Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

With the wind forecast to be gusting quite strongly from the south-west this morning I knew that the scheduled trip to Brown’s Farm would be a non-starter. I chose Red Lodge instead for two reasons: 1) I am doing Ravensroost Wood on Saturday and 2) my net rides in Red Lodge would be protected from the wind by the woodland and the rides running north to south.

Yesterday I topped up all of my feeding stations in the Braydon Forest. I ran into a very pleasant photographer called Mitch Harris at the Firs, whilst topping up there, who later sent me some lovely photographs, including 2 of my colour-ringed Marsh Tits, making use of the feeding station. The benefit of colour ringing these birds is that I can record sightings like these within the BTO’s on-line database, enabling the continued tracking of their survival.

Arriving on site at Red Lodge this morning I was pleased to see that the seed feeder had been reduced by one third since they were topped up at 13:00 on Tuesday. I hoped that this would augur well for a catch of some finches this morning. Unfortunately, that hope was not fulfilled: not a single finch of any description in the nets today. Instead it was almost entirely a catch of Blue and Great Tits.

What was surprising about this catch was that the vast majority of the Blue Tits were unringed when caught. At this time of the winter, at the Braydon Forest sites that I ring most regularly, I expect to find a majority of both Blue and Great Tits to be recaptured birds. The list today was: Nuthatch 2; Blue Tit 18(1); Great Tit 10(5); Coal Tit 1; Marsh Tit 1; Robin (1); Blackbird (1). Totals: 32 birds ringed from 5 species and 8 birds retrapped from 4 species, making 40 birds processed from 7 species.

It was a pretty straightforward session: never too busy, but never an empty round either. There were definite highlights: Rosie got to process half-a-dozen birds before having to leave for work, including a lovely female Nuthatch. A little later I got to process an equally gorgeous male:

It is quite easy to tell male and female Nuthatch apart, if you can get a look at the under-tail coverts. As you can see from this photo, the male has a brick-red surround to the white parts of the feathers. The female has paler, buff surrounds. These colours are replicated om the underwing areas if you are watching them in flight.

I caught and ringed my second Marsh Tit of the year: colour ringed metal over black on the left leg and yellow over red on the right leg:

The wind got up at just after 11:00, so I shut the nets and took down, and left site early (for me) at midday.

If you are interested in seeing more of Mitch’s work, you can find it at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bymitch/

An enjoyable, if cold, session at Webb’s Wood this morning. I had a good sized team out with me : Adam, Alice, David, Rob and, able to join us for a full session for once, Rosie. Because of that, we set a few more nets than I would usually do.

The 4 x 18m net line is one I haven’t used for a long time. There were two key reasons: firstly, it seemed to catch an awful lot of same day retraps with the ringing station set where we do (the red mark on the map) and, secondly, it had become very overgrown but this autumn it seems that Forestry England have widened the path and cut back the overhanging vegetation. Funnily enough, it was the only net that didn’t have a same day retrap in it.

The photograph below shows just how it looked pre-thinning so you can compare and see just how much thinning has taken place in the wood. If you have a look back at previous blog posts, it looked like this:

It will be interesting to review in a year or two whether the avifauna has changed much as a result.

It was a very comfortable session inasmuch as we never had a glut of birds: it was a steady procession of birds hitting the nets and getting extracted. That was definitely a good thing, with David back after a 10 week hiatus, Rosie on her first full session for ages, Adam coming along whenever his busy schedule allows and Rob on his third taster session, nobody needed to feel under pressure. What wasn’t very comfortable were the underfoot conditions by the easternmost 2 x 18m nets: the mud was more than ankle deep all along there (it eventually claimed my left wellie boot as we were taking down, I had to laugh, it was funny, if cold, wet and very mucky) and the wind, which wasn’t very strong until we started to take down, but it was bitterly cold. So the ambient temperature was fine but we were still getting chilled.

Once again we lured for Lesser Redpoll, Siskin and Brambling. Once again, we caught some Lesser Redpoll but none of the others. Frustratingly, there were Siskin around, in the tops of the trees. Presumably there is still food up there for them and they don’t need access to our feeding station with its luxury finch food!

The list for the day was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Nuthatch 1; Blue Tit 7(4); Great Tit 3(8); Coal Tit 3(1); Marsh Tit (2); Long-tailed Tit 1(4); Wren 1; Robin 1(2); Song Thrush (1); Blackbird 2(1); Chaffinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 2. Totals: 23 birds ringed from 11 species and 23 birds retrapped from 8 species, making 46 birds processed from 13 species. That is pretty decent variety in this woodland at this time of year.

The highlight was definitely adding another couple of Lesser Redpoll to the Webb’s total for this winter. It really has improved beyond anything we have had there before. Is this one improvement due to the thinning?

One of the benefits of having a good sized team out was that both setting up and taking down were much quicker than usual. We met at 7:00 and the nets were open by 7:45 and taking down took just 30 minutes. The nets were closed at 11:45 and we were leaving site by 12:15.

A nice, easy session in the Firs this morning, with a decent variety of species for this small woodland. I was joined for the morning by Miranda and for the early part of the session by Rosie. We only set 7 nets: 2 x 3 x 18m along the main glade and 1 x 12m behind the feeding station. Starting at 7:00, we had the nets open by 7:45 and extracted the first couple of birds as we returned to the ringing station. The first bird out of the net was an adult, female Chaffinch.

Having the nets open early meant that Rosie got to process a few birds before leaving to get to work, some hedge laying at Lower Moor Farm. Miranda has just recently started extracting birds from the nets. This morning I let her into the wonderful world of extracting Blue Tits. From the continuous pecking, the grabbing great claws full of net, twisting, double-pocketing and exploiting any small holes left unrepaired in the nets, they are the ultimate test of whether someone is going to make it as a ringer. She acquitted herself very well.

My training philosophy on extraction is simple: it is the only part of the process that can cause harm to the bird, so all of my trainees are told to do what they are comfortable with, and if they are at all concerned or having difficulty with any particular bird, to shout for help. I don’t subscribe to macho “carry on at all costs”, as that way birds can be hurt. Nor do I subscribe to the “you must do the feet and legs first, then the wings, then the head” as was the then mantra of my first trainer (that was a long time ago, so he might have changed since then – I hope so). For so many birds it is just not appropriate. If I can ringer’s grip a bird and lift it out of the net, that’s what I will do. Most often I “unwrap” a bird: lift it out by the thighs, then clear left foot and leg, left wing, head, right wing, right foot and leg, or vice versa. We must be doing something right because extraction injuries to our birds are an extremely rare occurrence (I cannot remember the last time it happened).

It was a very decent session for a small woodland: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Nuthatch 1(2); Treecreeper (1); Blue Tit 8(4); Great Tit 3(7); Long-tailed Tit 2; Dunnock 1(1); Robin 1(2); Blackbird 3; Goldcrest 1; Chaffinch 1; Bullfinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 1. Totals: 24 birds ringed from 12 species and 17 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 41 birds processed from 13 species.

The Lesser Redpoll was a nice surprise. Although we have been catching them in the other woodlands around the Braydon Forest, it is only the third ever caught here, and only the second occasion they have been caught in the wood: the other two were caught in November 2016. This bird was a juvenile / second year male. I took this photo to show the pink spotting on the breast that led me to identify it as a male. For the life of me, I cannot see a single one in the photo. Where did they go? No idea – hiding under other feathers presumably:

We worked out that each round involved a walk of some 800m, from the ringing station to the end of the net rides and back again. In 4 hours we will carry out a minimum of 8 rounds, plus the 2 walks erecting and then taking down the net rides: 8km per session. That’s pretty decent exercise for an old man! Today we closed the nets at 11:45, packed away and left site at about 12:30.

What seemed to be a quite remarkable month for us in January has actually turned out to be comparable with both 2019 and 2020.  I am not going to do my usual comparison with the previous year’s equivalent: that would be grossly unfair, given that we went into lockdown and were confined to our gardens after the 10th of the month, and only 207 birds were processed.  So I am going to compare with 2020: those halcyon pre-Covid days.  January 2020 was our second best January since the group split.  Our best to that time was actually 2019: 666 birds processed but, at 601, 2020 was pretty good.

This year we have had a 50% uplift on 2020: 958 birds processed from 34 species, compared to 601 processed from 29 species. However, we managed to fit in 20 full sessions this January, compared to only 13 in 2020. Presumably we have benefitted from the weather giving us more opportunity to get out and about.  In reality we have actually processed just 1.5 more birds per session this January compared to 2020.  January 2019 actually comprised 17 sessions, and 8 birds fewer per session than in 2022.

These are the results:

When you look at the bald figures Blue Tit numbers look so much higher compared to 2020.  However, the actual number processed per session in 2022 is 17.6 and the number processed per session in 2020 was 17.6! This is pretty similar with most of our commonly caught species.

However, there were clear increases in the numbers of Wren, Robin, Song Thrush, Reed Bunting, Chaffinch and Redwing caught this month (despite Redwing showing very little interest in the lure this side of Christmas) and an excellent catch of Lesser Redpoll. 

This is our best ever January catch of Lesser Redpoll, going back through all of the records in DemOn, which has records for the species from 2003 onwards, 19 years ago.  The majority were at Somerford Common, and another 7 at Webb’s Wood and 3 at Lower Moor Farm. 

Jonny caught 4 Chiffchaff (2 each at East Tytherton and Langford Lakes), which is our best for recent times. Funnily enough, he caught two at Langford Lakes on New Year’s Day 2021. The only other January catch of modern times was at Lower Moor Farm in 2017.

Individual highlights include: Jonny’s Water Rail at Langford Lakes and his Green Woodpecker and Brambling, both firsts for his East Tytherton site; my first Firecrest for Lower Moor Farm, my second ever Pied Wagtail at Brown’s Farm (actually, just getting out there was a delight, it is as difficult to get out there as at Blakehill Farm, it is every bit as exposed and the slightest breeze puts it out of contention), Andy got his second ever Corn Bunting for his SPTA site and Alice got her second Lesser Redpoll for Hogacre Eco Park.

Unfortunately, due to an outbreak of avian flu in Castle Eaton on the 10th December, Steph couldn’t ring her garden and I could not get to Blakehill Farm, nor a large part of Red Lodge, as both were inside the 10km surveillance zone (it was lifted yesterday).  To be honest, the only reason I was at Lower Moor Farm was because the avian flu outbreak had meant that I was, potentially, overdoing it at the available sites.  The outbreak meant that I couldn’t carry out my usual attempts for Snipe and Jack Snipe at Blakehill, as happened so successfully back in 2020 (1 Snipe and 3 Jack Snipe in one session).  

There was one significant reduction compared with 2020. Greenfinch. In 2020 Jonny’s East Tytherton and Sutton Benger sites produced all 36 birds. This year all bar one was at Sutton Benger, a third of the catch there in 2020, one at Melksham, and none at East Tytherton.

Anyway, a very interesting month, let’s hope February is as good.

Not trivialising it but, being on the fringes of storm Malik, we had wind speeds gusting to 40mph on Saturday, so I had to shift Saturday’s session to Sunday. Unfortunately, that meant that I would be working solo as my three putative helpers were unavailable today. Having filled the feeders on Tuesday, when I did the other Braydon Forest sites, I did my usual of going to top up the feeders at my target site the day before. I have two medium sized peanut feeders and one 2.5l seed feeder at this site. Working on the possibility that the session would be on Saturday, I went back on Friday, just three days later, to find all feeders empty. That was indicative that we would have a busy session. I filled them ready for whenever the session took place. Our last session there. on the 9th January, produced 36 ringed and 33 retrapped, with lots of tangled, difficult extractions. I was rather concerned at what might happen this time, especially as I would now be working solo. Arriving on site at 7:00, I started erecting the nets and had them all up and open by 7:45. My concerns about the potentially busy nature of the session were further heightened by the fact that those feeders were, once again, empty.

I set 6 nets: 2 x 18m along the main ride plus 2 x 9m nets and 2 x 6m nets around the feeders:

The two yellow crosses (nearest the top) are the peanut feeders and the bottom green cross is the seed feeder. Given the current discussions regarding feeding: the seed I feed is a small seed, finch mix, with no wheat. I refilled them for the third time in a week.

It was a much less busy morning than last time. Given the rate at which the feeders were being emptied, and given that there is no sign of squirrel involvement, I was surprised that it wasn’t busier. Perhaps they are all fed to capacity! I am not complaining, I ended up processing 40 birds and every round was unpressured and enjoyable. There was a lot footfall in the wood today and a lot of people stopped to chat. I rarely find people are antagonistic when they see you processing the birds. It gives me the chance to explain about how we catch the birds, and helps them understand about how the nets work, removing that potential source of conflict.

The undoubted highlight of the day was my first new Marsh Tit of the year. It was a second year bird. Alongside it we also retrapped three others: two of which were the same age as the one ringed today, the other is a year older.

I didn’t catch a single winter visitor species. There was no sign of any Redwing, Lesser Redpoll or Siskin. In fact, the only winter visitor I saw, and didn’t catch, were a couple of over-flying Fieldfare. There were a few birders who stopped to chat and, upon their return from scouting the wood, confirmed that it was devoid of those winter species.

The list for the day was: Blue Tit 8(10); Great Tit 7(6); Coal Tit (2); Marsh Tit 1(3); Robin 2; Chaffinch 1. 19 birds ringed from 5 species and 21 birds retrapped from 4 species, making 40 birds processed from 6 species.

I closed the nets at 11:45 and left site by 12:45.

As I have recently written a couple of pieces on Blue Tits in the Braydon Forest I thought I ought to have a look at the rest of them, as well as revisiting the Blue Tit figures. Previous work, because it was focused on the single species, only counted sessions in which Blue Tits were caught. This doesn’t work when incorporating other species into the equation, so I counted every session within the Braydon Forest carried out between 1st January 2013 and 31st December 2021. However, I also decided to exclude the sessions carried out at Blakehill Farm. It would massively skew the results against both Coal Tit and Marsh Tit, as there is no woodland to speak of where I ring at that site and no Marsh Tits have ever been seen there and we have only ever caught a single Coal Tit, in the hedgerow.

Despite the restrictions imposed on our ringing activities by Covid, and the restrictions placed on us by the Wildlife Trust, due to interference from members of the public with the increased footfall at Ravensroost Wood during and after lockdown, I have decided to include both 2020 and 2021 in the results, as they will have impacted all four species covered in this little analysis. These are the results:

Blue Tit:

Unsurprisingly, these are the commonest of the titmice in the Braydon Forest. What is interesting is that there is no commonality between annual catches. We know that both 2016 and 2021 were poor breeding seasons for Blue Tits and the results show that.

As you can see from the chart, whilst the numbers ringed do go up and down on an annual basis, the trend (the red line) over this period has remained pretty well static.

Great Tit:

Not quite the same swings in numbers as seen with the Blue Tits. Of interest is the ratio of adults to juveniles. Unusually, more adults than juveniles are ringed each year. I will look at this in more detail at the end of the piece.

As you can see from the trend line, the population is stable with a slight increase over time.

Coal Tit:

I suspect I could massively increase the numbers of Coal Tit caught and ringed if I did sessions in the western part of Somerford Common, which is predominantly a conifer plantation. I might test this out in 2022.

As you can see from the graph, although at a lower density than Blue or Great Tits, the dynamic in the numbers caught follows a similar trajectory. What is concerning about this chart is that the trend is showing a decline in the catch over time. This might be habitat related which, as indicated above, I might well test out this year.

Marsh Tit:

Undoubtedly, to me this is the most important species of Tit in the Forest, being a Red-Listed rapidly declining species. I make no claims about the population size, as I have not done full surveys of each site. What I do know is how many we catch each year. Unfortunately, due to the restrictions imposed on my activities in Ravensroost Wood, a site where I would normally expect to ring eight or more birds per annum, it seriously impacted on my numbers for this year. It also wasn’t helped by my not getting access to Webb’s Wood until July. Obviously, that impacted my catch of all species but when you are dealing with an uncommon species with small numbers the impact can be magnified.

As you can see from this, although it is starting from a very low base, it is the one species of Paridae in the Braydon Forest that is showing a positive upward trend in its population. Both Forestry England and the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust have committed to managing their sites sympathetically for this species, perhaps it is having an impact?

Adult to Juvenile Ratios:

Given that this analysis has primarily been based on the balance between adults and juveniles ringed by year, I have put together a table for comparison:

As you can see from table 5: we ring a greater proportion of Juvenile Marsh Tits than for any of the other three species. Obviously, the numbers are smaller, so the opportunity for a wider variance than in those species with much higher numbers of records is there, and I haven’t carried out the appropriate statistical analyses (yet – next rainy day maybe, once I have learnt R and / or Mark!). As previously mentioned, what is also interesting is that we ring more adult Great Tits than juveniles. I would never have guessed that would be the case.

I have been avoiding Red Lodge since the 10th December as a large part of it is inside the 10km Avian Flu surveillance zone after an outbreak on a farm at Castle Eaton. Blakehill Farm was inside the zone and part of Red Lodge was also. Although my ringing site was actually about 400m outside of the zone, I thought to err on the side of caution. I removed my feeding station for the duration. However, there have been no further outbreaks and I am conscious that I am getting high retrap volumes at my other sites. I like retraps, that is where the science is, but I am also aware that I don’t want to visit any of my sites more than once per month. So, on that basis, I decided to reopen the feeding station at Red Lodge on Monday and ring there today.

I was joined for the session by Rosie, doing her usual of helping set up before heading off to work, and Miranda. Fortunately, this time Rosie got the chance to ring nine birds before heading off. Not only that, she didn’t have to handle a single Blue Tit. When you see the make up of the entire catch you will realise how lucky she was!

I should have realised straight away that we were in for a titmouse heavy session: both peanut feeders had been emptied in less than two days and the seed feeder had hardly been touched. I am aware that the Grey Squirrels are likely to be taking a proportion of the peanuts, but we didn’t see one at all this morning. Of 40 birds caught, 24 were Blue Tits, 7 Great Tits and 3 Coal Tits.

We were joined at 9:30 by mum Jenny and her two tiny tots George and Lily, so they could see some birds at close range. They were lovely children, and didn’t moan at all about the cold breeze that was making the adults feel much less than comfortable. They stayed with us for an hour-and-a-half, during which we managed to show them a few species other than just Blue Tits, including the solitary Lesser Redpoll we managed to catch. After they left we did our last round and I made the fatal mistake of voicing that fact. Needless to say, Miranda and I extracted another 11 Blue Tits and 2 Great Tits!

The list for the day was: Blue Tit 19(5); Great Tit 6(1); Coal Tit 1(2); Dunnock 1; Robin 1(2); Song Thrush 1; Lesser Redpoll 1. Totals: 30 birds ringed from 7 species and 10 birds retrapped from 4 species, making 40 birds processed from 7 species.

The only unusual bird in our catch this morning was this juvenile Blue Tit:

As you can see, its left foot is badly deformed, with just one claw. I have no idea what might have caused this, but one does hear about these sorts of injuries being the result of claws getting bound by hairs used to line the nest. I will make the point, because ignorant people have tried it on before, we ring birds on the right leg, not the left, so this injury has nothing to do with our bird ringing activities. We did, however, ring it, and I hope we catch it again in the next couple of years, to see if it has survived. It was certainly at an average weight for Blue Tits at this time of year, so seems to be coping.

We packed up and left site by 12:45.

One of the benefits of having such a diverse group of ringers within the West Wilts Ringing Group is that, amongst the younger members of the group, they are taking advantage of other opportunities to expand their ringing activities.

This year, Jonny has spent time ringing geese through contacts he has with the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, spent time ringing birds in Portugal and, as part of being scrutinised for his A-permit by Olly Fox of the North Wilts Ringing Group and the West Oxfordshire Farmland Bird Project, spent time on various other sites in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.

Alice, currently based in Oxford where she is working towards her PhD at university there has spent time ringing in sites around Oxford with, amongst others, the prestigious Edward Grey Institute, and also spent a good part of the year on trips out with the Wash Wader Group, at Portland & Copeland Bird Observatories and Middleholm (near Skomer Island).

Lucy spent the summer as a warden for the Little Tern colony at Spurn Point, where she also got the opportunity to carry out some spectacular ringing at various places around Lincolnshire. She then spent a month or so on Lundy, watching / counting the Grey Seals giving birth, before heading back to Wiltshire for a few sessions and then heading south to Ascension Island for the next 11 months for some more wildlife monitoring.

All three of them took full advantage of their opportunities and these were the results.

Jonny:

Alice:

Lucy:

It isn’t often that I am jealous of my trainees but I have to say that Lucy had me green. When she sent me this photo I was a little bit jealous: I have ringed an adult, but I would still like to ring one of these:

However, what really made me green was this:

At the time I was asked to keep quiet about the bird, but Paul, the warden at Spurn, has given me permission to use this photo in this post. What an absolute stunner! I wonder what she will get to ring on Ascension that will make me even more envious?

I think it is glorious just how involved our team is with other projects and people. Of course, I shouldn’t forget my own little foray into the Golden Valley Nature Reserve with the fabulous Aurora Gonzalo-Tarodo to ring Dippers (actually, I had forgotten until I got to this point, several days after I started putting this together):

The nails, I hasten to add, are not mine!

Here’s to an equally exciting and productive 2022!

After the last session at Somerford I was rather excited at the prospects for today. I have a huge ten litre seed feeder on site and a normal sized peanut feeder. It was filled up on Tuesday with a finch seed mix and when I went to top it up yesterday, in readiness for Saturday’s session, it had been reduced by one-third. When we arrived on site this morning the level have been reduced by at least one-and-a-half litres, so I was quite confident of getting a repeat of last sessions excellent mix, if not better. Unfortunately, my confidence was somewhat misplaced. Despite setting nearly twice as much net, the catch was two-thirds the size of last session and the winter visitors were conspicuous by their absence.

I have to admit, though, that it was still a very enjoyable session, as I was joined by Ellie, Alice and Anna, with Rob joining us for his second taster session. Good company, good conversation and a reasonable number of birds to process. The nets were set as follows:

The yellow numbers indicate the lures used: 1,2 & 4 = Lesser Redpoll & Siskin; 3 = Brambling; 4 = Redwing until 10:00, followed by Goldcrest.

We had birds regularly throughout the morning but the only finches to get caught were two Chaffinch. One of those had to just be released without being ringed as it was infected with Fringilla papillomavirus. After a couple of years of not seeing this horrible infection it does seem to have made a comeback in the Braydon Forest this year.

The bright spot of the morning was a lovely flock of Long-tailed Tits that dropped into the Redwing / Goldcrest net set at 10:30.

The list for the day was: Blue Tit 12(6); Great Tit 3(6); Coal Tit (4); Marsh Tit (1); Long-tailed Tit 7; Wren (1); Dunnock (1); Robin 2(2); Chaffinch 1. Totals: 25 birds ringed from 5 species and 21 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 46 birds processed from 9 species.

One thing that the relaxed pace of the morning gave was an opportunity for Rob to ring his first few birds, something he hasn’t done for over 4 years, whilst Alice could show her suitability to become a trainer when we advance her to her A-permit, which we are currently working on. Of course, being kind, his first birds processed were two Blue Tits and a Great Tit: nothing like exposing a new ringer to those two species to test their mettle. Another benefit of having an experienced team out was that taking down the nets at the end of the session was a quick and easy process. We processed our last birds at 11:45, then shut the nets and took down and got away from site by 12:45.

Another excellent year in 2021: in terms of quality if not necessarily quantity.  Actually, my little team and I had our worst year since 2013, my first full year as a C-permit holder, with just 2,588 birds processed, 700 fewer than last year.  The key problem for me was the weather: of 85 planned sessions, I carried out only 60.  Six of those cancelled were at the busy times for juvenile birds: last week of July, first week of August.  Four of my planned sessions over the Christmas period were also cancelled: one of them when David and I sat in the middle of a cloud at Brown’s Farm hoping it would lift. It didn’t.  The other nail in my coffin was, unfortunately, the outbreak of Avian Flu at Castle Eaton, which put Blakehill Farm and Red Lodge out of bounds from the 10th December (ongoing unfortunately). However, like several others this year, I also had firsts for the group since we came into the current structure, more of which later.  Fortunately, elsewhere in the county others were not so badly afflicted by the weather.

One of the key developments this year was Jonny Cooper getting his A-permit.  He is the driving force behind the increase in our catch numbers, this year being responsible for some 55% of our total.
These are the comparative results:

So to our group firsts. The Curlew is clearly a stand-out bird. The first adult ringed in Wiltshire since 1992, and only the second adult ringed in Wiltshire (as far as we are aware).  Without embarrassing him, it shows what a stellar individual Jonny is that, because it was at Blakehill, he offered it to me to ring. Being an equally stellar individual, I refused and insisted he ring it, much as I would have loved to add it to my list.

It has been re-sighted on several occasions at Blakehill (naturally) but also in one of the meadows at Red Lodge Farm and, most recently, as blogged, at a site in Cornwall, near to St Mawes.  Alongside that, Ian and Andy, after years of ringing Stone Curlew on the RSPB’s / Wessex Stone Curlew project rings, have started ringing them on West Wilts Group rings. The first two on our rings were, unsurprisingly, ringed as youngsters on sites on Salisbury Plain. Both were ringed on the 17th June.

Photo courtesy of Ian Grier
I am not sure why but Jonny decided it was a good idea to ring a trio of juvenile Canada Geese, at his Melksham site on the 2nd August.  Apparently others have been ringed by the group, but not since 2005!  Here’s looking forward to the next ones in 2037!.  
I had two little contributions to the year’s new variety.  First was a fabulous Yellow Wagtail caught at Brown’s Farm.  Almost the last bird out of the nets, and only the second time I have had an opportunity to ring them: the first being a few I did at Icklesham back in 2011. 

Astonishingly, in the same session we caught a Firecrest: a first for the site, our only one of the year and in a completely wrong habitat for them. Presumably a dispersing youngster.   
My other first for the group was a Wheatear at Blakehill Farm:  This was on the 12th September on the Chelworth side of the site. Prior to this, the last group Wheatear were back in 2008 near Beckhampton: an astonishing catch of seven of them!Not firsts for the group but there were two other significant catches.  Johnny had his first Carrion Crow at Biss Wood: the first since I caught one at Lower Moor Farm in May 2014.  

Photo courtesy of Jonny Cooper

I then had my first Brambling for Red Lodge on the 24th November.  Another first for site was a Snipe that I managed to flush into a net at Ravensroost Meadows on the 7th September:

As a result of these additions, we ended up with 68 species processed during the course of the year, compared with 63 species last year, despite the reduced numbers.  I am not going to go into details on the species reductions: they are there for all to see. Evidence of a poor breeding season for Paridae was there from the start. The absence of Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps and Garden Warblers at my sites in the north of the county, was bemoaned by me in my blog posts throughout the summer. Despite that, their numbers were significantly better than last year’s catch thanks to stronger performances elsewhere in the county and good catches of them on autumn migration.

Here’s hoping that the weather is better in 2022 and that Avian Flu disappears as rapidly as it appeared.