Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

I was joined this morning by Ellie and Sarah. Sarah’s first outing for a while but she picked up from where she left off: as competent as ever. Ellie just keeps improving. We met at 6:30 and set the same nets as last time: once more netting the hill incline. There is a superb collection of blackberries along the ride and I am hopeful that they will prove suitably attractive during the autumn. The nets were open by 7:30 and we gave them 20 minutes to allow for the first catch to arrive.

Looking down the slope, we could see it was already quite busy and, with five birds taken from the lower nets and fourteen from the slope, we were highly enthused for a big catch. Hopes are only raised to be cruelly dashed, and so it proved as the next round produced just two birds. It then went 2,0,0, 1, 1, 0, 3, 3, 2, ending up on 31 birds by the end of the session at 11:30.

It would be churlish to complain too much. With some of my catches recently I would have been satisfied with that number, but with that excellent start I had thought we would be on to a 50+ haul.

The catch for the session was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Blue Tit 2; Great Tit 5(1); Long-tailed Tit 1; Wren 2; Dunnock 1; Robin 2(1); Blackcap 10; Garden Warbler (1); Chiffchaff 3; Goldcrest 1. Totals: 28 birds ringed from 10 species and 3 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 31 birds processed from 11 species. All birds processed, except the retrapped Garden Warbler, were juveniles.

It was a toss up as to which was our favourite bird of the session. The Great Spotted Woodpecker was a very juvenile bird.

However, the cutest had to be the rather tatty juvenile Goldcrest:

As you can see from this photo, it was just beginning to grow its crest. At first we thought female, but a little blow on the top showed the tiniest splash of orange:

Life isn’t easy being a bird, particularly for youngsters, and it doesn’t help when you are carrying a host of parasites:

Both sides of its head were equally badly infested. Underneath the ticks you can see were others hidden by the bigger ones. There had to be well over 100 ticks on this bird’s head. Some ringers are opposed to tick removal: “interfering with nature”. The BTO are happy either way, provided that you are competent to remove them. I spent quite a long time cleaning off the ticks from this bird. Am I competent? Not a single bleed was left after removal: I think that is competence. It is highly unlikely that I got them all, but the burden has been much reduced.

Footnote: I have just been advised by the BTO that some interfering individual, who, it seems, would have been happy to see this Great Tit suffer this tick infestation, and possibly die from potential infections, has contacted them and they have advised me that they have added another layer of bureaucracy into the ringing scheme. To quote their new position: “While removal of ticks for the purpose of enhancing bird welfare does not require a Home Office licence under ASPA (Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986), there is a risk to the bird if mouthparts are left in situ, and artificially improving the health of the bird compromises the monitoring remit of ringing activities. Ringers should therefore not attempt to remove ticks from birds caught unless collecting them for a specific study, which would require an ASPA licence from the Home Office as it wouldn’t be considered as for welfare reasons.”

I did ask for when this became a part of the rule book but, instead of getting an answer, I was shown a statement made back in 2012, which talks about being “trained” to do it, so you don’t leave mouthparts embedded in the host.

As someone who started their working career in stock management on a number of farms back in 1974, if your animals are picking up ticks I was trained to remove them. Apparently, “trained” is now being interpreted as having been trained as a vet! Perhaps the ringing scheme management no longer thinks that general animal welfare, outside of our ringing activities, is any longer a priority. I don’t agree but I won’t mention it in public any more.

We closed the nets at 11:30 and took down, packed away and off site just after 12:30. If the birds had been spread over the session we would have been happier than we were, but it was still an enjoyable session.

I was helped this morning by Ellie. This morning’s session was mainly about checking up on whether any Barn Owls were taking advantage of the boxes emptied after the Jackdaws had fledged. With the late start to the breeding season I was hoping that they might have chosen to do so. Unfortunately, not so, so far.

We started off at Clattinger Farm, meeting at 8:30 and heading off in my car. One of the boxes at Upper Waterhay had roosting Stock Doves and nesting material but no sign of actual breeding. The others remained as empty as they were after we cleaned them out. Two of the farms have seen Barn Owls flying around the fields, so there is still hope.

We started off at Clattinger Farm to check on Swallows. I have definitely got my timings wrong this year. Lack of the car was my excuse for missing the first broods. Incompetence has seen me miss most of the second broods. Definitely hoping that I get it right for any third broods. As the Wildlife Trust staff weren’t about this morning, we couldn’t get into the stables as they are kept locked, but we could get into the adjoining sheds. Pleased to find one Swallow nest with three warm eggs and parents flying around in shed 5. We will have a look at the others on Friday morning when Ellie P, of the Wildlife Trust, is about. There was plenty of adult activity, so hopeful we might get some results.

Our first Barn Owl box checked is a new one on site at Clattinger. This was the first time I have checked this box. A Stock Dove flew out as we approached and I was pleased to find two warm eggs in the box. We will give it another three weeks and have another look.

From there we headed over to Upper Waterhay to check their Barn Owl boxes and see whether there were any Swallows on eggs or ready for ringing. As I have already said, the boxes showed no signs of Barn Owl activity. Most of the Swallow nests were empty, but with plenty of adult activity, so I am pretty sure that a third brood is on the way. We will check back in a few weeks. However, one of the nests did contain four youngsters, so Ellie got to ring her first Swallow pulli. I say pulli because they were all nicely tucked up in the nest and showed no signs of trying to fly away, but their wing feathers were pretty near full grown, so they won’t be there much longer: so we finally got our timing right!

From there we checked out one more box before arriving at Drill Farm. When I last checked this box, on the 10th of this month, there were three very small chicks and two eggs. Because there were four eggs there on the first visit, 13th June, I felt that there would be the chance that the chicks would be big enough to ring. This time there was one somewhat bigger and two somewhat smaller chicks. The two unhatched eggs had disappeared. What was encouraging about this box was that it had a well-stocked larder of wood mice along with the chicks.

We went from there to check on our boxes at Home Farm Barn, which was empty. Then to Somerford Farm, where the barn based box had a pair of Stock Doves roosting. There was no sign of nesting though. The other two boxes were empty.

With Barn Owls in the Braydon Forest, this year we have ringed 12 young from five boxes, last year we ringed 31 young from 9 boxes. It is not hard to see that things have been a lot more difficult for them this year than last. We will see how it ends up in October when I clean out the boxes for the winter period.

With so few Barn Owls processed on Salisbury Plain so far this year we set out hopeful but not confident. The boxes we were checking today had previously been noted to have at least a pair of adults, a couple had eggs, and we were hoping that they might produce results.

The first good thing that happened was a good sized flock of Swifts flying around the camp. They have been nesting there in a good number of boxes installed by the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO). My friends, Ian, Andy and Jack, have been monitoring and ringing some of the chicks, and Ian confirmed that the last batch he ringed, a week ago, were close to fledging. It looks very much like it has been a successful year for them at this site.

The team today was Dick, Jon, Justine and me. We set off at 8:30 as usual and headed off for our checks. The plan was twofold, besides the Barn Owl checks we had three Kestrel boxes that needed assessment for maintenance and replacement. In the end, we left one box where it was in an Ash tree. Primarily because although, like so many Ash trees in the UK, the tree is dying from the Chalara die-back disease, none of the others in the location were actually any better. Another was moved from a very exposed position to a sheltered position on the edge of a copse. For the third we had to remove an old and dilapidated box and replace it with a nice new, all mod-cons Kestrel box. (For “we” read “Jon”, he did all the hard work, the rest of us just had fun breaking up the old one so it could be safely disposed of.)

A des-res that any Kestrel will be proud to occupy!

The good thing about today was that we actually managed to get some Barn Owl chicks ringed. In fact, we also ringed a couple of adults, more of which anon.

Driving over the Plain to our various sites I could not believe how many hundreds of Linnet there were to be seen alongside the tracks, over the landscape. Given how their numbers have decreased on farmland, this just shows that we should be able to increase their numbers again, by subtle changes to farming methods. This land is farmed but not intensively. I am pretty confident that it is not regularly sprayed with pesticides and herbicides.

Approaching our first Barn Owl encounter, in a barn on Wilsford Hill, driving up the track was phenomenal. As previously mentioned, so many Linnets but, also, five Wheatear flying up the track in front of us, and them I noticed a couple of Stonechat also flying from bush to bush along the track. We got to the barn and, thanks to plugging the entrance / exit hole managed to catch two juveniles. At first we thought that they could be adults but, on checking the plumage, they were definitely juvenile. Apart from the freshness of the wings and tail, the heads retained quite a lot of fluffy juvenile feathers. It was clear that they had been out hunting: there was blood in the creases of the skin around the talons. They were also, clearly, a male and a female:

The absence or otherwise of spotting on the underside of the wing and sometimes on the side of the breast is diagnostic, although males may occasionally have the odd one or two, but not as many.

The next box that we checked that contained owls contained two adults. One of the adults was unringed, but the other was already ringed. This bird, a female, had been ringed with a size F ring. The BTO approve the use of both F and G rings for ringing Barn Owls, dependent upon the projected size of the bird. It is found that Barn Owls in the Cornwall and Devon and west Wales tend to be smaller than those elsewhere in the country so, as a general rule, in those areas they fit F-rings and in most other areas they use G-rings. Nearly every ringer involved in ringing Barn Owl in Wiltshire uses G-rings, because we are not in those extreme areas. You are supposed to decide on which ring to use based upon tarsus width, although finding the exact width data is difficult. However. it was clear that this F-ring was too small for this particular bird:

If you look at the leg with the ring on it you can see that the feathers have been rubbed away, especially when you compare it to the unringed leg. Also, this ring has been shaped into a capital D. This meant that the ring could move up and down the ring, hence the feather removal, but not rotate, causing rubbing that exacerbates the defeathering. We removed the offending ring and replaced it with properly fitted G-ring and have informed the BTO of what we did and why. This is the second incidence of this problem being found within the last few weeks. I also have photographic evidence of that as well. That we needed to change these rings will, almost certainly, be investigated by the BTO. Hopefully they will identify the root of the problem and get the individuals to change their methods. Apart from that, the bird was fine.

Unfortunately, both were in moult and with no sign of breeding. They probably won’t this year now.

At the next box we checked a male flew off as we approached but we did catch an adult female in the next box. She also was already ringed, not with one of our rings though. I have just heard back from the ringing team that did it, she was ringed near Collingbourne Kingston as a pullus in June 2019, it has travelled about 6 miles West-South-West away from its natal area.

And then to the highlight of the day: a brood of four fat and healthy Barn Owl chicks, looking well fed and growing nicely:

The final box we checked as ever, the male flew off as we approached, but the female stayed hunkered down on the nest, so Jon simply shut the box door again and we left her in peace. The fact that she stayed down and didn’t move is a strong sign that she is on eggs. Hopefully another check in a six weeks or so will prove fruitful.

All of the Kestrels seem to have now fledged and their breeding season is over. We found evidence that the adults are moulting, with feathers around the base of boxes, like these:

We finished about 14:30 and headed back to base. Just over the road was a lot of smoke: it seemed that a farmer out working his field has somehow managed to spark a fire in the stubble. To his credit, he got out of the tractor and managed to stamp it out. Long gone, I hope, are the days when stubble burning was an acceptable practice.

Anyway, a good session, some Barn Owls ringed, and numbers are slowly climbing for this year. I am out checking a few of my boxes up north tomorrow, and have at least one brood to ring and am hopeful I will find some more.

After a very frustrating time trying to get out for a ringing session, the weekend was abysmal, Monday to Wednesday weren’t too bad – but they were forecast to be wet in the morning. They weren’t, but I can’t take chances as Ellie has to come from Cheltenham and I would hate to waste her time (and fuel). We finally managed to get out this morning. The rest of the team are on holiday, so it was just me and Ellie.

We met at 6:30 and set the nets: just the usual CES nets along the Heronry Ride and the first two arms of the Wildlife Refuge: I am deliberately not putting a photo up because I want something rather more special to adorn the social media posts. You can check in earlier posts if you wish to find out where they are set.

After a couple of irritating net issues, we had the nets open by 7:30 and started catching almost immediately. The first round was a Blackcap and a Robin: pretty much to be expected. However, the next ride produced five Blackbirds: two juveniles and three adults. As was par for the morning: all of the retrapped birds were adults, all of the ringed birds were juveniles! However, the sixth bird of that round was our first Lesser Whitethroat caught at the site since 2020, when three were caught. The sad thing is that, until 2019, we could regularly catch double-figures of the species.

The rest of the session was spent showing lots of people birds, just a couple each round, but the people enjoyed it. At 11:00 I went to check the Heronry Ride nets. I thought there were lots of birds in the nets, but they weren’t, they were leaves of different sizes. However, as I did the proper thing and walked along the net to check it all, I saw a biggish bird in there and, next to it, a very bright blue bird.

We usually catch Green Woodpeckers in the Wildlife Refuge, as the field there is full of ants’ nests. This was only the third caught in this net, and the first since July 2017.

Next door to this was the first Kingfisher that we have caught at Lower Moor for two years:

We decided to shut the nets at 11:30, starting with the Heronry Ride, which was empty. Unusually, it was actually our most productive ride this morning. Normally am debating with myself whether to bother setting it. I am so pleased that I decided to stick with the usual setup. Then we went and checked the Wildlife Refuge rides and found a few more birds, so we processed them and went to shut the rest of the nets, taking a couple more birds out as we did so.

The list for the session was: Kingfisher 1; Green Woodpecker 1; Great Tit 3; Wren 5; Dunnock 1(1); Robin 3(1); Song Thrush 1; Blackbird 2(3); Blackcap 2(2); Garden Warbler (1); Lesser Whitethroat 1; Chiffchaff 1. Totals 21 juveniles ringed from 11 species and 8 adults retrapped from 5 species, making 29 birds processed from 12 species.

A lovely morning, with a reasonable size catch, but three stunning birds in the mix, for different reasons. I let Ellie process every bird caught, because that’s the sort of trainer I am. One of the nice things about a catch like today’s is that there was plenty of time to focus on training on some of the less common elements, in this case, moult scores. It is only really available for training in the few months after the breeding season ends. Most of the adults were undergoing some form of moult, be it a female’s breast refeathering as she had finished breeding, to primary feather and tail scores.

Anyway, with everything packed away we were ready to go by 12:30. Very satisfying session.

One last highlight of the morning: we were showing some birds to a family having a walk around the reserve, dog on lead, very pleasant, chatty people. Their daughter suddenly blanked everything and everyone out. I immediately thought that she must be a teenager: in fact, she was trying to focus in and get a decent photo of a Great Crested Grebe on the other side of Mallard Lake. This was special: the adult had two humbugs on its back. I have been going there for 15 years and have regularly seen an adult pair. I have seen them carrying out their courtship displays but, in all that time, I have never seen them with chicks, until today! Just lovely! I hope they survive.

Autumn is definitely arriving early this year:

You can tell when the autumn berries and fruits are beginning to ripen: bird poop stains your hands purple. Today’s was the first I have had this year: it came from an adult female Blackcap. Her brood patch is just about ready to feather over and her wings and tail were already well advanced in their moult, so her breeding season is over. She will now be stuffing herself on berries and drupes to put on fat for her winter migration. Time to start looking at the fat deposition rates on migratory birds.

I had hoped to do the northern part of the wood but, as I was working solo, I decided to stick to the usual area, with my usual nets. Whilst putting them up I did manage to drop one of the nets onto a floor full of leaf litter, twigs, bramble cuts offs and a whole heap of other detritus. So, in the intervening time between rounds, I spent many minutes removing aforesaid detritus, and my lovely wife finished the job for me this afternoon!

Once upon a time, I would not have thought twice about working solo in that area, but it is very open, and the nets are set along the main paths for a lot of the way. Back in July 2020, soon after the Covid restrictions were lifted, I had a deeply unpleasant experience, with two women ignoring all of my signs, trashing one of my nets to get a Blackbird out and then having the gall to complain to the BTO that I had ranted and raved at them and threatened them with a machete. Fortunately, I had two independent witnesses to the fact that they were lying through their teeth about everything. Unfortunately, the BTO complaints team refused to accept their statements! If it hadn’t been for the police stepping in things might have gone badly wrong for me. However, it has had a long-term negative influence on my confidence of working solo in an open area.

Anyway, back to today. I was on site by 6:30, nets open by 7:30, nothing caught until 8:20. It didn’t get much better: just the odd bird every half-hour or so. Still, the weather was nice, I was there, lots of people stopped for a chat and were very friendly (well – apart from the one woman who shouted at me as I was setting my nets “You do this far too effing often!”, I just suggested she keep her dog on its lead and to make sure it came nowhere near me. I didn’t specify why not. Now, where did I put that machete? A joke based on the previously mentioned incident.)

I was in the wood, relaxing, until I decided to pack up at 11:30. I closed the least productive ride, then checked the others and processed the bird that was in the end one. I then took the closed ride down and packed it away and checked the other side (rides 2 and 3 if you have one of the previous diagrams). From there I removed another Robin and two juvenile Bullfinches. Nice to have the Bullfinches again. Anyway, after processing them, those last rides were also empty, so they were shut and taken down. What with all of the nattering with passers by, I didn’t get everything packed away until 13:20, with just 13 birds processed: Wren (1); Dunnock 1; Robin [4](1); Blackcap 1[2]; Chiffchaff (1); Bullfinch [2]. Totals: 2 adults ringed from 2 species, 8 juveniles processed from 3 species and 3 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 13 birds processed from 6 species.

It was a lovely morning, if less productive than I would like. The silence of the wood was regularly interrupted by the calls of juvenile Buzzards demanding food, and also quite a lot of Nuthatch calling within the wood: a shame we didn’t catch any.

A somewhat different blog today. With the temperature due to be up at 30^oC+ on Saturday and Sunday, and needing something to pass the time, this blog post is about an event scheduled for last Friday and Saturday at Lower Moor Farm. The plan was to provide an event for the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Watch Group, their junior branch, based at Lower Moor Farm. We set up in the grounds of the Lakeside Care Farm at LMF. The event was organised by Rosie and Nic, Rosie works for the Herefordshire Wildlife Trust, having worked for the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust for a good few years (and is one of my ringing trainees), whereas Nic works for the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust.

The Care Farm is a place for vulnerable and / or challenged young people and was featured on the BBC’s Countryfile programme back in 2019. My lack of modesty allows me to mention that it was the second time that I had demonstrated bird ringing on Countryfile, the first time was at the Help4Heroes rehabilitation site at Tedworth House in early 2014, where I ran monthly sessions for the beneficiaries, staff and visitors from 2013 until it closed, due to the impacts of Covid, in 2020.

Friday evening was going to be bat finding and moth trapping, Saturday was intended to be bird ringing. Unfortunately, the forecast for the Saturday was far too windy for setting nets at LMF, so Ellie J set a couple of nets for Friday evening instead. One of them was just too blowy from the outset and caught nothing and we closed it early. The other caught just four birds: all of which arrived and were processed before the target audience arrived at 20:30. Two juveniles: a Chiffchaff and a Wren and two adults, a Great Tit and a Blackcap. After the children and their parents arrived, although we left the net open until dark, we didn’t get another bird: that might have been something to do with the enthusiastic noises coming from the attendees.

The children were great: I took about 50 small pots with me, all of which disappeared, all of which came back with a variety of insects and other invertebrates for me to identify (or blag my way around it if I couldn’t). The first things that they started bringing back were the excuviae of dragonflies, they looked mainly like Broad-bodied Chasers but there are so many species of both dragonfly and damselfly there, it is definitely worth a visit for them alone.

I set the moth trap away at 20:00 and, at first, all we saw were hordes of midges and mosquitoes. I was pleased that, for once, I had remembered to pack the insect repellent: not a single bite! Eventually a few moths started turning up alongside the midges and we ended up with a perfectly reasonable catch:

Moth List:

Some photos of the moths, in no particular order:

Agapeta hamana

Blackneck

Brown-tail

Calamatropha paludella

Common Footman

Dingy Footman

Drinker

Common Wave

Elephant Hawkmoth

Flame Shoulder

Grey Tortrix agg. (i.e. impossible to identify without dissection)

Muslin Footman

Ringed China-mark

Ruby Tiger

Fan-footed Wave

Smoky Wainscot

Striped Wainscot

Dusky Thorn

Peach Blossom

I might have got a few wrong but, on the whole, I think it is pretty accurate. Those Waves are a bit difficult at the best of times, and when so many of them are pale and interesting, it an lead to error.

The key thing is that the children, and their parents, had a really good time of it – and made it totally enjoyable for us as well. They all started leaving at just after 10:30 and, after packing up, and potting up as many moths as I could for photographing the next day, I got away about 11:30, grateful that I wasn’t getting up at 5:00 the next morning to set nets for ringing!

The following blog was written by the newest member of my ringing team, Ellie L. As I now have three Ellies in my ringing life, I think I had better start distinguishing which is which. Ellie J was the second trainee that I took on, and is now an A-permit holder. Ellie P. is a key contact of mine at the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and helps keep an eye on nesting Swallows at their properties and rings them with me when we get the chance. Ellie L is the one who is now a regular trainee with the team and proving to be very helpful and skilled at what she is expected to do (and is making me ever so slightly jealous!).

Her blog:

To introduce myself, I’m a new (ish) member of West Wilts Ringing Group and have been training with Simon and team since March.

The opportunity recently came up to join a trip to Portugal to ring European storm-petrels and, having spent the year studying their vocalisations at university, it seemed about time to see some in the wild.

The ringing trip takes place each June and contributes data to a >30-year-long project run by Dr Rob Thomas from Cardiff University and the A ROCHA Portugal Field Centre. Most birds are caught on their migration route past Portugal on their way north to breeding grounds in the UK, Faroe Islands and the Republic of Ireland, but some may come from more local Mediterranean breeding populations.

European storm-petrel Hydrobates pelagicus (Photo by Ben Porter, June 2024)

Close-up showing ‘tube nose’

The ringing process:

Storm-petrels are caught at night on a wave-cut platform on the south coast of Portugal by playing a tape lure of a colony on a (very!) loud speaker.

Wave-cut platform where ringing takes place

The usual biometric data is collected as well as information on the condition of the birds’ feet (storm-petrels often lose feet due to entanglement in fishing gear or attack from predators, or even fish, as they hover over the sea surface to feed). Faecal and vomit samples are collected for dietary analysis and weather-related data (wind speed and direction, SST, air temperature, cloud cover) is collected hourly. This data collection allows for long-term changes in catch rates, foraging behaviours, weight etc. to be studied.   

A one-footed storm-petrel (Photo by Kayleigh Bargus)

Ringing has to be carried out under white light in this area, as red light is used as a signal by drug smugglers here, meaning birds can become slightly disorientated as it takes a while for their eyes to re-adjust to darkness. As a result, releasing the birds involves sitting with them near the edge of the cliff and making sure they fly off in the right direction or bringing them safely away from the cliff if they go too near the edge before beginning to fly.

Overall, just over 100 storm-petrels were caught this year, two of which were re-traps which had been previously ringed at breeding colonies (one of these was confirmed to be from West Wales). The number of storm-petrels caught was lower than in recent years which seems to be part of a longer-term decline in catch rate at this site since 1993 – this could be due to a decline in storm-petrel populations but could also be due to changes in migration routes/timings or foraging behaviours.

There were a few bonus extras caught including a desert locust (which flew in from the seaward side of the net!) and a couple of these:

Cory’s shearwater Calonectris borealis (Photo courtesy of Beth Rawles)

Overall, it was an incredible experience, storm-petrels are lovely birds to ring and it was worth staying up through the nights to do so!

I had just a few boxes to check this morning: particularly the box at Plain Farm which had two small chicks in last time we checked. Ellie and I set out at 9:30, first stop Plain Farm. There we found and ringed just the one chick:

This is Ellie’s first Barn Owl chick and she handled it perfectly. The G-rings aren’t always the easiest to get right first time, but she certainly had no problems fitting and closing the ring properly.

This chick was pretty healthy, weighed in at a decent 350g, with a reasonably full belly. How much of that was its now, no longer in existence, nest mate I don’t know, but it looked in good condition.

We then went over the road to Drill Farm. Back on the 13th June we caught the adult female on the nest and found four warm eggs. Today we found three chicks and two warm eggs. The chicks were too small for ringing. In fact, even the largest was still naked and was only just opening its eyes. Its nest mates were very definitely naked and bind. We will visit again in three to four weeks to ring what may be left. They do seem to be being well fed. This was the largest of the chicks:

Just look at the belly on that: makes me look positively svelte! A shame it is Ellie’s legs that are in focus and not the chick!

We checked a couple of boxes at Gospel Oak Farm: the Jackdaws had fledged from the bottom box and the owner had cleaned it out subsequently. The upper box, which had previously held a squirrel drey was still empty. We then went over to Clattinger Farm to look at the new box there: no sign of any activity or poo adorning the greenery under the box.

Our final stop was at Oaksey Moor: this was frustrating: plenty of evidence of owl occupation, plenty of white splash all over the vegetation all around the base of the box and beyond, so it looks active. Unfortunately, it was inaccessible using the ladder. It is going to need either permission to cut a swathe through the brush trees around the base of the tree (mainly Blackthorn) or a tree climber to get in there. As it is part of a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust reserve, one has to follow the Health & Safety protocols, which means two tree climbers!

By then it was approaching midday and getting very hot, so we called it a day! Ellie was happy with her first experiences of Barn Owls and ringing her first of their chicks: the first of many I expect.

A really nice session today: thoroughly enjoyable. I am not sure that I give my team enough credit in my blog pieces: I am very lucky with the people that I have the privilege to train. Apart from being massively interested in our birdlife and the importance of the ringing scheme, willing learners and committed helpers, they are all thoroughly nice people, with whom it is a pleasure to spend time.

That’s enough of that, down to business! I was joined this morning by Laura and Ellie at 6:00 for a session at Ravensroost Meadows and we set the following nets:

We started with a Wren that got into the nets before they had been opened. They are bad enough to extract when the nets are fully open but this one crawled through three pockets of the net, got the nets up around both thighs and angel-winged itself on both wings: just what you want for your first extraction of the morning after no coffee to wake you up and, having set Laura and Ellie other tasks I had to get it out. Suffice to say, I did, safely and with only a minimum of curses.

Anyway, it was an interesting morning for a number of reasons. It wasn’t the busiest of mornings, with some quite long gaps between catches, but there was plenty to appreciate. Our second round produced two of these:

Of course, those of us who are lucky enough to catch Bullfinch regularly will recognise this pose as far more typical:

He might look ferocious but they are one of the few birds that are more than happy to sit on your outstretched hand until you decide it is time for them to move on. Anyway, these were our first juvenile Bullfinches of the year.

A bit later on, at 10:30, we caught our second first juvenile of the year:

In addition to our catching these first juveniles of the year, we also caught two adult Lesser Whitethroat: a male and female in full breeding condition, which were also my teams first of this species for the year.

The total list for the session was: Treecreeper [1]; Blue Tit 1[3]; Wren 1(1); Dunnock 1; Robin [4]; Song Thrush [3]; Blackcap[1]; Whitethroat 2; Lesser Whitethroat 2; Chiffchaff 1[7]; Bullfinch [2]. Totals: 8 adults ringed from 6 species, 21 juveniles ringed from 7 species and 2 retraps from 2 species, making 31 birds processed from 11 species.

Given how the weather has been these last couple of weeks, we were lucky that the sun stayed behind cloud pretty much for the whole morning, coming out and into full force just after 11:30, just before we started to take down and pack up at midday.

Quite the most astonishing month, for all sorts of reasons.  Firstly, our biggest June catch to date:

The same number of species but more ringed and fewer retrapped.  Of those ringed, we added Canada Goose, Carrion Crow, Kingfisher, Marsh Tit, Meadow Pipit and Spotted Flycatcher and pulli from Lapwing and Stock Dove.  Missing species this year, ringed in June last year, were the totally astonishing Redwing, not really surprising, and Yellowhammer and pulli from Jackdaw and Kestrel.  

To those figures in more detail, the Canada Goose was, unsurprisingly, caught by Jonny at Langford Lakes.  Andy and Ian have ringed Lapwing chicks out on SPTA Imber Ranges, indeed Ian did another there this month.  The other 23 were ringed by Jonny and Aurora and the Project Peewit team – who invited me to ring my first ever chicks: three of them at one of my Barn Owl sites.  

The two Stock Doves chicks were found, with their mother, by Jonny in a Barn Owl box.  My experience of Stock Doves this month was somewhat less pleasant: the only box we found in the Braydon Forest area had an adult and two chicks: one was dead, the other looked in poor condition. We removed the dead one and left the other in peace.  In my journeys out with the Salisbury Plain Raptor Group we have come across a few nests: one had two dead adults killed and eaten in the box, another had a dead adult uneaten in the box and a third had a clutch of two very cold eggs.  We also saw four other boxes inhabited by pairs of Stock Dove but didn’t bother them.

On the Barn Owl front: they have started breeding much later this year: a lack of voles has pushed them back. One good thing about that is that the Jackdaws have finished breeding: so some rapid cleaning of boxes and there will be less competition for nest spaces from other species.  We have done a lot better than on SPTA, who had ringed nothing on the Plain until just two last minute ones for Justine at one of her off Plain sites.  We have ringed three broods, totalling eight chicks: one at Echo Lodge and two at Blakehill Farm.  There are also two broods developing at Plain Farm and Drill Farm which will be ringed in July if all goes to plan.  The numbers are lower than last year, but at least they are succeeding. One good point: we are finding dead voles inside the boxes.

With regard to the Jackdaw pulli, it is a lack of opportunity, due to my being out on Salisbury Plain and the Lower Wylye Valley checking their boxes, plus my lack of a roof rack after changing my car from a dead one to a much younger model.  Thanks to Laura for providing the roof rack and car for our box checks.

The Kestrels last June were fortuitous, ringed by Jonny and myself because, in my case, Justine was away and unable to deal with the brood at an appropriate time, so I got to do them.  This year the only Kestrel chicks ringed have been on Salisbury Plain: with quite a variety of age.  They seem to have swapped diet from small mammals to small birds, with Goldfinch and Skylark appearing quite often in their diet.

I am hoping to put up some Kestrel boxes in the Braydon Forest for next year.

Amongst the other catches: there was a quite excellent haul of Marsh Tits ringed.  It is our best June ringing catch ever.   The previous highest was seven in June 2014.  In fact, it is tied as our best monthly ringing catch with October 2019, which was influenced by supplementary feeding. Apart from that, 10 in August 2018 was the only other month when we ringed double figures of this species.  The Meadow Pipit is also notable: two adults were caught on the Imber Ranges in June 2022, this is just the third June catch of the species by the Group.

For me, the best moment of my month had to be ringing three Lapwing chicks, but it was a real toss up between them and this:

This is only the thirteenth Spotted Flycatcher caught by the Group since January 2013 – and the ninth caught in the Braydon Forest.  Perhaps more remarkable is the fact that this is the fifth caught in the Firs: the smallest of the five woods ringed in the Forest, at 10ha: a quarter of the size of Ravensroost Wood, one tenth the size of Red Lodge and one twentieth the size of both Somerford Common and Webb’s Wood.

Let’s hope that July delivers as well as June has.