Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

I was delighted to be joined by Annie and David at Lower Moor Farm this morning for CES 4. For different reasons, neither has been able to make as many sessions as they would like, so it was good to have the two of them out again. Despite the improvement in the weather it was still pretty cold at 4:30 this morning and the air temperature really did not warm up until 10:00. It was okay in the sun from about 8:00, but it didn’t really get above the treeline until gone 9:00 and it was cold in the shade. Naturally, by the time we were taking down at 11:30 it was stonkingly hot! Martin Eacott was back on site continuing his photographic odyssey.

It was a reasonable session, but very different to any other CES session I have done there: we caught only one Blackcap, a recaptured female, all morning. I have never caught so few Blackcaps here in the CES months since I started ringing at Lower Moor. Even this year in sessions 1 and 2 we caught 7 in each and in our last session we caught 12. I fully expected similar numbers today. It is that which kept the numbers down to below what I had expected.

The first two birds out of the nets were our first juvenile Wrens of the year. We ended up with three of them in total. As well as the Wrens we also ringed more juvenile Robins and Dunnocks. Nearly last out of the nets was our first Great Tit juvenile of the year.

Given the reports of high mortality in Blue and Great Tit youngsters from all over the country prior to fledging , I was pleased to find this one. However, the fact that it is only one is concerning: we would expect to catch small groups of them, before brood mates disperse, as we have done in previous years.

The highlight of the session was my first Reed Warbler at the site this year. Unlike Jonny Cooper’s site at Langford Lakes, there is no established reed bed at Lower Moor Farm. There is some small marginal incursion of reedmace on Mallard Lake and in other small areas but nothing that would really encourage Reed Warblers to attempt to nest there. (Not that I am hinting or anything.)

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When I released it he chose to perch on my finger:

The list for today’s session was: Great Tit [1]; Wren [3]; Dunnock 2[3](5); Robin [4]; Song Thrush 2; Reed Warbler 1; Blackcap (1); Garden Warbler 3(4); Whitethroat 1(3); Chiffchaff [1](2); Willow Warbler (1). Totals: 9 adults ringed from 5 species; 12 juveniles ringed from 5 species and 16 birds retrapped from 6 species, making 37 birds processed from 11 species.

Over the course of the morning we had a Blackbird and Great Spotted Woodpecker escape from the nets – which is rather unusual.

Other sightings during the session included a single Otter swimming around in Mallard Lake. It did hang around for a while but in the aforementioned area of the Typha and Yellow Flag Irises. The dragons and damsels were out in force, with a particularly impressive number of Black-tailed Skimmer:

Whilst walking across the bridge over the Swill Brook, after checking the Heronry ride nets, I noticed this fellow shumbling his way across the bridge:

After his photo-session I released him into a damp, sheltered area.

The photos of the perched Reed Warbler and the Black-tailed Skimmer are courtesy (and copyright) of Martin Eacott.

All in all, a very enjoyable session with good variety and interest. I was really pleased at how quickly both David and Annie got their skills back up to the mark with reliable ageing and biometric measuring during the session.

A very interesting May for the group this year. Last May was our best since the group took on its current structure in January 2013. This May actually bettered it but in a slightly strange way. Given the atrocious weather throughout much of the month, it was quite surprising that we managed only two fewer sessions than last year. We processed 662 birds in those sessions, compared to 659 last May. However, the breakdown was very different. Last May saw us coming out of lockdown after the middle of the month, so all of our ringing before the 16th of the month was focused on personal back gardens and, once we could get to our main sites, we were cramming in as much as we could to make up for lost time. This year we had access to all of our sites from the off, but were hampered by the weather.

So, whilst we processed a few more birds, we actually ringed 108 fewer birds but recaptured 112 more birds than last year. The difference is almost all down to Jonny Cooper’s work at Langford Lakes catching Reed Warblers and, to a lesser degree, the same species at the Western Way Balancing Ponds at Melksham. Retrapping so many of these long-distance migrants in the same place they were ringed, plus a French ringed bird that was recaptured at Langford last year and again this May is encouraging and Jonny is now trying out the site for a potential RAS scheme. RAS is a scheme based on retrapping adult birds at the same place year after year to gain a picture of the survival of individuals within the species. The breakdown this year represents 58 individual birds at Langford Lakes before the breeding season has resulted in any fledglings being produced. In addition to the Reed Warblers, 10 individual Sedge Warblers have also been ringed / recaptured at Langford.

On the subject of retrapped birds, last December had our highest ever total of retraps, at 327, but that figure is helped by the fact that we are catching at feeding stations then. This is the highest total recaptured without the concentrating effect of a feeding station, and the second highest that we have had.

There aren’t too many people who are lucky enough to have Siskin breeding locally and to be regularly catching them in their garden. To be catching juvenile Siskin in your garden at this time of year must be a real treat: something that Andy Palmer has had the luck to do in the last two years. It is such an interesting phenomenon: Warminster is 40 miles south of the Braydon Forest. They have a breeding population of Siskin and Lesser Redpoll whereas those two species are winter visitors from Scotland / Scandinavia to the Braydon Forest, as evidenced by recoveries of birds of these species ringed in the Braydon Forest and retrapped in Argyle and Bute.

My primary highlight of the month has been being able to start my CES at Lower Moor Farm again this year, after having to miss out last year because of lockdown. It is looking promising after 3 sessions.  The birding highlights of the month both happened at our first visit to Brown’s Farm since last September. We have caught few Firecrest over the years: just 6: 2 at Tedworth, 2 near Warminster and one each in Ravensroost Wood and Red Lodge. What all of these sites have in common is that they are woodland sites. However, the Firecrest we caught at Brown’s Farm was caught in a net set across the end of a hedgerow, in the middle of open farmland. No doubt it was on its way to Savernake Forest area, where I ringed my first two Firecrest as a trainee. This was Lucy’s first, on a morning where she got to ring 3 new species (Whitethroat and Linnet as well as the Firecrest).

The second highlight of that session was the group’s first Yellow Wagtail since reorganisation. They have been seen at Brown’s Farm before, most memorably back in September 2016 when Jonny and I set nets and a lure for Yellow Wagtail and saw none at all until we switched the lure off and were taking the nets down when a small flock flew past and into the hedgerow where we had just removed the net. I had previously processed them, at Rye Bay Ringing Group site at Icklesham, but I had never caught and extracted one myself before this one.

This bird was aged as a bird that fledged last year, as it had a diagnostic break in its greater coverts (i.e. two generations of feather):

The catch details are shown below:

Looking at the figures, apart from Blackcap, most of our improvement is across all summer visitor species and most of the reduction is in garden birds, particularly the House Sparrow.

Given how bad the weather has been, it was great that we did find a significant number of juvenile birds ringed within our catch. As well as the aforementioned Siskin, we had juveniles of Blackbird, Blackcap, Chiffchaff, Dunnock, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Robin, Song Thrush, Stonechat and Woodpigeon: all, bar Starling, being open cup nesters. With the weather set to improve significantly for June we will hopefully see a continued improvement in numbers and more juveniles in June’s catch. What will be interesting will be the numbers of juvenile titmice. Reports across the country are very mixed but generally pretty dire for them.

I arranged this session for Sunday at Brown’s Farm so that Steph could join me, as she is tied up with work and family commitments, except on Sundays and Fridays. We arrived on site at 5:30 and had the nets open by 6:30, before much was moving about. With the ringing station set up we settled in for what I expected to be a busier catch than our session at the beginning of May. It wasn’t!

We caught our first birds at 7:15: a male Whitethroat and a Red-legged partridge. The partridge escaped before we could get to it – but you cannot ring them anyway as the farm runs a small-scale shoot for pheasant and partridge and you need special permission from the BTO to ring them. That was it until 8:45! The next bird out of the net at 8:45 was the male Whitethroat we had ringed at 7:15. Groan! Fortunately, we took another couple of birds out of other nets: a new Blackcap and a retrapped Whitethroat.

At 9:15 we took another two Whitethroat and a Linnet out of the nets and at 9:45 a new Great Tit. That was it for the morning: Great Tit 1; Blackcap 1; Whitethroat 3(1); Linnet 1.

However, that is only a small part of the story of the morning. From soon after we got there and then throughout the morning, we watched and listened to the abundant number of Skylark that inhabit the site. It is a toss up between Brown’s Farm and Blakehill Farm as to which is the the better site we have for Skylark – but Brown’s is purely a commercial farm and, whilst Blakehill is run in commercial lines, it is managed for nature as part of Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserve complexes. This year the fields they are occupying at Brown’s are all laid to cereals and will hopefully ensure a healthy crop of youngsters.

During one of the quieter spells (one of!!!) we were treated to the spectacle of House Martins collecting mud for their nest building on the farm. I didn’t have my camera with me, so no photos, but I love the way they land and seem to mould great clumps of mud to their beaks before flying off to deposit it at the nest.

Frustratingly, we had plenty of time to watch the abundant (yes, I mean “abundant”) Yellowhammers flying around and over the nets, singing from song perches and making a display of themselves, Chaffinches, more Linnets and Whitethroats, and the occasional Dunnock, all managed to avoid capture and ensure that we didn’t reach double-figures. A male Cuckoo was also busily advertising for a mate. With the sheer number of Whitethroat and Dunnock at this site I am surprised there aren’t more Cuckoos in attendance.

Brown’s is also one of the best sites in the area for seeing Brown Hares, and this morning was no exception, with several seen running around the fields in amongst the cereal crops.

We were also treated to the regular Buzzard and Red Kite sightings. I am sure the Red Kite, which flew in very low around and over us, was checking to see if we were carrion, as we weren’t moving very much. Almost last of the birds noted this morning was a Raven, croaking its way from Savernake Forest towards some other woodland area.

At 10:30 we decided to close the nets and take down and left site by 11:30.

So, in answer to my question in the title: “No” – ringing can be like that. I rarely have such a quiet session but good company and plenty of wildlife to watch is worth getting out of bed for!

With so much torrential rain after my session at the Firs last week, I cancelled Saturday’s ringing session, as I just thought the birds didn’t need any extra pressures in their lives. However, as the weather in the last couple of days has improved, I went ahead with CES 3 at Lower Moor Farm this morning. I was joined for the session by Lucy and Jonny. This was fortuitous, as I had to bail out for an hour to have some blood taken, and the children from Malmesbury School were going to be on site again.

This will be Lucy’s last session for 3 months, as she is off to Spurn as a volunteer warden protecting the Little Tern colony next week. She has promised me some blog posts from Spurn whilst she is there.

We were on site for 4:30 and had the nets open quickly, with the first birds out of the nets at 5:30 being a couple of juvenile Robins. The session just developed from there into a thoroughly satisfying visit – particularly rewarding for Lucy, who added another two species to her ringing profile. More of which later.

I was concerned that there would be a dearth of juvenile birds, with so many reports of weather induced nest failures around the country. However, the first catches of the morning were another couple of juvenile Robins to add to those caught at our last session at Lower Moor. However, very much of note were our first juvenile Blackcaps of the year, extracted at 6:15:

We actually caught two young and a female close together in the same net. It looked to us that the two youngsters had been flushed from the nest prematurely: either avoiding a predator or possibly by hunger. Their wings were a good 20mm shorter than we would expect in a newly-fledged Blackcap. Because of that, we returned them, and what we assumed was their mother, to the bush they were heading for when they ended up in the net. It was good guess: I sat them on the bush in sunlight. Mum disappeared into the bush and immediately started calling to them. They soon followed, and we saw the three of them foraging for insects in the bushes around their rerelease site for the next three hours. Despite their short wings, I was encouraged to see how strongly they could fly. Occasionally one of the youngsters would sun itself out in the open, whilst contact calling:

At one point one of them got caught in the net again, so we closed that net for a couple of hours, until they had moved on, so they could go about unhindered. With the weather improving and the number of insects flying around at the site today, and despite the young age at which they seem to have left the nest, they have a good chance of survival in the short term, as they are clearly already able to forage for food.

We had the pleasure of Martin Eacott turning up to do some photography and have a look at our bird ringing and to have a chat. Martin mentioned that he had some excellent views of the Otters this morning. Minutes later they came back into Mallard Lake. We spent the next two hours being treated to a group of three of them swimming around Mallard Lake, in full view from our ringing station:

It actually corresponded to a time when the bird numbers reduced, so we had plenty of time to enjoy the spectacle. Perhaps the lack of persecution of them in this area has reduced their inhibitions and nocturnal habits. They are seen so frequently in the daytime. We were also visited by a small flock of Common Tern on a fishing expedition. It seems that the Black-headed Gulls, who are also frequenting the reserve, are using the tern raft instead.

The next bird bonus in the catch was our first juvenile Chiffchaffs of the year:

This was followed soon after by our first juvenile Dunnock of the year:

Martin left at about 9:00 and at 9:30 we were joined again by children from Malmesbury School. They stayed with us, on and off, in groups of 3 or 4 for the next hour and a half and had another opportunity to get close to some different species from those that they saw at the Firs last Wednesday. They all had the opportunity for some further instruction in safely handling and releasing wild birds. Soon after I returned from my visit to the GP surgery, they got particularly excited with the Great Spotted Woodpecker that Jonny extracted and processed. Unfortunately, this sparked a lot of boisterous behaviour, and the staff decided it was best to take them away so that they didn’t disturb the birds. It was a shame but it was the right thing to do. That meant that they missed the Jay that Lucy processed (her first), and the stunning end to the session.

At 11:30 we did a final check and shut the nets. I went to check and close the nets along the Heronry Ride and, in the very last net, having closed all of the others, were two Kingfishers: a retrapped male and an unringed female. Definitely a breeding pair. As Jonny has done plenty at his Meadow Farm site, and Lucy had never ringed a Kingfisher, she got to ring her second new species of the session. Not a bad send off for her warden role!

The list for the day was: Kingfisher 1(1); Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Jay 1; Blue Tit 1; Marsh Tit (1); Wren 1(3); Dunnock 1[1](5); Robin [3](1); Blackbird (1); Blackcap 4[2](6); Garden Warbler 1(3); Chiffchaff 2[4](4); Willow Warbler (1); Bullfinch 1. Totals: 14 adults ringed from 10 species; 10 juveniles ringed from 4 species and 26 birds retrapped from 10 species, making 50 birds processed from 14 species.

After an excellent session, with good company, and great help, we got packed away very quickly and left site just after midday.

Having mentioned in my Red Lodge blog from the 24th April that I had been given a dead Buzzard found at Red Lodge plantation on the 17th April in unusual circumstances: lying on its back in the middle of the main path, I thought I might do an update, as I found the whole process interesting:

Ian, who found it, sensibly put it in the freezer straight away and I did the same when I got it, to preserve as much as possible without the bird degrading.

I contacted the police, who were not interested in the first instance, and they recommended that I contact the RSPCA to investigate the death. Unfortunately, I could not get a response from the RSPCA. I have always been of the opinion that the RSPCA should not exist as a charity but should be a fully funded arm of the police. Like so many charities, particularly those who are not membership organisations, they are suffering from a lack of funds. They have had to lay off staff and close centres and I am not surprised that things will fall through the cracks. I am not criticising the RSPCA, people’s expectations of them are ridiculously high and unrealistic. They are subjected to concerted levels of criticism from people who have never contributed to their funding and those who have a vested interest in neutering the organisation (i.e. wildlife criminals, animal abusers, etc.). They have apologised directly to me, but it underlines that government needs to take crimes against animals, both domestic and wildlife, seriously and either fund the police to take over the role of the RSPCA or directly fund the RSPCA and give them arrest and prosecutorial powers.

When I didn’t hear back, I contacted the RSPB through their membership email. Although it had gone to the “wrong” department, I got an instant response by email and then had a long chat with one of their investigators about the circumstances of the find. She asked me to provide a number of photographs focused on the overall shape of the bird and focused on the head and feet. Some of them are shown below:

After sharing the photos with the RSPB they were confident that its affect did not indicate poisoning and asked if one of our local vets would X-ray the bird for them, to check for shotgun or air-rifle pellets or broken bones. The RSPB were prepared to pay for the X-ray to be done.

I contacted the Purton Veterinary Group who were lovely. We arranged for me to take the bird to them (they have a locked door policy as protection against Covid-19) and they kindly offered to carry out the checks free-of-charge. The RSPB advised that, if the bird had not been shot or had other indications of criminal actions, that I should contact the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme to see if they wanted to add it to their archive.

I am pleased to say that, sad though it is, it looks as if the bird died from natural causes: what that cause is, we don’t know.

I contacted the PBMS who were extremely helpful. By return, they sent me a all of the appropriate packaging for sending a biological sample safely through the post, including a prepaid business postage label, so there was no cost involved for me. They now have the bird. If you do find a dead bird of prey, and there is no sign of foul play, you can contact the PBMS on 01524 595830 or email them at PBMS@ceh.ac.uk

So, a big thank you to the RSPB, Purton Veterinary Group and the Predatory Birds Monitoring Scheme for their help and their interest.

After the driest April I can remember, it seems as though May is trying to make up for lost time. However, the weather forecasts have been dreadful: dreadfully inaccurate and forecasting dreadful weather. Having had our CES session two rained off to the last possible day, I was up at 3:50 yesterday. There was no way I was going to repeat that this morning, (I like to have some sleep) so I was delighted that the forecast was for it to rain until 6:00. I set my alarm for 6:30 and got up to brilliant sunshine and no sign that it had recently stopped raining.

That said, the Firs is known as the Braydon Bog for a reason and it was back to its boggy best! I was filthy by the end of the session, despite almost constant warmth and sunshine: all it did was dry the mud on my clothes more quickly.

My last session at the Firs was rained off, so I was pleased that this one could go ahead. Both the last session and this were timed to coincide with a visit from Christine from the Wildlife Trust. I had to let them down last time, because of the weather, so was very pleased that this could go ahead. Christine is the Trust’s Education & Well Being Officer and works with local schools, providing outdoor experiences for schoolchildren who are either excluded, or deemed to be disruptive or vulnerable. I have done quite a few of these sessions and I always find them thoroughly enjoyable, and I always end up wondering what is supposed to be wrong with these children. One of my current trainees came out of this process and is a really competent and reliable worker. I think I might have identified another from today’s group. He is going to talk about it with his parents. To enable me to work with young children I have been CRB checked and have a “Young Persons Training Endorsement” on my ringing licence.

I was on site for 7:00 and had the nets open by 8:00 (luxury!). The children arrived at 9:30. It was never very busy, and I only caught 14 birds, but the youngsters all had a chance to see several species close up and all bar one had the chance to learn how to safely hold and release a wild bird. It should have been all of them but the last bird, for the last of the crew, managed to escape from the weighing pot. That it was the best bird of the day for the assembled group, a Nuthatch, made it doubly unfortunate.

The list for the day was: Nuthatch (1); Great Tit (1); Wren 1(2); Robin (2); Blackbird 2(2); Blackcap 2; Chiffchaff (1). Totals: 5 birds ringed from 3 species and 9 birds recaptured from 6 species, making 14 birds processed from 7 species.

There was nothing astonishing in the catch but the youngsters all thoroughly enjoyed the contact. The two teaching assistants who had brought them along were very pleasantly surprised at the lad who was, clearly, the most extrovert of the group and how he was so calm and gentle when shown how to handle and release a Robin. As he let it go and he watch if fly away he said “Sick!” and, being down wiv da yoof. I know that means “really good”. We all packed up for midday and got away soon after. I had a short debrief with Christine and found out that, by happy coincidence, the next time this group are out is at Lower Moor Farm next Wednesday, when we will be carrying out CES 3, so I shall look forward to meeting up with them again.

I left the Firs in brilliant sunshine and within 400m was in the middle of a torrential downpour which lasted for nearly an hour! We were lucky!

This session was originally scheduled for last Friday. The weather forecast had said that rain would stop by 4:30, when we would be on site to set up the nets. True to the inability to forecast even a few hours in advance, Lucy and I arrived on site at just before 4:30 and sat and waited for the rain to stop. When it showed no sign of abating by gone 5:00 we decided to reschedule and go home. The rain eventually stopped ay 7:30 – but that would have been 3.5 hours late starting our 7 hour session and, anyway, I was asleep again by then. The latest date for doing CES 2 was today, the 18th May. From tomorrow, for the next 10 days it would be session 3, so today was our last chance. The forecast was a bit iffy: rain was scheduled on and off throughout the morning. Fortunately the forecasters were as accurate as they had been last Friday and, apart from one brief shower mid-session, and a slightly heavier one as we started to take down, it didn’t set in for any length of time until after we had left site at midday.

The weather has been frightful, with thunder and torrential rain late Tuesday afternoon and into the evening as a final worrying flourish, and I did wonder what impact it might have had on the birds. Lucy and I met up at 4:20 and had the nets open by 5:00.

The catch was never very busy but by the time we closed the nets we had captured a reasonable haul of 37 birds. Significantly, however, of those 37, 26 were recaptured birds.

Our first bird out of the nets this morning was our first juvenile Robin of the year:

This was the first of three that we caught this morning. We were joined by a very friendly chap called Martin. He has developed an interest in wildlife photography as an antidote to lockdown, and spent most of the morning with us, taking advantage of our activity to get some close-up ID skills and photographs. It gave Lucy a break from being the focus of my wittering on, and was good company, helping the quieter parts of the morning pass more quickly.

Our list for the day was: Blue Tit (1); Great Tit (4); Long-tailed Tit (4); Wren 1(2); Dunnock 1(1); Robin 3(1); Song Thrush (1); Blackbird (2); Blackcap 3(4); Garden Warbler 1(2); Whitethroat 2; Chiffchaff (4). Totals: 11 birds ringed from 6 species and 26 birds recaptured from 11 species, making 37 birds processed from 12 species.

Lucy’s highlight was ringing her first ever Garden Warbler, my highlight comes at the end of this piece. It was a quite remarkable catch, but something that I am getting used to: a lot more recaptured birds than ringed. It does make life cheaper!

To my highlight. We packed away the nets in the wildlife refuge, packed away the ringing station and then went and packed away the nets in the Heronry Ride. I was about to drive off site when I realised that I hadn’t refitted the padlock to the wildlife refuge so I turned around, parked up and got out of the car to lock it up. As I stepped out of the car I noticed this little beauty sitting on the vegetation:

The wonderfully named Hairy Dragonfly: a relatively recently arrived species in Wiltshire. My first dragon of the year and a lovely finale from a good morning’s ringing.

A somewhat poignant day: my father would have been 101 today had he not smoked himself into lung cancer and an early grave at age 62. I always like to do something on this day as a personal marker, so I scheduled a session at Ravensroost Meadows to see what else might have arrived in the month since I was last there. It was a pleasure to be able to get out after the rain and high winds of the last week, but the catch was very small for this time of year. It isn’t that there were not lots of birds around, there were plenty, but they seem to have changed their foraging habits, so I might have to rethink my net positions.

I spent the morning with an audience: a herd of Belted Galloway steers who have been put out to grass in the meadow adjacent to the pond. As they were in the field I moved my car into the pond area so I could close the gate and keep them away from the car. The last time I left it out in the field with the Belties, apart from the using it as per Baloo the Bear singing “Bare Necessities” and rubbing themselves up against it, it took months to clean their slobber off the bodywork. I think it could be bottled as an adhesive!

The morning started well with a new Garden Warbler and a retrapped Dunnock getting caught before the nets were properly open at 6:00 (I had a bit of a lie-in, getting up at 5:00). At 6:45 I took another half-a-dozen birds out of the net, including my first Lesser Whitethroats of the year: one new one and a retrap ringed at this site as a juvenile last year.

As you can see from the photo, the feathers at the top base of the bill are sticking up. This is known as a “pollen horn” and seems to be quite common in migrant warblers. It is caused by the feathers becoming encrusted with pollen when foraging for insects on migration and comes mainly from citrus or eucalyptus plants (Laursen K.~ E. Holm & 1. S¢rensen 1997. Pollen as a marker in migratory warblers, Sylviidae. Ardea 85: 223-231). I have also found pollen horns on Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler, as well as the Sylvidae.

After this, however, it went very quiet and I didn’t catch another bird until 09:15, by which time I had been joined by Jonny Cooper. He had been out monitoring Curlew at Blakehill this morning and was killing time until a scheduled meeting with a local farmer who has had some Curlew turn up on his farm this year.

The list for the day was: Long-tailed Tit 1; Dunnock (1); Blackbird 1; Garden Warbler 1; Whitethroat 1(1); Lesser Whitethroat 2(1); Chiffchaff (1); Willow Warbler (1). Totals: 6 birds ringed from 5 species and 5 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 11 birds processed from 8 species.

As well as the retrapped Lesser Whitethroat, both the retrapped Whitethroat and Willow Warbler were also ringed at the Meadow Pond last year.

So, not a big catch but there was a lot of bird song, from the male Cuckoo who started calling at about 6:30 and kept it up all morning. Try as I might, I could not get him to come close to the pond area. It seemed content to stay around the main body of the wood. There were several Swallow hunting over the meadow. As the Belties would attest, there were plenty of flies to attract their attention:

They were certainly irritated by the flies: lots of head-shaking and tail twitching – and that was just me! As there were no birds getting into the nets I started taking down at 10:45 so, naturally, I caught a final Lesser Whitethroat as I was doing so. I was away from site by midday: slightly disappointing numbers but nice variety and the site faithful recoveries were a bonus.

This morning I processed a number of birds ringed in his garden by one of our team who lives in mid-Wiltshire He is not a fan of social media so that is all of the identification you are going to get.

Amongst the birds processed were a number of Starlings. Two of those were recently fledged juveniles.

I thought that this was early, so I had a look at all of our group records, going as far back as we have them on DemOn, i.e. all computerised records.  We have ringed 1,398 Starlings of which 75 are recently-fledged Starlings caught in May between 1996 and the present day. 

These are the earliest by 15 days, with the next earliest being on the 20th May last year, which was a juvenile caught in my garden in Purton.

According to BTO Bird Facts, based on data collated from the Nest Record Scheme, the mean laying date for the first clutch of eggs for Starling is 19th April, with the earliest record being the 6th April.  Incubation is 12 to 15 days, time to fledging 19 to 22 days.  If you take the shortest intervals, and the 5th May as their fledging date, i.e. go back 31 days to find the date of laying, unless my maths is wrong, the date of laying is as early as the 4th April. 

I just thought that I would share that.

Last year’s CES, like so many other activities, was unsustainable due to restrictions imposed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, so it is great to be able to get out and start this year’s study on time.

I was joined for the session by Alice but, as she had to come down from her university digs in Oxford, I suggested that she meet me at 6:00. For my sins, I was on site for 4:30 to set up the nets. The volume of birdsong was astonishing and I was confident that I could hear Garden Warbler in the mix. The nets were open by 5:30 and I took my first bird of the morning out of the nets as I was opening up. Sometimes birds do blunder into closed nets, usually Robins or Wrens, but this time I was delighted to extract and process my first Garden Warbler of the year:

They might look unspectacular but they are one of my favourite birds.

The weather forecast for the morning was for it to start to get wet about 10:30 but, apart from a few spots at that time we had no rain until we got hit by a short shower after we had closed the nets and were taking down. That said, it was very cold for a May morning, with 3 degrees Celsius at the outset and, despite (or, perhaps, because of) a clear sky and the sun, it did not warm up properly until 10:00. Every time the sun went behind one of the very few clouds around the temperature dropped quickly.

Alice arrived just as I finished opening the top nets and the next couple of rounds were quite busy. We were enjoying the variety of what was turning up in our nets. There was quite a lot flying around that we didn’t catch: a couple of Common Tern flying over our ringing station was an unexpected pleasure.

One of our nets is set within a small area of woodland so, naturally, that is where Alice extracted a Kingfisher! This was a male that we ringed in July of last year once we were able to get back to site. The last time I posted a photo of how we weigh Kingfishers some troublemaker in the wider ringing community complained to the BTO that the bird looked dead – despite being wide-eyed and clearly alive and, they being scared of public opinion, I was asked to take it down. So sorry folks, no can show. They are astonishing: they just lie on their backs and look at you turning their heads from side to side. Perhaps next time I will video it and post that instead.

The list for the session was: Kingfisher (1); Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Treecreeper 1(1); Blue Tit 2(3); Wren 1(3); Dunnock (4); Robin 1(3); Song Thrush 3(1); Blackbird 1(2); Blackcap 4(3); Garden Warbler 4(3); Whitethroat 1; Chiffchaff 4(4); Willow Warbler 1(1); Bullfinch 1. Total: 25 birds ringed from 13 species and 29 birds retrapped from 12 species, making 54 birds processed from 15 species.

It was a super morning. We did a couple of short ringing demonstrations, one to a family of Mum, Dad and 2 children plus a dog (on a lead: top marks to them), which delighted them and hopefully informed them. We left site just gone midday.

PS After the incident at Red Lodge blogged about recently, the police have taken a very positive interest in helping to prevent future occurrences. One of the members of the local wildlife crimes team is going to join me for a session and they are going to put up a notice on their community web-site about bird ringing, why it is carried out and why people must not interfere. That is really positive and helpful of them.