both locally and nationally. Unfortunately, we are still waiting on the 2024 ringing records to be published, so I have focused on the data published up to the end of 2023. Nationally, the BTO do not publish the number of retrapped birds, so I cannot do a national or Wiltshire analysis of individual birds, but I have done so for the Braydon Forest. I can tell you that 2024 was on a par with previous years in the Braydon Forest, and that 2025 is looking to be significantly better, but I don’t have the comparison for 2024 yet, although it should be published soon, given that the 2023 figures were published in September 2024. Obviously, we have another just under four months to go for 2025 data collection, but October and November are usually our best months for the species.

The first thing I did when analysing this was to look at the woodland make up of Wiltshire and then, for what I initially thought would be a bit of a joke, how that looks on a national scale. I was pleased and surprised to find how readily available those figures are from the Forest Research group. I took my figures from their latest paper for 2025. Of course, it is impossible to actually identify what proportion of any of the woodlands are suitable Marsh Tit habitat, but that applies across the whole of the UK, Wiltshire and the Braydon Forest itself, plenty of which is still farmed for conifer, parts of which, like Ravensroost Wood, are managed on coppice cycles. For example, Ravensroost Wood is a 40ha wood, approximately 10ha is 8-year coppice, some 15ha is 25 year coppice and 15ha is “ancient woodland”. So, by taking the figures as a whole, carries the same magnitude of error across the board. As Christopher Perrins noted in his esteemed volume on British Tits, Marsh Tit are almost exclusively a broad-leafed woodland species. Fortunately, I was able to separate broad-leaved woodland from conifer thanks to publicly available data from Forest Research. All area measurements are in hectares.

So the Marsh Tits found in the Braydon Forest are actually recorded in an area of 0.15% of the entire broad-leaved woodland of Wiltshire, and less than 0.005% of England’s broad-leaved woodland. Bearing in mind that Marsh Tits are the least mobile of the four Paridae species now found in the Braydon Forest, I think that we can be reasonably confident that what we find is genuinely representative of the local population.

The next thing I looked at was how the population of the Braydon Forest compared with Wiltshire and England as a whole:

To put that into perspective: over the 11 year period of my study to date, 33.4% of all Marsh Tits ringed in Wiltshire are ringed in 0.15% of the woodland covered by my ringing activities. More importantly, 2.2% of the national population ringed is ringed in less than 0.004% of the national woodland cover, and less than 0.005% of what might be considered suitable habitat. That is quite astonishing in my view. Unfortunately, whereas the Forest Service paper does breakdown the difference between coniferous and broad-leaved woodland, I cannot find a definitive breakdown for the whole of Wiltshire. This table, that I have lifted from that paper, does show the following:

My calculations are, therefore, based on those woodland proportions for England and applied to the woodland profile of Wiltshire, so bear that in mind,

Moving on from the population versus occupied area statistics used above, I thought I should have a further look at the population trend for the Braydon Forest against the whole of England.

The trend is clear: whilst the national trend is downwards, the Braydon Forest trend is upwards, but the numbers in the Braydon Forest are not large enough to affect the overall trend. Not only is it upward but it shows a five point increase over the period. However, when you look at the figures on a proportionate basis, the trend against the England totals is identical, but against the rest of Wiltshire, it is somewhat downward:

What this shows is how proportionality in a relatively small cohort can distort the overall picture: 2013 to 2015 inclusive had low ringing rates for the species in Wiltshire, and slightly lower than average ringing rates in the Braydon Forest, producing higher proportions in the Braydon Forest for those years, so I excluded them and redid the graph:

It’s okay: I am not trying to con anyone, I leave that to some of the less scrupulous academics. My cherry-picker has been too busy picking plums, apples and quince!

I fully expect the addition of the 2024 and 2025 data to correct the initial imbalance shown in fig 2 and omitted from fig 3. Expect more in the not too distant future. In conclusion: I contend that the population of Marsh Tits in the Braydon Forest is a significant proportion of the Wiltshire population, and is a small, but significant, part of the England population, given that it is reversing the negative trend across the country, and that the woodland management of the Braydon Forest is an important indicator of how the population’s position within England could be improved.

Citation: Robinson, R.A., Leech, D.I. & Clark, J.A. (2024) The Online Demography Report: Bird ringing and nest recording in Britain & Ireland in 2023. BTO, Thetford (http://www.bto.org/ringing-report, created on 4-September-2024)

Forest Research: Provisional Woodland Statistics 2025, 26 June 2025

Perrins, C. M. 1979: British Tits, The New Naturalist Series, William Collins & Sons & Co, Glasgow

An update: the BTO has just released the 2024 ringing totals for the UK. In the insignificant population of Marsh Tits in the Braydon Forest we ringed 19 birds out of 44 ringed in Wiltshire, or 43.2% of the total. There were 633 fledged Marsh Tits ringed in the UK this year, making our contribution 3% to the national average. To put that in perspective: that is 3% in 0.005% of the suitable habitat for the species in England, and 43.2% in 0.15% of the suitable habitat in Wiltshire. I would like to know, however, what percentage of Wiltshire and England’s broadleaved woodlands are covered by bird ringing.

Quite the most disorganised, staccato session I can remember. Sitting here writing this whilst absolutely wrecked. Having not been able to get out all week, today was a good opportunity to get to Blakehill: low wind speed, with some moderate gusting from 11:00. Laura was coming along to help set up, but would be leaving about 11:30 as she had a work training session this afternoon. We met at 6:30 to set up. First problem: I had packed the car the evening before, only I forgot to pack the guy ropes. It isn’t far to home so I shot back off to the house to collect the ropes. We had decided to set the ringing station out on the plateau, save all of the walking backwards and forwards when we didn’t need to, as we weren’t setting up any hedgerow nets.

We set up the Mipit triangle on the way out to the plateau nets. Second problem: the lure I had been using last time was too quiet, so I sorted out one of my older MP3 players, with a couple of really good speakers. Charged them all fully the night before, and charged a backup battery for the MP3 player, plus a second pair of speakers. Set them going in the middle of the triangle: everything started playing – for two cycles and then stopped. Nothing could persuade it to work again. That was the end of that. We left the triangle in place: you never know what you might catch.

We then most of our usual plateau nets:

It was quite a long process getting the nets sorted, and we didn’t have them open until 8:30. However, as we were finishing off net 8, Laura looked over and said “Birds in the Mipit nets”, so I asked her to go and extract them whilst I finished of net 8. She came back with six Blue Tits, a Chiffchaff and a Willow Warbler from the Mipit triangle; I returned with a Blue Tit, a Wren and a Willow Warbler. Not a bad first round one would have thought. We ringed and released the birds.

Problem 3: we must have extracted each of those same Blue Tits at one time or another from every net we had set out on the plateau: Laura must have done over 50 extractions today and actually ringed just 14 birds. It did teach me something though: I won’t be setting up my ringing station anywhere near any bushes in future! It was the worst session ever for same day retraps in the 16 years of my ringing career.

Despite the lack of a Mipit lure, and the lack of Mipits, that triangle was the hit of the session. At least it had the big hit of the session: this chased a couple of Dunnocks into the net and got itself caught:

This was Laura’s first Kestrel extraction and processing. I showed her the “cuddle grip”: how to hold the bird without getting clawed or ripped by the beak, which she mastered quickly, and escaped with only very minor injuries! As it was Laura’s first experience, we spent a deal of time working out age and sex: thanks to Geoff Baker’s excellent book for steering us in the right direction

The Dunnocks were unharmed and processed as well – and let free long before the Kestrel was released.

We had a couple of small catch rounds after that, and then, at 11:00 a nice fall of Chiffchaff and another two Whinchat juveniles. What was really good about these two was that their median coverts were textbook juvenile male and female.

Soon after we had processed those birds, Laura had to leave, at about 11:30. I thought to leave things open for another 30 minutes but, almost immediately, the gentle breeze with the occasional gust became a full scale blow out and I had to close the nets. Apart from the Mipit triangle which was, thankfully, isolated from any close bramble bushes so, when closed, they were safe. Unfortunately, one of them was badly affected, and I spent over an hour extracting it from some rather annoying, and painfully spiky, bushes. i.e. problem 4!

Anyway, the list for the session was: Kestrel 1; Blue Tit 12; Wren 1, Dunnock 2; Whinchat 2; Blackcap 1; Whitethroat 1(1); Lesser Whitethroat 1; Chiffchaff 7; Willow Warbler 2; Reed Bunting 1. Totals: 31 birds ringed from 11 species and 1 retrapped bird, making 32 birds processed from 11 species. Every bird processed, except the Reed Bunting, was a juvenile.

Having finished the processing I started packing up. With the net extraction issue, plus somehow losing two bungee cords that never left my car, and seemingly having fewer pole tops than bottoms, I was a long time leaving site: getting away at 15:00. Here’s hoping that tomorrow is better organised (on my part) and that we also get a decent catch!

One hopeful sign: finally I saw some craneflies flying around. It seems that Tipulidae are a key prey species for Meadow pipits. At least, the abundance of Meadow Pipits does seem to coincide with the emergence of the craneflies.

One slightly disappointing issue: apparently there has been a large number of Yellow Wagtails associating with the cattle. With no cattle on the plateau today, there was no sign of Yellow Wagtails. However, from next week there will be cows and calves on the plateau, so fingers crossed that there might still be some about!

What can I say: our best ever August and our second best ever monthly catch, behind September 2023.  That is not to say that there weren’t a couple of surprising omissions.

There are so many points of interest this month, it really has been a good set – even for those of us not landing large catches.  In my case, it has definitely been quality over quantity.

New to the list, compared to 2024, were Firecrest, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Jay, Kestrel, Magpie, Sparrowhawk, Spotted Flycatcher, Swift, Whinchat and Yellow Wagtail.  Somewhat surprisingly missing from the catch were Meadow Pipit, Reed Bunting and Starling!  Not so surprising was the lack of Hobby in the list this year.

In my opinion, the most remarkable catch of the month were the 11 Redstart! To start with, this is our best ever year for the species: with 14 so far.  It is also our best ever monthly catch. What’s behind it? Well, no one site dominated: evenly spread across Salisbury Plain, farmland to the east of Chippenham and, to my absolute delight, for the first time ever, three of them at Ravensroost Meadows!  With the news that the Wildlife Trust, after just 15 years of nagging by me, have budgeted to reconstitute the largest pond and clean out around the causeway ponds, I am actually getting excited about the potential for this site next year. If we can get it back to the situation I encountered when I first started birding there: with breeding Sedge and Reed Warblers plus Moorhen, and Swallows and House Martins buzzing the causeway ponds, I will be delighted.

The Firecrest was a pleasant surprise in an otherwise disappointing session at Ravensroost Wood. It is only the second caught there and the fifth in the Braydon Forest, the others being caught two in Red Lodge and one on Somerford Common. Being in the right place at the right time: Miranda got to ring her second, and a family of four got a really interesting close up view of an uncommon bird.

Even more exciting though was Jonny’s first Yellow Wagtail:

This is only the third caught by the current group since my two at Brown’s Farm back in 2021 and last July.

As for Ian and Andy: the Nightjar hauls just keep getting better. Ian has given me the secret of his success, which I plan to test out at Blakehill Farm this coming week.  It is the nearest area I have in habitat to the Salisbury Plain sites.  Just have a look at the video, filmed by Ian, and be enchanted. 

The suggestion is that the autumn migration has started early this year. Just looking at some of our warbler numbers would seem to support that contention: a 40% increase in the number of Blackcaps, a 200% increase in the number of Lesser Whitethroat and a 100% increase in the number of Whitethroat caught this month compared to last.  The Whitethroat catch is our second best ever for July. As seems to be the same for a lot of species, the best July was in 2020, after lockdown.  Our Lesser Whitethroat catch is the best ever for August, following our best ever July for the species. Ironically, someone who likes to speak for the whole of Wiltshire, was on Facebook bemoaning what a terrible year it has been for Lesser Whitethroat. Well, with September and October to go, we are on 80 individuals: a 157% increase on last year, which was, itself, our best year to date for the species.  To be fair, August is always our best month for Lesser Whitethroat. However, the 33 this year is 83% higher than the previous best, August in 2022.

Alongside these, it was surprising to catch four Whinchat on Blakehill, in an otherwise quiet session (okay, we also had four Lesser Whitethroat and a couple of Willow Warblers, so hard to complain).  September is the key month for the species on Blakehill. This is only the third time we have caught them there in August: seven back in my first autumn at Blakehill in 2015, and two in 2020. We actually caught none at all on the site in 2022 and 2023, so I am always happy when we catch a few more. The fifth for the month was on the Imber Ranges.

Although Stonechat are a regular catch on the Salisbury Plain sites, this is only the second time that we have caught them in August on Blakehill.  September to November are usually our best months for them there. 

So, an excellent month. Let’s hope September lives up to its usual good catch.  For one, I am hoping that our Meadow Pipits, instead of hopping up on the fence posts and tops of the various bushes, will start hitting the nets. They were just taking the mickey this month: teasing us and avoiding the nets.

It is 13 months since my last session in the northern part of Ravensroost Wood. The key reason for that is the amount of forestry work that has been, and is being, carried out in that area. There is more significant work scheduled for this winter. I went that last time to see what impact the work might have had. In that session we caught and ringed 15 birds from six species: Blue Tit 1: Great Tit 2; Wren 3; Robin 4; Blackcap 2; Chiffchaff 3. Today I thought I would have a look to see if things had changed.

With the weather forecast to be likely to start raining at about 11:00 we agreed to meet at 6:00 so we could get a few hours in before then. I was joined by Miranda and Ellie, which in itself is slightly unusual, their being my midweek stalwarts of recent times. We set the following nets:

It was very slow to start with: we got very few birds in each round, and it was weird: three Wrens in one, four Robins in another. What was fun, though, was that we had several families come through, happily when we actually had a few birds to hand. The first family had four children, two of whom were willing and pleased to be able to learn how to safely hold and release a bird, both Robins.

So, we were slowly accumulating a couple of birds, with a few dead rounds in between. We did our second family education set at about 10:15, this time with two slightly older girls, Mum and Dad all getting to learn the trade. They were a little luckier than the first group in that we had the Robin and Wren combo, but we also had a lovely juvenile male Goldcrest. They went off for a wander, promising to come back within the half hour to see if we had any more to show.

The unluckiest person this morning was Ellie. She knew she had to leave a bit early to get home to Cheltenham because she was working from lunchtime. She left at about 10:00 to give herself plenty of time. The family had returned from their walk and, as we were “apologising” for not having any birds to show them, a bird hit the end of ride 3, nearest to us. This was only the second bird that whole net set caught in the session, the first being a Wren, the first out of the net in our session. Miranda went to retrieve it and came back with this:

Had it arrived before Ellie had left, she would have ringed her first ever Firecrest, as Miranda did her first in October last year, at Red Lodge. This is a significant bird for the site: only the second ever recorded on the site, let alone ringed. The first was caught and ringed (and subsequently seen by a few local birders there) in the eight-year coppice area, nearly 10 years ago! (November 2015, by Jonny Cooper in his first year as a ringing trainee, lucky beggar!). We have only caught and processed five in total in the Braydon Forest. However, with this one, the last three have been caught in the last 10 months, neatly shared between Red Lodge, Somerford Common and Ravensroost Wood – just Webb’s Wood and the Firs to go!

The Firecrest was quickly followed by a Treecreeper: another treat for our very pleasant and enthusiastic audience. With no birds in rounds at 11:00 and 11:15, we closed the nets and took down, with the pack up completed by midday.

The list for the session was: Treecreeper 1; Wren 2(1); Robin 7; Blackcap 1; Willow Warbler 1; Goldcrest 1; Firecrest 1. Totals: 14 birds ringed from 7 species and 1 bird retrapped, making 15 birds processed from 7 species. All birds ringed were juveniles. So, the same number as last visit, but a much better variety / quality of catch.

Lovely though the Firecrest, Goldcrest and Willow Warbler were, to have 50% of the birds ringed to be juvenile Robins is remarkable. Not our biggest catch of them, but the absolute highest proportion of them in any catch in Ravensroost Wood, and on track to produce our largest catch of Robin juveniles in the Ravensroost complex: currently standing at 18 birds, with 26 in 2017 being the target.

I suspect it will be at least another year before I try out this part of Ravensroost Wood again, however, I will be carrying out a session further down the track, adjacent to the ponds at the north of the wood, before the end of the year.

It turned out not to be the best day to get out. I moved our scheduled session for Blakehill to Saturday, replacing today’s session with a visit to Somerford Common. That was done because the Saturday forecast was for 2mph winds, gusting to 4mph, perfect for Blakehill, and the wind was destined to be 5 to 10mph, gusting to 25mph, coming from the south-west. Saturday’s forecast was nearly spot on. I was joined this morning by Sarah and we set our nets:

Unfortunately, the breeze got up at about 9:00, and from completely the opposite direction to that which was forecast. The combination of bright sunshine and the nets billowing in the breeze was not conducive to a big catch, and that is how it turned out. To be clear: they were not blowing so much that they were dangerous to the birds, just very visible.

We saw and heard a lot of birds this morning: a decent flock of Long-tailed Tits, several Nuthatch calling and drumming, Jay, Great Tit all flying around our area, but not one of those was caught this morning. The Nuthatch, in particular, spent the morning teasing us with constant calling in a back and forth across the site.

As Sarah doesn’t manage to get out too often, I scribed and left her to process all of the birds that we caught. It was a nice catch, given that it wasn’t very large. The breakdown was: Blue Tit [1]; Robin [2](1); Blackcap 1[6]; Willow Warbler [1]; Goldcrest [3]. Totals: 1 adult ringed, 13 juveniles ringed from 5 species and 1 bird retrapped (a juvenile Robin), making 15 birds processed from 5 species.

It is not that the catch wasn’t without interest. We do not catch a lot of Blackcaps on Somerford Common these days. In our first three years ringing at Somerford Common, 2013 to 2015 inclusive, we ringed 35, 19 and 33 respectively. Since then the numbers have significantly reduced. However, so far this year we have caught 15. Since 2016, that is our equal best total for any full year, with 2020, with plenty of time for us to add to that. The seven caught this morning is our second best single session total since 2016.

It was a notable session for Sarah. She got to ring her first ever Willow Warbler. She had previously processed a retrapped bird, but hadn’t ringed one:

The three Goldcrest that she ringed today were her third to fifth. They are also part of our biggest ever August catch of the species at Somerford Common, taking it to 10 in two sessions.

With the wind getting stronger, and the sun getting hotter, we closed the nets at 11:45 and took down. We would have been off site quite quickly but we got into a lovely conversation with a couple of women walking their dog. They were very interested in what we had been doing and were really positive about it. One turned out to be a vet working for APHA (the Animal & Plant Health Agency). We had a pretty good discussion on a number of topics, particularly the difficulty APHA have in monitoring pheasant shoots for HPAI, as they are termed domestic animals when penned, wildlife (bad joke) when released, unless they are then fed by the shoots, whereupon they become domestic livestock again. Suffice to say, we have a shared opinion. As a parting exchange, it turns out that we live one street apart in Purton. Small world syndrome.

Back to the plateau at Blakehill Farm to see whether we have any more migrants coming through. Without the hedgerow to help, as it was laid last winter and is beginning its grow back, but it will take a year or so before it becomes productive again, the catch can be very hit and miss. Last session, on the 11th August, we were happy with a good catch of Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat and Stonechat. We did see a couple of Meadow Pipit but didn’t catch them.

Once again, today we set our Mipit triangle, and I will keep doing do so until we find that they have arrived and we start catching them. I was joined by David, Laura and Adam, with Daniel and, later on, Mark and Trevor to help with the packing up and general chatting in between rounds. We set the following nets:

I have had a chat with Jonathan, the farm manager, and he has agreed that, on the days that we are going to be ringing out on the plateau, they will use their GPS management system to keep the cattle away from our ringing area. The yellow lines indicate the boundary for when we are on site. I selected it so that we were not cutting off access to any of the water troughs.

We started with three birds: a Wren and two Whitethroats. Our next round produced four of these beauties:

Essentially, we caught 14 birds in the first hour and another five in the next three hours before we decided to pack up and go home. Once again, no Meadow Pipits in the nets yet, but a couple flying around.

The list for the session was: Blue Tit [2]; Great Tit [1]; Wren (1); Whinchat [4]; Whitethroat 1[3](3); Lesser Whitethroat [1]; Chiffchaff [1]; Willow Warbler [1]; Greenfinch [1]. Totals: 1 adult ringed, 14 juveniles ringed from 8 species and 4 birds recaptured from 2 species, making 19 birds processed from 9 species.

So, one bird fewer than our last session on the 11th, but better variety: nine species processed against five. Both of these sessions have been interesting for differing reasons.

With the exception of a single bird caught in the Ravensroost Meadows area in September 2018, we have only ever caught Whinchat at Blakehill Farm, and those were all on the plateau. We have had some good years, notably 2018 (15), 2020 (10) and 2021 (12). Both 2022 and 2023 were blank, but 2024 had four, caught in September and now we have four caught in August. This is only the third time we have caught them in August, the others were in 2015 and 2020. The most we have ever caught was 15 in 2018, fingers crossed for something similar this year.

The most unusual bird caught was the Greenfinch. We caught four back in 2016 and one in 2020, but they were all caught along the perimeter track hedgerow, today’s was the first that we have caught on the plateau.

The number of Whitethroat continues to grow: we have now processed 29 this year so far in the Braydon Forest: 23 ringed and 6 retrapped. Our best year ever, and Blakehill is certainly adding to that, with 13 ringed and 3 retrapped already.

Anyway, we checked the nets regularly until midday when we shut up shop and went home. A satisfactory session: more birds would have been good, but the variety again helped make up for it. Daniel and Adam got to process their first ever Whinchat, Laura her second and David his third. Laura also got to process her first Greenfinch. I think they were relatively happy with that outcome.

With the weather forecast for it to be dry and windy, with gusts up to 26mph, coming from the north-east, I decided that we had to be inside Webb’s Wood, rather than trying my new site just to the south of the wood. I will get there one day, fourth time lucky! I was joined by Laura, Adam and Ellie. We met at 6:30 and set the following nets:

It was definitely a weird session: just three birds caught and processed between 7:30 and 8:45. Then we had 41 between 8:45 and 10:00, and then nothing until 11:00. The weather was also weird. It was cloudy, as forecast. It was windy, from the north-east, as forecast, but it also produced regular periods of light drizzle, interspersed with the sun trying to break through, before clouding over again, completely against the forecast. The thing is, though, this unforecast odd weather coincided with our periods of catching birds.

Anyway, it was a decent catch. Every bird caught was a juvenile except for one of the Blue Tits and the retrapped Chiffchaff. The catch was: Blue Tit 11; Great Tit 3; Long-tailed Tit 2; Wren 4; Robin 3; Song Thrush 1; Blackcap 9; Chiffchaff 7(1); Willow Warbler 1; Goldcrest 2. Totals: 43 birds ringed from 10 species and 1 retrapped bird, making 44 birds processed from 10 species.

After an hour from 10:00, with three empty rounds, we decided to close the nets and take down. Between us, it did not take long to get everything packed away and we were off-site by 11:30 and home for an early lunch.

It was an enjoyable session, even though there were no stunners in the catch. Catching our third Willow Warbler of the year was rather good – as we catch very few in Webb’s Wood. However, this year we have caught and processed 26 Chiffchaffs. That is our largest ever catch of them in Webb’s Wood. What is more, 16 of those have been caught during the May to July period inclusive, the breeding season, if you like, with a further eight today. All of our other larger catches have been in April, either on passage or setting up territory.

Introduction and the Birds

Rosie and I have been trying to get this bio-blitz done for a couple of months now but something always seemed to get in the way: unavailability of volunteers, wind or rain (yes, rain) and thunderstorms. Last night Rosie and I went and set up the moth trap to run overnight.

Driving onto the site, following the track down to the Whitworth Building, I had the delight of seeing a Brown Hare sitting on the plateau, no more than 3m from my car window. It looked at me as I slowed down, before taking off across the plateau to get away. Unfortunately no camera to hand!

The ringing team and Rosie met up at 6:30 by the Whitworth Building, to get the nets set up. My team was David, Laura and Adam, with Mark coming along to help with the set up. We set the following nets:

Rosie’s blitz team were arriving at 8:00, they were Andy, Tracie, Pete and Chris.

The first thing that Rosie and I did on arriving was to switch off the moth trap: it was covered with Hornets, and inside the trap were a whole load more. Perhaps even more surprising, the white sheet upon which the trap was set was absolutely covered in small Back Swimmers, Lesser Water boatmen, family Corixidae. There was, however, a lovely collection of moths. We left everything in situ, ready for the blitz team, and got on with setting the nets. I am pleased to say that the Hornets were 1) native and 2) didn’t sting anyone, although we are pretty sure that they ate a few moths, as there were some wings unattached to bodies in the trap, particularly that of a Dusky Thorn, Ennomos fuscantaria.

The first bird into the nets flew in just as we finished opening them: a Wren. It did its usual: flew in span around in the net and crawled through to the other side of the pocket. Wrens have one purpose in this world: to torture trainees. I let one of the team have a go for a short while before rescuing them from torment.

The session got underway quite nicely after that: with birds coming in during every round. I left the team to carry out all of the extractions and processing, relegating myself to scribe for the session. In between, I became the de facto moth expert, helping identify the species, as far as was possible. One thing that was a great help is an app known as ObsIdentify. I am pretty good at macro moths but plenty of the micros are difficult. It did a decent job of most of them, but went a bit awry on several occasions. I will come back to the moths and other insects in the next post.

It was quite a steady catch, a few birds at a time, until 11:00, when we caught a small flock of titmice and then back to steady. Our usual catch when solely netting in this field is around the 20 to 25 bird mark, so we were happy to know that we were going to exceed that.

The list for the session was: Treecreeper [1]; Blue Tit [9](1); Great Tit [4]; Long-tailed Tit 3(1); Wren [2]; Robin [5]; Blackcap [5]; Whitethroat [1]; Lesser Whitethroat [2]; Chiffchaff [5]; Goldfinch [3]. Totals: 3 unaged from 1 species, 37 juveniles ringed from 10 species and 2 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 42 birds processed from 11 species. This is our best catch in this single field. However, disappointingly, no House Sparrows. The 9m net that runs from the farmyard gate to T-junction with the 12m and 18m nets is usually an absolute dead cert for this species. We could hear them, just didn’t catch any.

Significant in the catch was another two Lesser Whitethroat, taking our annual total to 11, the best for five years, nearly three times the size of the catch last year with the bulk of the autumn migration to come. When one looks at the figures for the Braydon Forest component of our catch, 10 of them, that is our second best catch ever, with 11 in 2017 being the best. Hopefully we will match, or pass, that this year.

Our Braydon Forest Whitethroat catch, with 19 ringed, is the best since 2019 and 2020, when both also had 19, and we need to ring another eight to match the best year, 2017. In fact, the Braydon Forest is the only area in which we have caught them this year. My other main area, Lower Moor Farm, has been devoid of them, but their numbers there have been declining since 2020, with just one last year, none in 2023 and three in 2022.

We did see some significantly large flocks of Goldfinch flying around, but they were all at tree top height. They are not a regular catch at this side of Blakehill Farm, best catch was on the Chelworth side, on the 20th September 2015, with 69! In three weeks that year we caught and ringed 102 of them in three sessions. However, we were pleased to get three this session:

These three were very much late brood birds. One of them hadn’t started its post-fledging moult, and the other two had a small amount of pin, no sign of facial mask development.

As well as the birds caught and processed, we observed quite a few additional species flying around the site. The sighting list was: Cormorant, Buzzard, Kestrel, Woodpigeon, Swallow, Carrion Crow, Rook, Jackdaw, Magpie.

We closed the nets at midday, and the blitz team mucked in to help us to get everything taken down and packed away, so it didn’t take long. The ringing team headed off, as did I, after a chat with the others as they tried to eat their lunch, and then I left them to do part 2.

I will blog about the other flora and fauna once Rosie has managed to work her way through all of the other records.

Our plan for today was to go for a large catch, hoping for a few early migrant species. I intended to put nets along the entire field margin, as well as the usual positions around the pond area. On Tuesday I did a recce to check that the access was going to be okay. I was delighted to see that the farm crew had mown the path down to our ringing area, and that the hay had been cropped and removed from the field. I had a look in the two fields in which the Belted Galloways have over-summered, and checked our field, where they haven’t been seen at all. No sign of them: all good stuff. So I loaded the car with all my long nets, and the short nets for the pond area, plus the appropriate number of poles, guys and spikes (i.e. virtually everything). Arriving on site at 6:15 I drove onto the field. Pretty much straight away a large black head poked around the corner of a hedgerow opening from the far side of the field. That was followed immediately by a dozen Beltie bullocks. It was a little race for me to get to the ringing area, open the gate and get the car backed in and out of the way before they reached me. Just managed it. I have made the mistake of leaving the car out in the field with the Belties before: it took two goes through a car wash to get their dried slobber off it! Never again! I wandered over to the gate into the field to warn the others to park outside. I hadn’t realised that all of the gates between the fields, apart from one pen-forming complex, have been removed. Not sure when, as we have run several sessions in the pond area this year, with nets out in the field, without a visit from the Belties.

Obviously, that put paid to my grandiose plans, so we set the usual nets in the pond area plus two extras. I was joined for the morning by Miranda, Laura, Adam and Ellie.

We had the nets open by 7:30 and started catching straight away. The first round produced two Whitethroat: a juvenile and an adult female ringed back in our last session at this site. It was one of those mornings where we would have birds, empty, birds, empty, etc as the rounds progressed. Not quite that bad but near to.

Our second round produced four birds: two Blackcap, a Lesser Whitethroat and our first ever Redstart for the site. Since the start of 2013 we had caught just 11 in both the Braydon Forest and Lower Moor Farm, nine at Blakehill Farm and two at Lower Moor Farm. Adam had extracted his first back at Blakehill Farm last year. He didn’t get to ring it so, today, having extracted his second, he got to ring his first!

Our next successful round produced our biggest catch of the morning: eight birds, but a very nice little group, three Wrens were a bit humdrum, but we also had a Blackcap, Whitethroat, Lesser Whitethroat, Goldcrest and Miranda coming back with a secretive smile on her face. She had extracted her first ever Swallow, and got to ring her first ever Swallow. This Swallow is the first we have caught at this site for four years, so a very welcome catch. Between 2015 and 2017 inclusive, we would regularly catch 25 Swallows in a session. Unfortunately, due to the ponds becoming overgrown with Reed Mace and rushes, and the causeway becoming choked with blackthorn scrub, the nice open track through the two ponds, over the causeway, became blocked. I am delighted to say that the Trust have designated budget for the restoration of the whole area, and have allowed me to advise on the changes to be made, and I have volunteered to help.

It was becoming a really pleasant morning. That was helped by the weather. Despite the forecast being for bright sun and high temperatures in line with the current heatwave, throughout the morning, until we were packing up, the sun did not put in an appearance. We had very low cloud cover and some very refreshing mizzle. Nobody complained.

The next round produced another seven birds: Blackbird, Blackcap, Robin and Bullfinch plus, astonishingly, another two Redstart! Ellie got to ring her first and Laura her second. To have gone from none for just about 12 years to three in one session is lovely.

After those two rounds things died right off, with just a Blue Tit and a Willow Warbler in one and a Chiffchaff in the last. The Willow Warbler was stunningly coloured: very bright yellows, a lovely bird.

The total catch for the morning was: Swallow [1]; Blue Tit [1]; Wren 1[2]; Redstart 1[2]; Robin [1]; Blackbird 1; Blackcap [5](1); Whitethroat [2](1); Lesser Whitethroat [2]; Chiffchaff [1]; Willow Warbler [1]; Goldcrest [1]; Bullfinch [1]. Totals: 3 adults ringed from 3 species, 20 juveniles ringed from 12 species and 2 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 25 birds processed from 13 species.

It might be passé to some but to get 13 species in just 25 birds is remarkable to me. With a reasonable size team out I was a bit worried about whether there would be enough to keep them happy. The fact that every one of them got to ring a species special to them, and for three of them, a first for their ringing careers, ensured they were happy. We started packing up at 11:15, as things had died away so much, extracted the one last bird, the Chiffchaff, which Adam and I processed whilst the others continued taking down. The team is working well together, as everybody gets more experienced, and everything was cleared away for us to be off-site before midday.