Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

I had planned to try for a session at Blakehill Farm this morning but the weather forecast was for it to be too windy, so I decided to take a chance on the opposite side of Somerford Common from where we were on Saturday. The key difference is that this wood, whilst still mixed to a degree, is largely a mature conifer plantation. Previous catches there have been very variable, both in number and species. From Buzzards to Goldcrests and quite a lot in between.

Having stood and looked at Siskin and Lesser Redpoll in the trees above our feeding station on Saturday, with none ending up in the nets, and Crossbill calling in the conifers, I wondered whether there would be more opportunity to catch them if we went along to that site. We are also much more likely to catch Coal Tits and Goldcrests on that side of the wood, both usually outnumbering even Blue Tits.

I was joined for the morning by Miranda, Anna and Rosie – doing her usual stint if helping set up and hoping to ring a few birds before heading off to work. We met at 6:30 and had the nets set by 7:30.

We set two rides of 3 x 18m nets and one ride of 2 x 18m nets, along two of the major paths through the wood. Lures were set for Lesser Redpoll, Siskin, Brambling and Goldcrest.

To say that we weren’t busy is an understatement: the first birds weren’t caught until 8:45, an hour and fifteen minutes after we had opened the nets. The first birds came out of the nets furthest west of the ringing station. They were two retrapped Goldcrests originally ringed as youngsters in December 2020. Interestingly, they were a female and a male, and they had consecutive ring numbers: LXL 880 and LXL 881, i.e. they were almost certainly caught together when ringed. To confirm that, I checked the records and found that they were processed at the same time.

Almost immediately afterwards, in the net furthest to the east of the ringing station, we watched as a small flock of five birds flew in. They proved to be two Siskin, two Treecreeper and a Blue Tit. Unfortunately, one of the Siskin managed to escape before we could extract it, but we managed to get the others without mishap. This Siskin, it turned out, is actually our first from this part of the wood. Rosie kindly forewent the offered opportunity to ring it, and gave it to Anna to ring her first ever, before heading off to work.

We then didn’t catch another bird for over an hour. By 9:45 I decided that we would give it another 30 minutes and then pack up. At 9:55 Miranda and Anna both reacted to something that was going on behind me in the western nets. When I turned to have a look there was a small flock of birds hitting the nearer set of nets. A quick look through the binoculars confirmed that they were Siskin: another six of them. They were extracted and processed.

Whilst we were doing this another bird flew in: a Robin. It turned out to be our last bird of the morning. The total catch was: Treecreeper 2; Blue Tit 1; Robin 1; Goldcrest 1(2); Siskin 7. Totals: 12 birds ringed from 5 species and 2 birds retrapped from 1 species, making 14 birds processed from 5 species.

As I said, not a big catch but to get our first Siskin for the site was extremely satisfying. Equally, the two Treecreeper were only the second and third for this part of the site. No Crossbill (in fact, we didn’t even hear them today) or Lesser Redpoll but still a nice quality catch.

Unfortunately, the wind began to get seriously strong after 10:30 and many of the nets started to blow out, losing their pockets for holding the birds, so we closed the nets, took down and were off site by 11:15.

We had to cancel last Wednesday’s session at Webb’s, due to the wet weather, so I rescheduled it for this morning. I was joined by Rosie and Tanya. The net setup was as follows:

Fortunately, Rosie was working at the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s Echo Lodge reserve first thing this morning, right next door to Webb’s Wood, so she was able to stay with us until five minutes before going off to meet her team. Tanya was on her second session with me today. Last session she got comfortable handling birds and today I started her on her ringing career. Delighted to say that she seems to be a natural: she had no problem holding the birds and fitting the rings. Her measurements were almost all spot on with a couple just 1mm out. I know people who have been doing it far longer who aren’t that accurate. Next session I will start her on extracting the birds.

It wasn’t the busiest session, which actually helped. Because we weren’t under the pressure of numbers, I could let Tanya take the time she needed to be comfortable and confident in handling the birds. I was a little surprised that it was as quiet as it was: I filled up the feeders yesterday at about 14:00. I have two peanut and two finch seed mix feeders at the site, which were fully filled yesterday and they had all been reduced by about one-fifth in that relatively short time.

We started off with a few retrap Coal Tits, a couple of new Great Tits and a retrap Marsh Tit at the feeding station on our first round. That was actually our biggest catch of the morning. Thereafter it dropped off to just 2 or 3 birds per round until Rosie went off to work. It was good to get a couple of Goldcrest, so Rosie got to ring one before she had to go. They have been remarkable by their absence this winter.

Tanya and I then had a lull of an hour with no birds but, just as I was deciding that I was getting too cold, this dropped into the 18m net in the 18m + 12m dog-leg setup:

This is our 38th of the winter in Webb’s Wood: adding to what is already our best winter for them there. Funnily enough, we had been joined by a representative of the contractors who did the thinning at Webb’s in winter 2020/21. They have started removing the timber stacks from that operation and he was collecting up redundant signs from where the stacks have been cleared. Apparently they will all be gone by the end of March. He was interested to know if we had found any difference since the thinning and was genuinely pleased when I told him about the massive increase in Lesser Redpoll activity in the wood this winter.

Tanya and I decided to take down the line of 3 x 18m nets, because it caught absolutely nothing all morning, at 11:00. That was despite my best Brambling lure playing the whole time. We did another round and processed a couple more birds and decided to take down the 2 x 18m net ride only I noticed that a bird had just flown in. It turned out to be this:

This is the first Siskin that we have caught in Webb’s Wood since March 2017. They have always been a bit hit and miss on the site: back in 2013 my feeding station used to be set up in the a stand of trees adjacent to a large crop of conifers and we caught 15 in a single catch, in 2016 it was 16, in 2017 it was 5, and then the conifers were removed and my feeding station area cleared and we didn’t see another one in the nets until this one arrived this morning.

It seemed that each net set we went to take down decided to have a final bird in it. We eventually got the nets down and left site at just after 12:30. Our total catch for the morning was: Nuthatch (1); Blue Tit 4(1); Great Tit 2(2); Coal Tit (4); Marsh Tit (1); Goldcrest 3(1); Lesser Redpoll 1; Siskin 1. Totals: 11 birds ringed from 5 species and 10 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 21 birds processed from 8 species.

Originally scheduled for the 19th February, and postponed for obvious stormy reasons, this morning we ran the Spring ringing demonstration for the Swindon Wildlife Group. This is the first time that we have done this at a Forestry England site. Usually we hold them on Wildlife Trust premises. When I went to fill up the feeding station on Monday, I was treated to a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker drumming in the trees alongside the road through the wood. On Thursday, when I went to top up the feeders, the large 8 litre feed dispenser was half empty and the trees were full of birds: Chaffinch, Lesser Redpoll and Siskin were all noticeable. So I was hopeful that we would have a wide range of species to show. We set lures for Siskin and Lesser Redpoll at the feeding station nets, and one for Lesser Spotted Woodpecker drumming in a net ride we set behind the tree line parallel to the road:

The set up was as follows: FS = Feeding Station; RS = Ringing Station; 1 = 18m net; 2 = 12m net; 3 = 18m net; 4 = 18m net; 5 = 1 x 18m net + 1 x 9m net; 6 = 1 x 18m + 1 x 12m net. Nets 1, 3 and 4 all had lures for Siskin and Lesser Redpoll playing; net 6 had the lure for Lesser Spotted Woodpecker.

I was joined by Ellie, Anna and David for the morning. We met at 6:30 and had all nets open by 7:30, with the birds starting to arrive immediately. The public arrived at 9:00, and we did have birds to show them. Unfortunately, the hoped for finch flocks just did not hit the nets. We were lucky enough to see both Lesser Redpoll and Siskin on site. Indeed, the Siskin were sat in the tree above the feeding station for quite a while. Unfortunately, that was a bit later in the morning, by which time the wind was getting up and the nets were just too obvious, moving in the breeze, and the Siskin were reluctant to come close until we closed the nets. Alongside these species, we could also hear Common Crossbill calling in the conifer stands that have been left within the paddock.

Obviously, as ringers working regularly in woodlands in winter, we do get to handle loads of Blue and Great Tits. When doing a ringing demonstration, we tend to forget that the general public do not have that exposure and they were actually delighted to have the chance to see both species up close.

Our bird of the morning was our third Marsh Tit of the year: one in each month so far. Ironically, the scheduled colour combination for this bird was as follows:

Unfortunately, both this bird and the retrapped Marsh Tit were caught before the public arrived. Still, we caught birds regularly all morning. I was able to show lots of variety in terms of ageing Blue Tits and Coal Tits, ageing and sexing Great Tits and sexing Nuthatch, as we caught a stunning male, and also why we can’t age them.

When asked if anyone would like to be shown how to safely handle and release a bird, the response was extremely enthusiastic. When that was translated into how many people want to be pecked by a Blue Tit, the enthusiasm was undimmed. That is how it went all morning. From about 11:00 people started to leave, primarily because the temperature had dropped significantly, as the northerly wind started to become a factor, and they were getting cold. However, every single one of them thanked us for a really interesting and enjoyable session so, in that respect, job done. We had, by then, closed the feeding station nets, because they were the most affected by the breeze. Once everyone had left we finished taking down and actually were away from site just before midday.

The list for the morning was: Great Spotted Woodpecker (1); Nuthatch 1; Blue Tit 16(11); Great Tit 9(3), Coal Tit 2(1); Marsh Tit 1(1); Dunnock 1; Robin 1. Totals: 31 birds ringed from 7 species and 17 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 48 birds processed from 8 species.

Despite the fortnight of storms, we managed to carry out just one full session less than in 2021.  Not that we did a lot in February 2021: just 14 sessions then and 13 sessions this year. Results were pretty similar:

Our best February came in 2019, with 556 birds in 13 sessions. It does seem that 13 or 14 sessions is the norm for this month.

A few differences from last year: no Brambling this February, whereas David got to ring his first at Somerford last year.  We also managed a Snipe in February this year, Ellie’s first.  Another nail in the coffin of her claims to be a jinx on our catches together (although, to be fair, we did only catch two birds that morning – but we were only targeting Snipe).

No Sparrowhawk or any Yellowhammer this year.  The Yellowhammer last year were at Jonny’s Sutton Benger site, but not this year.  He has a new, related, farmland site near Hilmarton and it was this that produced 38 of the Chaffinch ringed this month.  It looks like this could be a productive site, with 69 birds from 9 species in the first (only) session so far. 

Apart from the Snipe, my birding highlight was the first Siskin in Ravensroost Wood since February 2019.  

What is significant about this year is that we have already processed more birds from more species than in any Q1 since the 2013 reconfiguration, except for the number processed in 2019, when another 87 birds will take us past that milestone – and we still have one month to go.  It just goes to show how active the group has become within our own boundaries.  This graphic rather illustrates the point:

The spike in activity in 2018 coincides with Andy Palmer and Jonny Cooper getting their C-permits and getting on with working their own sites.

After two really good sessions this one was very disappointing. Lower Moor is very hit and miss in the winter, because I don’t set a feeding station there.  I work in the wildlife refuges, using a cut-down version of my breeding season Constant Effort Site. There has been a problem of rats in front of the various hides, as a result of some photographers putting out food to attract birds and small mammals closer in for better photographs, and I have no wish to attract them in to these wildlife refuge areas.  I know that the Trust have asked for that practice to stop: one hopes that it has.

The weather didn’t help: it started out with a freezing mist between 7:00 and 9:00. When the sun broke through at about 10:00, the breeze started to get up and by 10:30 it was too strong to leave the nets open, so we closed them up and took down by 11:00. 

It was doubly unfortunate for my two trainees: Annie was making her first trip out for nearly a year, and David making his first visit for nearly 3 months, both for unavoidable reasons.

We managed a paltry 11 birds: Blue Tit 1; Great Tit (1); Long-tailed Tit 2; Wren (1); Robin (2); Redwing 1; Blackbird 1(1); Lesser Redpoll 1. Totals: 6 birds ringed from 5 species and 5 birds retrapped from 4 species, making 11 birds processed from 8 species. Still, with over 100 birds processed this week it would be churlish to moan too much.

We have seen Siskin in and around our woodland ringing sites since October but, unlike the Lesser Redpoll, they have remained stubbornly in the treetops all winter. They must have been finding enough food to sustain them – until today, that is.

I was joined by Rosie and Tanya at 7:00 and by Claire with her children Samuel and Zara at 8:00. It has been a couple of months since Claire et al have been able to join us, so we had to reintroduce Samuel to the delights of handling Blue Tits, before letting him take on ringing duties again. We started with him just getting comfortable handling the birds and, once he had got his ringer’s grip re-established to my satisfaction, he then shadowed the ringing process, checking wing lengths and weights, before getting to ring his first bird of the morning. I was kind, it was a Robin, not a Blue Tit (he is only young – I don’t want to put him off).

Recently I have just been taking just exactly the number of nets I want for the session, to save on packing too much stuff. That came back to bite me on the posterior this morning when my two 6m nets decided to fail. One broke a shelf-string, which meant I couldn’t use it. The second broke the link to the loop that goes around the pole. Fortunately I managed a running repair on that net so, by a slight reorganisation, we could still surround the entire feeding station area.

As expected, the first round was busy and very Blue Tit heavy, plus the odd Great and Coal Tit. What I am finding somewhat surprising is just how many second year Blue Tits we are catching and ringing. There is no doubt that breeding season 2021 was dreadful for Blue Tits. Everyone who was monitoring Blue Tit nest boxes confirmed full failures or low fledging rates, yet this winter, since the 1st November, we have caught and ringed 234 juvenile Blue Tits in the Braydon Forest, out of a total of 285 ringed in total, i.e. 82.1%. I have done a comparison with previous years to see if this is reflected in our ringing totals. Because of the Covid restrictions in place throughout 2020 and 2021, it has severely distorted the data for that period, so I have excluded it from this analysis:

What does this table show? Essentially, whatever happened in the breeding season is not reflected in what we have seen over this winter. Either the breeding season wasn’t as bad as first thought or, radical suggestion, perhaps with less intraspecific and intragenerational competition for food more young Blue Tits have survived than would otherwise be the case. Who knows?

Amongst all of these youngsters, today we recaptured Blue Tit S859712. This bird was originally caught and ringed as a juvenile on the 2nd September 2017. This was the eleventh time it has been recaptured, always in the same general area (the 8-year hazel coppice) so twelve times in all it has been handled – and it still pecks like a good ‘un every time! I love Blue Tits: birds with attitude!

The third round produced the bird of the day:

This is my first Siskin since one at Somerford Common almost exactly one year ago (27th February 2021) and it was the first that Rosie has ever got to ring. Rosie and Tanya were actually scheduled to be working at Ravensroost this morning, so they had to go to work when the rest of their work party turned up at 9:30. On the penultimate round I found another Siskin, this time a female, in the nets by the feeding station. It looked nicely settled and there was a Blue Tit that was rather entangled, so I decided to extract that first. Unfortunately, she was nicely settled but, also, not particularly restricted and as I removed the Blue Tit she managed to escape the net. Fortunately, by then Claire and the children had left for the morning so I didn’t have to apologise for my language.

The list for the day was: Nuthatch (1); Blue Tit 13(11); Great Tit 2(4); Coal Tit 1(3); Marsh Tit (1); Dunnock 1; Robin 1(3); Siskin 1. Totals: 19 birds ringed from 6 species and 23 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 42 birds processed from 8 species.

We had convened at Ravensroost Wood, as opposed to Lower Moor Farm, because the weather forecast was for it to be a bit breezy. In the event, there was no sign of a breeze until 11:00, which was when I decided to start closing up the nets and taking down. It took a while, as I was now working solo, and I took down in stages, extracting the few remaining birds as I went. I left site at 12:15. It will be Lower Moor Farm tomorrow, as I finally catch up on the fortnight lost to the storms.

After two weeks of ringing inactivity, due to that unprecedented run of storms, I decided to kick off our activities again with a trip to the Firs. This was because the forecasts still suggested that there would be a gusting south-westerly wind. With the rides at the Firs running north to south, the wood offers better protection from the wind, when it is coming from that direction, than any of the other sites.

I was joined for the morning by Rosie, Miranda and Jonny. We set the usual nets down the central glade. Astonishingly, at first sight there was no sign of damage from the storms in the central glade. However, as we were setting the 12m net behind the feeding station, Rosie said “Has that tree always leaned that way?”. A mature tree, which my net runs in front of, with a near 1m diameter is now only staying upright because a couple of other trees are blocking its passage to the ground. Fortunately, it is falling away from our ringing area.

I ventured into the wood yesterday to top up the feeding station, having taken the sensible pills and not headed out whilst the wind was so fierce. Having watched the local news showing a film of the spire of St Thomas’ Church in Wells falling as a result of the winds, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. Unsurprisingly, after all of the rain, the Firs had reverted to its local name: the Braydon Bog. It was filthy underfoot so I advised everybody that wellies were essential.

We arrived on site at 7:00 to find that the weather was better than forecast. In fact, the wind didn’t start gusting until we started to take down at 11:00. That was a definite bonus. Rosie managed to get a good number of birds processed before heading off to work, leaving the three of us to manage the rest of the morning.

The catch was exactly as expected: lots of Blue and Great Tits and more recaptures than new birds (28 to 21). There were two highlights for me: the fourth ever Lesser Redpoll for the site. Our first two there were caught in November 2016, then we had no more until our last session in the Firs, just about the last bird out of the net that day and another singleton this morning.

The second was a male Great Spotted Woodpecker. I thought that the ring number looked old so I logged in to the on-line system and did a search on that bird. It turned out that it was ringed as a second year bird on the 18th February 2017. This makes it a bird in its seventh year. Okay, it has another 4 years 3 months and a few days to go to get to the longevity record, but it is the oldest that my team has recovered so far.

The list for the day was: Great Spotted Woodpecker (3); Nuthatch (2); Treecreeper 1; Blue Tit 10(9); Great Tit 7(8); Coal Tit (3); Marsh Tit (2); Long-tailed Tit 2; Dunnock (1); Lesser Redpoll 1. Totals: 21 birds ringed from 5 species and 28 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 49 birds processed from 10 species.

With the number of birds declining as the morning wore on, and the wind beginning to get up, at just before 11:00 I announced that the next round would be the last, and we would shut the nets as we emptied them. Usually at the Firs that is a signal for a large influx of birds to hit the nets. This morning it didn’t! We had another 8 birds, not as many as usual, which is normally multiples of ten. As a result, we had the nets down and everything cleaned away by just after midday.

That got me home in time to unpack the replacement Barn Owl boxes that have, finally, arrived, for me to now work hard over the next couple of weeks to get them all erected. Many thanks to my wife for her help in getting the boxes sorted out and stored ready to go.

It is wet, it is windy, no ringing, no fun, so I thought I would spend some time today having a look at some data. As regular readers will know, I have recently done some analysis of Blue Tits in the Braydon Forest, as a result of a paper by Shutt et al¹, which was followed by an article in January’s British Birds², expressing concerns about the impact of garden bird feeding on vulnerable species. Although I expressed no criticism of the source paper and, in fact, was at pains to make that point several times in my post, it certainly ruffled enough feathers for me to be attacked on Twitter. I am not going to go into details of the individuals concerned, but I hope that they put more rigour into their science than they did into their criticism of my post. One critic was particularly egregious, criticising me for something that I never claimed, and then getting his data and analysis so horribly wrong that, when I pointed it out, he did what any self-respecting academic would do and admitted he was in error (don’t be silly – he blocked me). My post pre-dated the article in British Birds, and I only got the chance to read it during the criticisms, not that it was relevant to the points I was making anyway. It helped that I have over 9 full years of data for me to analyse.

At the risk of sparking off more Twitter Wars, I thought I would have a look at the population of Great Spotted Woodpeckers in the Braydon Forest, as represented by my ringing data, as this species was one of the species identified as having had a significant increase in numbers and, being a successful nest predator, capable of impacting on populations of vulnerable species. Anyone who has watched recent Springwatch episodes in the last few years cannot have failed to have seen examples of their predatory behaviour. Particularly gruesome was the predation of Treecreeper pulli / near fledglings from their nest.

I have had regular visits of Great Spotted Woodpecker on my garden peanut feeder over the years. This year I am pretty confident that we have seen a juvenile that has matured into a fine looking male – but I cannot be sure it is a single bird. I did catch and ring a single male adult back in April 2020. It hasn’t subsequently been recaptured.

For this analysis I have looked only at the captures within the woodlands of the Braydon Forest, ignoring the wide open spaces of Blakehill Farm. Also, I have counted the total number of sessions in those woodlands in each year, not just the number of sessions in which Great Spotted Woodpeckers were caught, and analysed as per the total number of sessions.

As you can see, over the nine years there has been a near 5% increase in the number of sessions in which we have caught this species. The next thing I looked at was the actual size of the catch:

As you can see from these figures, there was a significant spike in the number of birds ringed in 2017. Despite that, the overall trend shows a slight decline in the number of birds over the nine year period.

Next I looked at the proportion of the catch that are adults and juveniles over the period:

As this graph shows, whilst numbers of juveniles ringed each year are lower than those of adults, the trend for juveniles is a steadily increasing line. Conversely, the trend for adults ringed is steadily declining:

Whilst I have analysed the numbers ringed and retrapped, a single bird can be recaptured multiple times over multiple years, so I have counted the actual number of individuals that have been processed per annum:

As this shows, the actual incidence of interacting with individual birds shows a slow decline. In all of the figures shown, the 2017 spike has clearly had a positive impact on the population trend shown, so I have removed that spike from the data to see what impact it might have:

The impact is relatively minor: a reduction of 3% in Fig. 5 to a reduction of 4% in Fig 6, albeit from a lower starting point (27% as opposed to 30%).

Given that we carry out our sessions with consistent net positions and consistent, although seasonally variable, session lengths, this does not look as though it shows a population that is growing rapidly within the Braydon Forest. As per my previous posts, I make no claims about the validity of this analysis, outside of the specified geographical parameters and the limitations of bird ringing for analysing population dynamics.

References:

1. Shutt JD, Trivedi UH, Nicholls JA : 2021 Faecal metabarcoding reveals pervasive long-distance impacts of garden bird feeding.

Proc. R. Soc. B 288: 20210480.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0480

2. Broughton, RK; Shutt, JD; Lees, AC: 2022 Rethinking bird feeding

British Birds Volume 115 pp 2 – 6

Jonny Cooper has just updated the maps and data for the ringed bird recoveries, adding in those registered during 2021 and I have just uploaded them into the blog.

Highlights include: the oldest recovered Goldcrest in the UK (unless another, older one has been found since) and the second longest movement of a Blue Tit within the UK (okay, that’s a 2022 record).

Lowlights: the recovery of one of the Buzzards ringed on Somerford Common in November 2019 being found shot dead in a country park near Dudley in the West Midlands.

Both Snipe and Jack Snipe regularly overwinter at Blakehill Farm. They can be seen pretty much anywhere on the site when the ground has been softened by the weather. One place that is a regular spot is the middle pond of the three on the west of the site. With lockdown and other issues, last year we didn’t manage to get out for a Snipe catching session. Our first go for these birds at the site was back in January 2019. We caught three Snipe and one Jack Snipe: I gave Andrew and Jonny a Snipe each, with one for me and my first ever Jack Snipe.

Remarkably, in January 2020 Jonny and I tried again and this time we also caught four birds: three Jack Snipe and one Snipe, so Jonny got to ring his first two Jack Snipe, I got my second and another Snipe. I did run another session in early February 2020, to see if we could catch some Snipe for other members of the team. Unfortunately, that day we drew a blank.

I was hopeful that there might be some Snipe about that we could have a go for this week. The forecast for today was for it to be flat calm: a lull in a windy week. On Monday, hoping that the forecast would be correct, I took a trip over to see whether there were any Snipe about. As I approached the middle pond six Snipe flew off. When I got a bit nearer, 3 Jack Snipe decided it was time to make their exit. That decided me: we would try for a session on Friday. The pond itself is very full and the birds were gathered in the swampy tussock grass at the eastern end. Three Stonechat showing really well were an added bonus.

Knowing that I would be setting up in full darkness, and away from my usual positions, I decided to go back yesterday and use some bamboo canes to mark where each of the poles would be set for the 2 x 12m and 1 x 18m wader nets (50mm mesh size) I planned to use to form a cul-de-sac. As luck would have it, I flushed 15 Snipe.

I arrived on site at 5:40 this morning and was followed into the carpark by another car. I had agreed with Ellie and Tanya that they would arrive at 6:00 so, knowing Ellie as I have for a long time, I assumed it was Tanya. First time out, keen as mustard etc. Only, it was the police. Momentary trepidation dissipated as soon as they asked if I worked for Oak & Furrows. They were sharing the car with two Canada Geese that had been injured on a local road. They had tried calling the O&F phone line and were looking for their site. Lucky for them, I had the code for the padlock and could direct them to the facility.

I started setting my three nets, was joined by Ellie and Tanya at just after 6:00, as arranged, and we had the three nets open in short order. It was still very dark, so we set up the ringing station a couple of hundred metres away from the net set, and sat and waited for it to get light. Whilst setting up I flushed a couple of Mallard from the pond, but no Snipe (which I think was a good thing).

As it was beginning to get light, a couple of Canada Geese flew in and landed on the pond but away from the nets. At about 6:50 there was quite a lot of squawking from the geese and I could see the 18m net moving. My first thought was that one of the geese was in the net, so we ran over to try and rescue the net but, as we got closer, both geese flew off. There in the 18m net was a Snipe and in the adjacent 12m net, a Blackbird. I extracted the Snipe and Ellie took the Blackbird. There is an art to removing birds from these large mesh nets. It isn’t hard, just different from the nets we usually work with and you just have to be a bit more careful, particularly with freeing the wings.

Having missed out on them the last time she came along (because we all did), Ellie got to ring her first Snipe:

As it turned out, those were the only birds we caught all morning. A little later on we went over to look at the easternmost pond and, sure enough, two Snipe flew off. Forgetting the old adage about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, I decided to set my 2 x 18 2-shelf wader nets adjacent to where we had disturbed them. I shouldn’t have bothered. What I should have done was go with my initial instincts and set those nets up immediately after setting the first three, whilst it was still dark. Lesson learned.

Ellie had to leave just after 8:00 to get to work, and Tanya left a little later still to get to her job with the Wildlife Trust. I sat back and enjoyed watching the birds flying around. As the sun came up and the weather warmed, it turned into a beautiful winter’s day. I checked the nets regularly, but they remained empty, s0 at 10:45 I started to take them down and began to leave site at 11:15. I say began because I got some good birding in on my way out.

As I left the pond area I put up a mixed flock of Redwing and Fieldfare in the adjacent field. There were at least 40 birds. I haven’t seen any of either species for a while, so it was good to see. I plan to be back to try for Snipe again the next wind-free day, but I will also set nets for these thrushes. On my journey back to the main gate I saw three Stonechat and a superb male Kestrel. Despite only two birds caught, I thoroughly enjoyed this morning’s session.