Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

For the second year running, the BTO are looking to trial the Constant Effort Site format, that is a keystone of their summer data collection, during the winter. There will be eight sessions, approximately two weeks apart, between November and the end of February. The key difference between the summer and the winter CES formats is that the winter one allows for provision of a feeding station. With the agreement of Forestry England, I have decided to trial it at Somerford Common.

This morning was my first session of the trial. For a number of reasons, not least that it is a Monday and some people have to work for a living, I ended up doing this one solo. Naturally that meant it would be the busiest session that I have had all year! A total of 85 birds were processed. I set the nets as diagrammed in my previous Somerford Common post: just 6 of them, 4 around the feeding station and two in a line along the main path (my Redwing nets).

The first round was a nice enough indicator of the morning: just four birds but one was a new Marsh Tit and another was a retrapped Marsh Tit, plus a Robin and a Blue Tit. However, the second round was crazy, with 51 birds extracted from the nets. Fortunately, they were all very accommodating, even the Wrens and the Blue Tits, and it did not take a huge amount of time to clear them. However, I did process them in batches (smallest birds first), so that I could keep a check on the nets within my preferred 15 to 20 minute timeframe.

During that second round, a decent catch of seven Redwing flew in to the main ride nets. I caught a couple more in the following two rounds and it also caught a small flock of Lesser Redpoll.

The third round brought in my bird of the day (possibly of the year) for she was the biggest female Sparrowhawk that I have handled for a long time:

She was lying in the bottom shelf of the Redwing net, with her belly facing out and when I first saw her I was somewhat dismayed, because it looked for all the world as though one of the hen pheasants, that had been conspicuous all morning, had blundered in. As I went over to remove it from my net (pheasants and mist nets do not go well together – and the net comes off the worse), I soon realised my mistake and my arthritic limbs were once again spurred into an uncommon action for them, called “running”. The extraction was not difficult, as she was just lying in the pocket of the net and could be simply picked up and out, and I managed to ring, sex, age, weigh and measure the bird without any damage to myself (or her). Without someone to hold the bird for photographs I have had to make do with this head shot.

Alongside that, it was good to catch and ring a couple of juvenile female Great Spotted Woodpeckers. Mostly this year we have been retrapping those ringed in previous years.

The list for the day was: Sparrowhawk 1; Great Spotted Woodpecker 2; Nuthatch (2); Blue Tit 20(13); Great Tit 7(10); Coal Tit (1); Marsh Tit 1(5); Wren 2(1); Robin 1(1); Redwing 9; Chaffinch 3; Lesser Redpoll 6. Totals: 52 birds ringed from 10 species and 33 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 85 birds processed from 12 species.

All in all, a very satisfying morning’s work. Any session in which we encounter 6 Marsh Tits is a good session. I closed the nets at 11:30, took down and was away by 12:30 – the benefit of only having six nets in your set up.

We had hoped to have another farmland session at Brown’s Farm this morning but the forecast was for windy weather so I changed venue to Ravensroost Wood. I set up a feeding station, and cut the appropriate net rides, on Tuesday. Next time I really must remember to take my gardening gloves, as the dog rose fought back:

The net setup was as shown on the diagram below:

1 = 2 x 18m; 2 = 12m; 3 = 9m; 4 & 5 = 6m; 6 = 3 x 18m.

I was joined for the session by Ellie, Rosie and Anna and by Samuel and his mum, Claire. This was Samuel’s third session with me, and his first time actually processing some birds. So far he has been learning how to hold them and how not to react when Blue Tits and Great Tits let you know that they are displeased.

The feeding station did its job, and we had a good haul of Blue and Great Tits, but so did the bird seed dispensers, as we also attracted in both Chaffinches and Lesser Redpoll. On visiting Ravensroost yesterday to check on and top up the bird feeders, I noticed a large flock of Redwing, so we set the net ride number 6 with a lure playing for the first couple of hours. It did attract in a couple of Redwing and a Song Thrush. The only (slight) disappointment of the session was that there was a good sized flock of Long-tailed Tits flying around the woodland adjacent to net ride 6 and we didn’t manage to catch a single one.

The list for the day was: Great Spotted Woodpecker (1); Nuthatch (2); Blue Tit 21(4); Great Tit 7(3); Coal Tit (2); Marsh Tit (3); Song Thrush 1; Redwing 2; Chiffchaff 1; Goldcrest (2); Chaffinch 3; Lesser Redpoll 6. Totals: 41 birds ringed from 7 species and 17 birds recaptured from 7 species, making 58 birds processed from 12 species.

As much as it was very pleasing to recapture three Marsh Tits, the highlights for the team had to be the Lesser Redpoll. In particular, it was good to have some clearly marked adult males in the catch to contrast with an adult female:

Samuel started his ringing career by ringing two Chaffinch and a Blue Tit and processing a recaptured Great Tit and Coal Tit.

A couple of the team had to leave at 11:00 to get their Covid-19 booster shots and, as the number of birds had dropped off, we did a last round at 11:20, closed the nets and took down. We were off site by just after midday.

I started monitoring Barn Owl breeding in north-west Wiltshire in 2017. In that first year my team helped me check on 15 boxes. To be fair, we didn’t start until the September, so it wasn’t too surprising that we only ringed 3 broods comprising 8 chicks: at Drill Farm, Plain Farm and Blakehill Farm. We also managed to ring 4 Jackdaws in 2 broods at Blakehill Farm. It was a similar situation in 2018, but only 2 broods of Barn Owl chicks were ringed, plus one roosting adult. This time we had youngsters in one box at Blakehill and an adult in another there. The other brood was ringed in a condemned barn, in the worst box of our entire stock.

This box has been one of our most consistently productive but it won’t be there much longer. If it doesn’t fall down it will be pulled down. The Wildlife Trust, I am delighted to say, erected three new boxes in 2020, in the immediate area of this box.

2019 produced 10 youngsters and 2 adults from 15 boxes visited. It also produced one brood of 2 Stock Doves. 2020 was a bad year, primarily due to Covid restrictions imposed by the BTO, plus the need for social distancing and taking sensible precautions. We still ringed 8 young from 3 broods plus two broods of 2 Jackdaw chicks each.

So to 2021. Unfortunately, our nice Jackdaw nests, in the bug hotel at Blakehill Farm, were made homeless over-winter when the structure collapsed. However, we did get to check on 20 boxes. Of those 20, one box failed: there were 6 eggs laid but, on first checking, they were cold. On second checking six weeks later, they were still cold and unhatched. Eight boxes produced 26 young Barn Owls, one produced an adult Barn Owl, two of the new boxes erected by the Wildlife Trust produced a young Stock Dove each, and one box near Somerford Common produced young Jackdaws.

Some images from this year’s activity:

Many of the boxes that we have been checking are very old and becoming extremely dilapidated, so I looked into if I could get funding to replace them. I approached one of the local landfill operators, Thomas Crapper & Sons, as I know they have been generous funders of developments for the Wildlife Trust, and they pointed me in the direction of Community First. I had to jump through a few hoops, filling in forms, getting quotations, so that they could put it forward to Entrust, who approve or deny such applications. I am delighted to say that I have received notification that the application has been successful and that the funding (hopefully) will be made available mid-November. That will set my team up for some hard work over the winter. The offer has been made to the team: the more help they give to get these boxes set up, the more opportunity I will give them to ring Barn Owls. Bribery is not always corruption.

Two types of greyness affected our session at Webb’s Wood. To start with, the three weather apps that I use (Meteo, Met Office and xcweather) all forecast a dry morning, with the wind getting up towards midday. When I stepped out of the house into a fine spray of mizzle, I was concerned. As Rosie was joining me for the session, and would be able to stay for the entire time, I was reluctant to call it off. I also had David back after a few weeks away and Anna coming a fair distance to join me, so I decided that we would see how it went. The mizzle was light enough for us to set up and go for it. There were patches of dry weather but it did not fully arrive until we started to take down and it stayed grey all morning. However, the mizzle never breached that barrier where it would have been inappropriate to continue.

I had set up a feeding station on Tuesday, and the fact that the peanuts had disappeared but the seed mix had been ignored let me know what sort of morning we were in for. It was a decent session for the first couple of hours, with 25 birds processed between 7:45 and 8:55. We then only caught one bird in the next hour and twenty minutes. As I am suffering with a painful, and sleep-depriving, neck problem, getting cold and miserable with no birds was more than I was prepared to put up with. I made the fateful statement: “If there are no birds in the next round we will pack up, go home and get warm”. Next round we extracted 27 birds.

That is where grey became interesting. In all of my ringing in the Braydon Forest my team has never caught one of these:

I have processed a good number as a trainee, but none of my sites regularly plays host to them. Anna extracted this beauty from one of the nets adjacent to the feeding station which, in turn, is nowhere adjacent to a water source: just a few puddles. Anna has now processed her first Grey Wagtail.

The list for the session was as follows: Great Spotted Woodpecker (1); Blue Tit 16(7); Great Tit 8(5); Long-tailed Tit 10; Wren 1; Grey Wagtail 1; Redwing 4; Goldcrest 12. Totals: 52 birds ringed from 7 species and 13 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 65 birds processed from 8 species.

We are getting good numbers of Goldcrest in the Forest at the moment. Interestingly, our last session at Webb’s Wood was on the 6th October and we caught 12 Goldcrest, exactly the same as we had today. I had better schedule a session for the 6th December!

After our bumper round at 10:25 the numbers fell away again for the next two rounds, and we decided to pack up and head home.

This year has been a cracking year for fungi all over my local area. I found this in the feeding station:

I might have a look to see if I can identify the lichen that is just to the left of the fungus.

We were off site just after midday after a surprisingly satisfactory session, despite the weather.

We last had a session in Red Lodge on the 4th September. I had planned to run a session mid-October but, when driving past a few days before, I noticed this:

The gate support had been sawn off. I went back to have a look and found a lorry load of rubble had been fly-tipped:

I contacted Forestry England to let them know. Due to holidays and staffing it took a couple of weeks to get it cleared. As I was planning on setting up my feeding station over last weekend, on Friday I went back to do some ride clearance. It was great to be able to drive up to our usual parking spot and get on with the task in hand. I went back on Saturday, just after lunch, to set up the feeding station, and found this:

Some deeply unpleasant individual had taken advantage of the fact that Forestry England hadn’t managed to fix the gate and had dumped a load of tree waste in exactly the same spot as the rubble had previously been dumped. I had a chat with David, one of the locals, who told me that when he had walked his dog there that morning, between 10:00 and 11:30, the path had been clear. So whomsoever did this, did it at lunchtime, in broad daylight, on a busy road. I went back on Monday to see whether it was worth me trying to clear it, or if there was sufficient room for the team to park safely away from the road, to find this:

At least this was a natural occurrence. I let Forestry England know again. They are, unsurprisingly, angry and upset about this vandalism and the incurred costs. There is an epidemic of fly-tipping in our area at the moment.

So, I decided that they weren’t going to stop me carrying on with my session. I was joined at 6:30 by Lucy and Miranda for the full session, and Rosie and her new Wildlife Trust colleague, Charlotte, for the start of it. We set nets by the pond and the feeding stations: just 6 nets: 4 x 18m and one each of 9m and 12m.

One thing I noticed immediately: the birds had found the feeders. They were all empty! We refilled them and had all of the nets open by 7:15 and had our first birds straight away. As is usual once the feeders are up, the session was Blue Tit heavy, with a supporting cast of Great Tits. However, we did have some decent catches of other birds: another two Marsh Tits ringed and an older one, ringed in October 2019, recaptured.

I set a lure for Redwing on the net set alongside the pond and lures for Redpoll and Siskin at the 9m and 12m nets. Needless to say, we didn’t catch a single one of the target species. At 10:00 I changed the Redwing lure to Goldcrest, and they turned up straight away. At 11:00 I moved it to the other 2 x 18m net ride and, again, a few more dropped in. I never lure for Goldcrest until well into the session: at approximately 5g in weight, I really don’t want to target them until they have had a chance to warm up and feed first. In fact, unless I am happy with the ambient temperature, I won’t lure for them at all. They are one of the most lure responsive species, and will respond all year round. To date I have not had any cold-related casualties with Goldcrest, and I want to keep it that way.

This Blue Tit decided that it needed a high perch before it flew off back into the wood:

The list for the day was: Nuthatch (1); Blue Tit 20; Great Tit 8(4); Marsh Tit 2(1); Wren 4; Dunnock 2; Robin 3(2); Blackbird (2); Goldcrest 6; Chaffinch 2. Totals: 47 birds ringed from 8 species and 10 birds recaptured from 5 species, making 57 birds processed from 10 species.

We packed up at 11:30 and, as our luck would have it, all the nets were down, the lures switched off, and we were sat at the ringing station processing the last few birds, when a flock of 20 either Siskin or Lesser Redpoll (they were in silhouette) flew into the tops of the trees above the feeding stations! The consensus was that they were Siskin.

The morning was cold at the start: bang on freezing point, with a ground frost and a layer of mist covering the plateau. I was joined by Lucy for the session: cramming in as much cold weather ringing as she can before facing the rigours of Ascension Island in a week’s time. I cannot say how much I pity the hardships he is about to face!

We set nets for Redwing along the perimeter track and four plateau nets, hoping for Stonechat. There was also a plan to set up a Meadow Pipit net but the deer had made a mess of the electric fence across the centre of the plateau and so we held off from setting that until after Jonathan, the farm manager, had repaired his fence. Fortunately the cattle that were in the compartment next to our plateau area did not realise that the fence wasn’t working and avoided it anyway, so the nets were safe. In the end we managed to get the Mipit triangle open at 10:30 but there weren’t many around.

The first round was decent: 16 birds, including four each of Chaffinch and Blue Tit plus five Redwing. It was nice to have four Chaffinch that we could actually ring. They all had nice clean legs: no signs of Fringilla papillomavirus, in contrast to a couple of other occasions at my woodland sites recently.

The next round produced our first three Wren of the morning and two Stonechat. They were a male and a female in the same net about 50cm apart. I will have to look into their pairing and mating habits: do they pair up annually or do they maintain the pair-bond beyond? Anyway, they were fine adult specimens, and he was particularly haughty:

The next couple of rounds produced another eleven birds, including our second Blakehill Linnet of the year:

For some reason our catches of Linnet at Blakehill are very variable. Between 2014 and now, we had excellent catches of 42 and 25 respectively in 2015 & 2016 and then 15 in 2018 but every other year has only produced single digit catches. The most productive months for the good years are April, August and September.

The list for the day was: Blue Tit 4(2); Great Tit 3(1); Long-tailed Tit (1); Wren 6(2); Meadow Pipit 2; Stonechat 2; Robin 1(1); Redwing 7; Song Thrush 1; Blackbird 2; Chaffinch 4; Linnet 1. Totals: 33 birds ringed from 11 species and 7 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 40 birds processed from 12 species.

What was surprising was that 20% of the catch comprised Wrens. Six of the eight were caught in the scattered nets out on the plateau, with just two in the hedgerow of the perimeter track. They were caught in just three rounds between 9:00 and 10:00 and then no more. One of the two retrapped birds, JTY709, was ringed as a juvenile in December 2016, which is a good age for a Wren. The BTO’s Bird Facts data gives a typical lifespan of two years and the maximum age from ringing is 7 years 3 months and 6 days, so logging in at 4 years and 11 months is a venerable age for a Wren.

As you can see from the two photographs, once the sun came out and the mist lifted, the sky was crystal clear. Unfortunately, soon after we had the Meadow Pipit triangle open the breeze got up, the nets became too visible and the catches went right down, and we only caught the two Meadow Pipits, despite a decent number of them flying around the plateau. As a result, as for the next three rounds we were not catching more than one bird per round, we started packing away soon after 11:00 and left site just after 12:30.

Despite the dreadful weather of the last week of October, we still had a pretty decent return for our efforts this month. It is our second best October since the group came into its current form: the best having been in 2019.

Numbers of Meadow Pipit were well down compared with last year. The change was that numbers in two of our farmland sites (Blakehill and Jonny’s East Tytherton site) were at one third of the catch last year. Blakehill had the same number of sessions (i.e. one) but East Tytherton had half as many (two) as in 2020.

So, where did the improvement come from: Blackcap and Chiffchaff numbers were well up on last year. Catches were evenly spread throughout the month in both years. Similarly, the number of Blue Tit ringed one third higher than last year. What is most surprising is that the increased number is down to a significant increase in juvenile birds ringed (149 as opposed to 90). As everyone acknowledges: Blue Tit had such a poor breeding season, and yet in both October and September juvenile numbers have been on a par with previous years. One can conjecture as to why this is the case: fewer birds leading to less competition for food, lower likelihood of predation, etc, but who really knows? As you can see from the session statistics: we weren’t running a lot of extra sessions.

Other significant increases were Redwing and Lesser Redpoll arriving in reasonable numbers and being caught earlier than usual. My first Redwing, caught on the 9th of the month, equalled one ringed on Salisbury Plain in 2016 as the earliest we have ringed the species in the autumn. Lesser Redpoll are resident further south in the county, in the Warminster / Longleat area and it is possible that there is a small relict population in Somerford Common but, in the main, the Lesser Redpoll we catch in the north of the county are migrants from up north. Our catch of nine on the 13th of the month, at Somerford Common, matches a catch of two there on that day in 2015 as our earliest autumn catches and the ten in October there is the biggest for us in that month.

Amongst our resident birds, both Robin and Long-tailed Tit showed increased numbers over last year.

So what are the highlights? The standout bird is the Corn Bunting captured on Salisbury Plain. As I mentioned at the time, it is only the third location on the Plain at which the Group has caught one. Seven singles were caught near Winterbourne Stoke, with the last in March 2005, one was caught near Enford in September 2005 and so it has taken another 12 years for one to be caught by us on Salisbury Plain.

Another highlight, because we catch very few, was Jonny’s Skylark at the beginning of the month. Funnily enough, this is our best year for them so far, with four caught, three on Salisbury Plain and this month’s one at his site near Sutton Benger.

Steph’s highlight was her first ever Woodpigeon caught in her garden! We think it had only just fledged as it was very juvenile: no white collar developing yet and, whilst she processed it, a pair of adults sat atop a pole and a neighbouring tree and watched the whole thing intently from capture to release.

Apart from that, we have had notification of a couple of interesting recoveries of our birds this month. A Blackcap ringed in Melksham in early September was recovered by a ringer in the Netherlands at the end of September. It had flown 480km in an ENE direction in 22 days. That is one confused migration!

The second is a Chiffchaff ringed at Langford Lakes in August and recaptured 231km away, due East, 27 days later at the Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory. Another odd looking migration route.

Just to end on a slightly negative note: one of my sites, Red Lodge, has suffered some vandalism. Firstly, the criminal used a power saw to chop off the gate support and then backed their wagon in and dumped a load of rubble blocking the path onto site:

I let Forestry England know and they came and cleared the rubble but didn’t mend the gateway. I went back on Friday to clear my winter net rides and everything was clear. When I went back Saturday afternoon to set up my winter feeding stations I found this:

Clearly taking advantage of the fact that the gate hasn’t been repaired or replaced. I informed Forestry England when I got back. This morning, after setting up another couple of feeding stations and doing a bit more ride clearance, I thought I would pop back to see if the gate was still in place, where I had propped it up. it was, but this has now joined the rubbish dumped on the path:

It won’t keep me out! I plan to be there Wednesday and I will be! I had problems with vandalism of my feeding stations a couple of years ago. The beat forester set up covert camera surveillance and we put up notices, which stopped the problem. Time to do it again I think.

An interesting month with a lot going on. Here’s to a busy November! The weather is looking okay for the next few days.

It was touch and go for a session this morning. Although it was forecast to be dry, there was the threat of winds at a base of 16mph, gusting to in excess of 30mph. Somerford Common is able to offer some relatively sheltered areas but 30+ mph is serious. Opening my door to leave at 6:35, I was disappointed to see that it was raining but, with four of the team turning up to help from varying distances away, I decided to carry on regardless and hope that the forecast would come good. Fortunately, although my windscreen wipers were reacting for the first couple of miles, by the time I got to Somerford the rain had stopped.

I had put up a couple of feeders on Monday morning, on the off-chance that the birds might have discovered it by today and give us a decent haul of birds. They hadn’t, but we ended up with 30 birds, so not too bad.

Arriving on site at 6:45 I was surprised to find Lucy already there and waiting: she’s never late but over 15 minutes early: unheard of for any of my team before today. We were then joined by Rosie, Miranda and Anna and we set to and had the nets open by 8:00. I used the net set that I am going to be using for the winter CES. First opened were the 18m and 12m set along the main ride and, whilst it was still dark, I set the Redwing lure working to see what might drop in whilst we opened the other nets. Twenty minutes later Lucy went to check the nets and set up the ringing station, and she extracted the first birds of the morning: two Long-tailed Tits and (no surprise) a Redwing. As Rosie was doing her usual selfless thing of helping us to set up, before heading off for a hard day’s graft with a chainsaw at Lower Moor Farm, I let her process the first three.

Thereafter, we had a couple of decent catches of Redwing coming to the lure between 9:00 and 10:00. I then changed the lure to Goldcrest, and we started to catch them as well. The other nets had lures for Lesser Redpoll, Siskin and Marsh Tit running – all to no avail. Which is not to say that we didn’t catch birds in those nets: just not those species. Ironically, the penultimate bird out of the nets was this, right next to the Goldcrest lure:

Although the tail showed that it was definitely a bird of the year, it had a few pink feathers on the breast, identifying it as a male.

The list for the day was: Blue Tit (2); Great Tit 3; Coal Tit 1; Long-tailed Tit 1(1); Robin (1); Redwing 10; Goldcrest 9(1); Lesser Redpoll 1. Totals: 25 birds ringed from 6 species and 5 birds retrapped from 4 species, making 30 birds processed from 8 species.

Throughout the morning it would spit with rain for a few minutes, then dry up for half-an-hour, then spit with rain again. For most of the morning the wind didn’t interfere with the nets, but as the morning wore on the wind did get stronger, and I decided to close the nets and pack up at 11:00. We took down the feeding station nets first, returning to the main ride to find the Lesser Redpoll and a Great Tit in that net set. We were off site by midday.

Back at the beginning of May regular readers might remember that we had one excellent session at Brown’s Farm (first Wiltshire Yellow Wagtail for me, first Firecrest for Lucy (and in the most improbable of habitats). That was followed by a disappointing solo session right at the end of the month – and that has been it since then. I have no idea why I haven’t been back but I decided that it was about time I put that right. I was joined for the morning by Anna.

The farmer there, James, runs a small scale pheasant and partridge shoot and by “small scale” I mean I never see pheasant, and just the occasional red-legged partridge, there outside of the shooting season. He has planted up a good number of game cover crops in the corner of many of his arable fields. I carried out a reconnaissance visit on Thursday to decide where to set the nets. The plan was to set up as shown below around the game cover adjacent to the old dismantled railway track. Two key reasons for that: 1) it was the most accessible for my car and 2) that field has been left as stubble, so there was no crop to avoid.

Immediately we opened the net set that is at 90 degrees to the track, birds started to get caught. With just the two of us, and Anna being very new in her ringing career, I decided to abandon the planned 2-shelf net set along the field side of the game cover to ensure that we weren’t overrun with birds. As a trainer, I am always conscious of not putting trainees under the pressure of numbers. There is enough pressure with safely extracting the birds, ageing, sexing and measuring.

The first bird out of the net was a Robin, followed by a Wren: that is the standard opening combination for most of my sites, occasionally augmented by an early morning Blackbird.

I was hoping that we would get Anna her first Yellowhammer and Linnet to process. We only managed one of the two: which was a little surprising. None of my sites in the north of the county produce regular Yellowhammer catches. In my 12 years of ringing I have only caught and ringed a single Yellowhammer away from Brown’s Farm: at Blakehill Farm in October 2016. When I first moved to Purton in 1997 there was a reasonable population of Yellowhammer in the fields surrounding the village but, with everything gone to cattle, sheep and horses, they are long gone. Brown’s is now the only site I have where I can catch them regularly. Linnet is slightly different, we can still see them in the fields around the village and they are a reasonably regular catch at Blakehill Farm but not as regularly as I catch them at Brown’s Farm. There again, I have never repeated the astonishing catch of 44 of them at Brown’s on the 7th April 2015. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any at all today but we did get half-a-dozen Yellowhammer:

The list for the day was: Blue Tit 3; Wren 2; Dunnock 10; Robin 4; Song Thrush 1; Blackbird 2; Chaffinch 4; Reed Bunting 5; Yellowhammer 6. Totals: 37 birds ringed from 9 species.

The birding was also good, with highlights being excellent views of a cruising Red Kite and a hunting Sparrowhawk. The catch died off quite quickly after 10:45 and we closed the nets and took down just after 11:30. It won’t be 5 months before I am back there again1

With Wednesday blowing at gale force for most of the day, with occasional downpours as well, I postponed that session to Friday. Also, because there was still a significant amount of wind forecast, coming from the west, and the rides there running from north to south, I moved the session to the Firs.

I was joined for the morning by Rosie, doing her usual of dropping in to help and heading off to work soon after the nets are open, Miranda and Lucy. Thanks to half-term, a little later we were joined again by Claire with her son Samuel and, this time, daughter Zara. Once again they were given the opportunity to be pecked by Blue Tits and Great Tits. Samuel has expressed a wish to take up ringing, so he is going to have to get used to getting pecked first.

The first round was good: just 4 birds but from 4 species. These were given to Rosie to process and then she headed off to her day job as an estates worker for the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. Our second round was satisfying as a small tit flock hit with 11 new birds and 2 retraps. The third consisted of two each new and retraps – and then we had a big tit flock of 21 new birds and 8 retraps. Miranda took over scribing duties so I could focus with Lucy on clearing the catch as quickly as possible.

The list for today was: Treecreeper (1); Blue Tit 22(6); Great Tit 6(6); Coal Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit 2; Wren 2; Robin (1); Redwing 1; Song Thrush 1; Goldcrest 3. Totals: 39 birds ringed from 8 species and 14 birds retrapped from 4 species, making 53 birds processed from 10 species.

Given how poorly the breeding season went for Blue and Great Tits this year, I am catching an astonishing number of juveniles this autumn: 23 of those processed were juvenile Blue Tits and 5 of the 6 Great Tits ringed were also juveniles.

Equally, since the beginning of October there has been a sudden upsurge in the numbers of birds being caught in the woodland sites, despite no change to our regime: same number of nets in the usual places. I will be setting up the feeding stations next week so it will be interesting to see what happens then.

With three of us to get it done, we packed up at about 11:15, it didn’t take long and we had all left the site by midday.