Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

This week’s session was planned for Red Lodge. I set up a feeding station there on Tuesday morning for the first time this winter. Our last session at Red Lodge, without a feeding station, produced just 21 birds from six species, with just four Blue Tits and two Great Tits. It rather begged the question: is it the feeding station that is attracting those two species into the catching area? So, today could provide an indication of the impact.

With Saturday forecast to be drizzly and miserable, but Sunday looking dry and miserable, we decided to be miserable on Sunday! Unfortunately, that meant that several of the team couldn’t make it. However, Rosie joined us for an hour-and-a-half before heading off to work, and I had the family Childs with me for the whole session.

On arrival at the site, at 7:30, it was damp, misty and cold. However, there was very little wind to disturb the nets. We set the following:

The two seed feeders and one of the two peanut feeders, the one adjacent to ride 3, had been emptied, and the other peanut feeder, adjacent to ride 1, was half full still.

One of the nice things about Red Lodge: for the first time for what seems like an age, we were not wading through mud. The tracks in Red Lodge are all pretty solid, with either chalk or rubble bases under a top layer of soil and vegetation. It does make a bit more of an effort to get the holes in place for the poles, but it is worth it! Another nice thing about it: with the feeding stations in place it is a compact area we work in, the nets are all easily visible and we can go and extract birds as they arrive, rather than having regimented rounds that may, or may not, produce any birds!

We started catching straight away, which meant that Rosie got to process a few birds before heading off to work, and the first round was reasonably varied: Blue Tit, Chaffinch, Coal Tit, Dunnock, Great Tit and Marsh Tit. However, thereafter it was Blue Tit city, interspersed with a few additional species, mainly Great Tit, but it was a decent haul and an enjoyable session. We caught regularly all morning.

The list for the session was: Nuthatch (1); Blue Tit 22(3); Great Tit 8(1); Coal Tit 3; Marsh Tit (1); Long-tailed Tit 1(1); Dunnock 1; Robin (1); Chaffinch 2. Totals: 37 birds ringed from 6 species and 8 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 45 birds processed from 9 species.

So, clearly, if we take this as able to be extrapolated to all sessions, the feeders are a big attractant to the Blue and Great Tits, but also improve diversity by attracting in other species.

Nice to catch a couple of Chaffinch that we could put a ring on. Unfortunately, we also had one that we couldn’t ring due to the beginnings of Fringilla papillomavirus on its legs. It seems to me that it is becoming less common in our local Chaffinch population. Hopefully that is the case.

It is always nice to catch a bird that has exceeded the typical lifespan for the species. That was the case with the female Nuthatch that we retrapped. It was five years since she was ringed as a bird of unknown age. According to the BTO’s BirdFacts, based on masses of survey data, their typical lifespan is just two years, although the oldest known from ringing recoveries is a couple of days over 11 years!

Female Nuthatch, Sitta europaea

With us all getting quite cold I announced we would shut the nets and start taking down at 11:30 so, naturally, we took another 11 birds out of the net whilst trying to get them shut. I swear that if I announced after each round that the next would be the last before we packed up, I would end up with much larger catches! Anyway, we started packing away just before midday and left site by 12:30 after a cold but enjoyable session.

It seems that we share Somerford Common with some rather unsavoury characters. We continually find shotgun cartridges all over the site. Nobody has a licence to shoot wildlife on the site, outside of the deer management team. Whilst topping up the bird feeders yesterday I was approached by a local resident who asked if I knew anything about the tree felling going on. There is none scheduled, so this is clearly illegal. She explained that she had seen lights and the sound of chainsaws at night time over the weekend. When she went to check the next morning, she found several stumps and someone cutting up some of the wood. He got aggressive when asked why he was cutting down Forestry Commission wood. His response was that he was removing dead wood, but it isn’t, it is green oak wood. The presence of his chainsaw and his manner made her decide not to pursue it. She chose not to call the police, presumably worried as she is very local to the site, and they were nowhere to be seen today.

In recent years I have found several Fox carcasses dumped adjacent to our ringing site, and a dead Buzzard outside the stable just over the other side of Queen Street, that runs along the north edge of the wood. This morning, whilst carrying out our session at Somerford Common, I was approached by a young man out walking his lurcher and black Labrador. He asked if I was aware of the dumped Foxes and Buzzards along the by-way that runs through the western part of Somerford Common. They must have been there a while, as he told me that the bodies are now too decomposed for meaningful examination. He forwarded me some photos of one of the dead birds:

He said Buzzard but, with that colouration, it could equally be Red Kite. I did go to try and find the dump site after we had finished our ringing session, to confirm, but was unable to find it. I know that things die of natural causes, but rarely do they do so in a communal area. They look to have been killed elsewhere and then dumped. That looks to me like foul play.

Anyway, onto nicer things. I was joined for the morning session by Laura and Miranda. We met at 7:30 and set the usual nets. We started catching birds as we were opening the nets and, although it wasn’t the biggest of catches, it was certainly interesting.

The first bird out of the net was a retrapped Marsh Tit, the first of four recaptured this morning. The rest of the morning panned out pretty much as expected, although a haul of eight Robins was the best we have had since 28^th May 2017, when 10 Robins were part of a catch of 47 birds. Mind, that catch was boosted by the addition of three newly fledged juveniles.

Apart from the Robins, the catch was primarily Paridae. Unfortunately, no sign of any finches! Hopefully we will get some Goldfinch, Chaffinch, Lesser Redpoll and Siskin and, if we are very lucky, some Brambling in the next couple of sessions.

The list for the session was: Nuthatch 1(1); Blue Tit 7(1); Great Tit 3(4); Coal Tit 1(4); Marsh Tit (4); Dunnock (1); Robin 2(6); Blackbird (1). Totals: 14 birds ringed from 5 species and 22 birds retrapped from 8 species, making 36 birds processed from 8 species.

We started closing up and taking down at 11:30, stopping to process the four birds that insisted on dropping in as we were trying to get things packed away. Things were finished by 12:30 and I went off to try and find some corpses.

I have seen enough mud to last me a lifetime so today I decided to have a session at Lower Moor Farm, knowing that it would be firm underfoot. Having spent the week with a stinking cold and a sick car, I was pleased to be able to get out: cold has more or less cleared and the car, with its new starter motor, is back on the road again. Mind, on my way to site, it was nearly off the road again, as I misjudged an S-bend, got into a mud skid and just managed to keep it out of the ditch. Not an auspicious start!

David joined me for the session. We met at 7:30 and set the following nets:

It was a slightly unusual session, starting with finding this when setting up ride 3:

We couldn’t think of what might have killed the deer. It is a long way from any roads, I suppose it could have died from illness or old age. Regardless, it has been stripped by the scavengers in the area. I contacted Jonathan, the farm manager, to find out if he knew anything about it. He was aware of it but had no idea how it had ended up, ironically, in the Wildlife Refuge! Nobody has noticed any White-tailed Eagles flying around!

Anyway, we did manage to catch a reasonable number of birds adjacent to the carcass: including our first two February Nuthatch at Lower Moor Farm. In over 10 years of ringing there we had only ringed eight at this site, and those were all caught in ride 1, adjacent to the woodland.

It wasn’t our biggest ever catch by a long way, but we seemed to be active constantly. A lot of it came from the fact that each round produced at least a couple of birds. We also had a lot of visitors interested in what we were doing, so I spent quite a lot of time explaining about ringing, why we do it, how we do it and the results and feedback we get from our activities.

The catch for the morning was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Nuthatch 2; Blue Tit (1); Great Tit 4; Long-tailed Tit 1(3); Wren 2; Dunnock 1; Robin 1; Redwing 1; Goldcrest 1(1). Totals: 14 birds ringed from 9 species and 5 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 19 birds processed from 10 species. Not bad variety for just 19 birds.

The Redwing was the first that we have caught since 19th November: a very long time between catches for this species in the winter.

We have only caught seven Great Spotted Woodpeckers at this site before: the last in 2021, so it was good to catch another one. We should have caught more: I even noted an occupied nest site last breeding season. That was because you could hear the youngsters demanding to be fed. I might have tried to ring them if the nest hole hadn’t been facing over the stream that runs through the reserve.

Anyway, it was a nice, relaxed session. We closed the nets at 11:30, processing the last few birds, then took down and were off site just before 12:30.

On the face of it, compared to last January it was a disappointing month but, considering the weather and the impacts on bird life, and the fact that it is comparable with previous years prior to 2024, no real concerns about the result. Indeed, the key difference between the two months is in the number of full sessions we were able to fit in. There were just over half as many full sessions as last January, so the numbers caught per session were just about equal. Another factor from my catches was, quite simply, I did not manage to set up my usual feeding stations at all of my winter feeding sites: Red Lodge, because I need to find time to clear the winter rides; the Firs, because I did set a feeding station but in three weeks the only feeder found was the peanut feeder destroyed by squirrels and Webb’s Wood, because last year the feeders were stolen from the site and I haven’t found a position that I think would be safe from such people. The impact is quite marked. Last January my Braydon Forest team processed 436 birds in six sessions, this January it was just 168 birds in four sessions.

Missing from our catch this January when compared to last were: Blackcap; Brambling; Cetti’s Warbler; Corn Bunting; Lesser Redpoll; Tree Sparrow and Woodpigeon. Added to the catch were just Siskin and this beauty:

Ian and Andy have been trialling a new site and, although the catch at their session wasn’t huge, to catch our first adult Little Owl is very exciting, especially given that their UK population has declined by 82% between 1967 and 2022.

I am not going to do the usual increases / decreases analysis, as the difference in the number of sessions renders it meaningless. Let’s hope for better weather in February!

Ten days ago, to help with the bitter weather that had moved in, I set up a feeding station in the Firs: two one litre seed feeders and a one litre peanut feeder. On Tuesday I stopped off to top up the feeders, only to find that the peanut feeder was half empty and the seed feeders had not been touched. I assumed that this was simply a case of adjusting to them being there / finding the feeders. I was joined by David, Mark, Adam, Daniel and Emma. Laura did come to help us set up before heading off for a day of French Horn playing!

The first thing I did was to check the feeders: the peanut feeder had been wrecked, no doubt by an irate Grey Squirrel. Just the lid and its hanger remaining. Despite looking all around, no sign of the cage and the base. It brought to mind an image of a squirrel running around with it stuck around its head and body. One of the seed feeders contents had been reduced by about two inches, the other hadn’t been touched. I did wonder if we would actually catch any birds.

We set the following nets:

As we walked down the hill there was just one bird in ride 1 and nothing in ride 2. However, while Adam extracted the first Blue Tit of the morning, as we watched, a small flock flew into the furthest away net in ride 2: five Blue Tits. Having extracted them, we found a few more birds had flown into the nets: a Dunnock, Long-tailed Tit, Blackbird and a Wren. Ten birds proved to be the best catch of the session. Thereafter it was just one or two birds each round.

It really was a quiet morning. The only highlight was our sixth Goldfinch at the site. The first three were caught in a session in December 2013. After that, there was one in March 2017, one in August 2024 and this today:

The list from this morning was: Blue Tit 9(1); Great Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit (1); Wren 1(1); Dunnock (1); Blackbird (1); Goldfinch 1. Totals: 13 birds ringed from 4 species and 5 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 18 birds processed from 7 species. This is our worst January catch in the Firs ever. The previous worst was 32 back in 2019.

We kept the nets open until we all decided we were too cold to continue. Mind, that was at midday. There was quite a lot of Great Spotted Woodpecker drumming going on all morning: they were too busy with their territorial percussion to come down to the nets.

One actual bonus: David’s dad, Trevor, was clearing out his loft (roof repairs going on) and found a rather fine, solid four-seater picnic table. Surplus to their requirements, so we tried it out as a ringing table and it is perfect!

The Wiltshire Wildlife Trust make a huge commitment to community engagement, particularly with their care farms for children and their wellbeing groups for adults. As it says on their website:

https://www.wiltshirewildlife.org/health

Occasionally some of the group activities coincide with my ringing sessions, and I am always happy to spend time with the groups, show what we do and explain why we do it. The other thing that I offer is for members of the group to get bitten by a Blue Tit, sorry, I meant, to learn how to safely hold and release a bird! Today I had arranged with the Swindon Wellbeing Group for them to join us for a while at Somerford Common.

I was joined for the session by Laura at 8:00 and we set the usual nets, which were opened by 9:00. You can see the set up on the post from the 4^th January session. The weather was interesting: it started warm and misty, to the point that we were shedding layers of clothing but, as the morning went on, the fog got thicker and the temperature dropped considerably and we were wrapped up warm by the end of the session.

The first birds arrived at 9:15: an hour and three quarters before the Wellbeing Group arrived! Actually, in the interim we were joined by Rob, his wife and their three month old baby. Rob had been out ringing with me a couple of years ago, until work got in the way. We have stayed in touch and, hopefully he will be able to resume ringing at some time in the future.

It was a smallish catch, but we did have nine species in the tally. The highlight had to be a couple of Great Spotted Woodpeckers: a male to be ringed and a female retrap.

The Wellbeing group arrived bang on 11:00 and I ran through my usual profile of the ringing scheme, peppered with some examples of how the data from ringing is used. We had a decent number of birds for them to look at, good variety, and everyone who wanted to had the opportunity to hold and release a bird. The man who got to release the Great Spotted Woodpecker was particularly happy with the opportunity. In fact, only one of the group decided that they didn’t want to do so. They came with Laura and me to see our net set up and watched whilst we extracted birds from the nets. It is not something that I do often, showing the nets with birds in them, or extractions: it tends to be the part of the process that can upset the onlookers but, fortunately, the group were interested and positive about what we were doing, and all of the extractions were nice and straightforward.

As expected with the bird feeders in place, the session was titmouse heavy. However, the catch size is actually on a par with how they were back in October / November before I set up the feeders. I thought it might be interesting to look at the catch sizes, the numbers of titmice in those catches and what proportion of the catch they made.

My reading of this is that the provision of the feeding station has had a minimal impact on the catches we have made. The first catch with the feeding station in place, 14^th December 2024, was on a par with the previous three catches. The subsequent two have been somewhat smaller. Was today’s catch, being the smallest, due to the impact of the recent bad weather? It is possible, but the weights of the individuals caught were on a par with what I would expect. Blue Tits between 10g and 12g (although one was 8.9g, it was the only one sub 10g), the Great Tits were all between 17g and 20g.

The catch was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1(1); Blue Tit 11(8); Great Tit 3(3); Coal Tit 1(2); Marsh Tit (2); Wren 1; Robin (1); Blackbird 1; Chaffinch 1. Totals: 19 birds ringed from 7 species and 17 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 36 birds processed from 9 species.

Laura and I closed the nets at 12:15 and took down. We were away from site by 12:50 after a quiet, but enjoyable, session.

As well as being active within the group, several of us also work with other bodies. Ellie works for the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and helps them whenever the opportunity arises, but doesn’t keep records of what she has processed with them. Clearly not a nerd like Jonny and myself.

Jonny enjoys a productive relationship with a group that rings in Iceland. This year he was there again and had another fantastic experience:

A couple of photographs that I am in no way jealous of!!!

As mentioned in the introduction to part 1 of this review, I took on the responsibility of being trainer for the Salisbury Plain Raptor Ringing Group. In order to get to know the various elements of the group I spent a day out with each of them.

My first session was with Justine, a C-permit holder, who had been coming out with me prior to the trainer issue arising, as she wanted to expand her knowledge beyond raptors, and Mark, who has now signed on as a T-permit holder but had been doing the ladder work, with Justine doing the processing. Their work is primarily along the River Wylye valley, farmland along the A303 and some areas on the edge of the Salisbury Plain Training Area. It was the fact that I was already working with Justine that put me in line to help the group out. This session was on the 5^th May and we processed a brood of Tawny Owls and five broods of Barn Owl:

My second trip out was with Dick, currently heading up the SPRRG, and Jon. They cover the central SPTA boxes. I met with them at West Down camp on the morning of the 15^th June and we checked a number of boxes, ringing four broods of Kestrel and three broods of Barn Owl. One interesting find was regarding the diet of Barn Owls. A couple of years ago, at one of my sites near Waterhay, I found the remains of a Starling in one of the boxes. One of the boxes holding a Barn Owl brood on the Plain has a huge stock of Starling carcasses:

Clearly, this is a dietary choice for these particular birds. I suppose that large roosts of Starling are fairly easy prey. After this session I asked Ian to assess Jon for his A-permit, which he did and Jon is now a fully licensed bird ringer.

My third session was with another Jon. This time it was at Cumberwell Golf Course on the 23^rd June. As well as being a greenkeeper, Jon is the conservation manager for the site. His work is exceptional, and the site is an absolute haven for wildlife. We ringed two broods each of Kestrel and Barn Owl, plus one brood of Little Owl. I was delighted to be given the opportunity to ring my first ever Little Owl:

My last trip out was my long weekend with the Wash Wader Research Group, as previously blogged about. Rather than repeat all of the detail from that, this was the list that I was lucky enough to process: Curlew 1; Dunlin 15(2); Redshank 8(1).

There was a lot of opportunity to get really confused about ageing Redshank. This photo shows the wing of both an adult (top) and juvenile Redshank below (I think I remember that correctly):

I am looking forward to my next session there in October!

Like, I suspect, every bird ringer in the country, this last week has been an absolute no-go for any ringing activity. So, with the forecast set to be a balmy 5^oC today, I arranged to go ringing at Ravensroost Wood this morning. I chose Ravensroost because, like Somerford Common, I have been providing supplementary feeding for the last month or so, and actually stepped it up because of this cold weather. I reasoned that these birds would be in better condition than those at sites I haven’t yet managed to set up feeding stations at.

I was joined by David, Laura and Adam at 8:00 and we were met by the Robin who seems to have made the carpark his territory. I had given him a handful of seed when I went and topped up the feeders on Thursday. We set the following nets:

Nice to see that Ordnance Survey have updated the aerial map of the Braydon Forest area: I shall renew my OS Maps subscription in March!

We set up ride 4 first, followed by ride 1, so that we were unlikely to catch birds until we were good and ready. The temperature was a lot warmer than it has been, but it was still cold, and I didn’t want birds cooling in the nets by the feeding station, whilst we were setting up the longer net rides. It was the right decision: we started with a couple of Marsh Tits hitting net 2 before we had finished setting them up. An excellent start to the session: our first new Marsh Tit for 2025 and one retrap, that was ringed as a juvenile at Ravensroost in November 2024.

To ensure the wellbeing of the birds, we were checking the nets every 15 minutes. I did tell the team that if any of the birds were showing signs of cold stress we would pack up straight away.

Unfortunately, ride 4 was a bit of a waste of time: it produced a single retrapped Wren. The catch wasn’t huge but it was relatively interesting. Predictably, with the feeding station in place, the catch was Blue and Great Tit heavy. Even so, I was surprised that, of the 12 Blue Tits caught, only two were retrapped birds: 10 to be ringed.

However, the biggest surprise of the session came at 9:45, when we caught our second Jay of the year! Two sessions, two Jays. We have never caught them in consecutive session before. This was David’s first experience of ringing a Jay, and he got to feel the pain. Not quite as much as Laura did in the previous session, but enough to make sure he is careful about how he will handle them n future.

Then, at 10:45, we caught our first Great Spotted Woodpecker of the year: also a nice catch.

The catch for the session was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Jay 1; Blue Tit 10(2); Great Tit 2(3); Coal Tit 1; Marsh Tit 1(1); Wren (1); Robin (3); Blackbird 1. Totals: 17 birds ringed from 7 species and 10 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 37 birds processed from 9 species.

There was a lot of footfall through the wood this morning: no doubt lots of people making the most of the change in the weather. We had some lovely chats with people interested in what we were doing and, on the whole, the interactions were positive.

Unfortunately, those with dog owners were less so. It seemed that most of the dog walkers had forgotten their poo bags, and there was dog mess all over the place, and muggins managed to tread in it, which was not pleasant. To be fair, only two of them had their dogs off the lead, as required by the Wildlife Trust, and the one who actually had a poo bag refused to put his dog on a lead when politely asked to do so. Responsible dog owners? Responsible for ignoring the requests of the landowner, disturbing the wildlife that the area is actually intended for, and spreading poo!

Moan over! With the catch having fallen away, and having been out in the cold for just under 4 hours, we decided to pack away just before midday. With only a few nets set, it didn’t take long to get packed away and we were off-site by 12:45. We were a little delayed at the main gate whilst I, once again, fed some seed to the Robin and watched him pick out his preferred seed types. A nice little session. The only disappointments were the compete lack of any finches, nor any Goldcrests or Long-tailed Tits. I do hope that they have just moved into local gardens.