Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

Lucy and I met up at the entrance to Blakehill Farm Wiltshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve at 6:45 this morning. The plan was to see what birds were using the fields adjacent to the cow byres behind the Whitworth Building. I had a couple of mad ideas, the maddest of which was to set up a few Potter traps baited with mealworms and a lure for Wheatear, just in case any of them happened to be passing through and fancied a snack. Unfortunately, that drew a blank. One day!

We set the usual nets for that field:

My other slightly mad idea was to lure for Redwing, as there were still some of them and Fieldfare about the site. I put lures on for them on the 2 x 18m and the standalone 18m net. It didn’t work. However, at 10:20 we did catch one – in the 9m net in the complex adjacent to the farm. Needless to say, moving a Redwing lure to that area did not deliver any further examples of the bird.

All nets caught, which is always a good thing: it makes you feel that you made the right choices. The three net complex was most successful, particularly the 9m net. It is the site at which I most regularly catch House Sparrows and, sure enough, the first two birds out of the net were a male and a female.

The catch for the day was: Blue Tit 1(1); Great Tit 2; Wren 2; Dunnock 4(1); Robin (1); Redwing 1; Blackbird 2(1); House Sparrow 6. Totals: 18 birds ringed from 7 species and 4 birds recaptured from 4 species, making 22 birds processed from 8 species.

It wasn’t the biggest catch but it was big enough to be enjoyable and relaxed enough for some training. As it was the first time that Lucy has had the opportunity to process both House Sparrows and Dunnocks it meant we could take time over these species. Ageing Dunnocks is a real black art: there are so many slight variations of plumage and eye colour to take into consideration before coming to a conclusion. House Sparrows have always been considered to be incapable of being aged accurately once both adults and juveniles have gone through their autumn moult, whereupon young and adults adopt identical plumages for their particular sex. That was until recently when Laurent Demongin’s “Identification Guide to Birds in the Hand”, translated from the French by Oxford based, fellow ringer and all round good bloke, George Candelin, hit our shelves with the suggestion that second year male House Sparrows can be identified as such due to a characteristic of the median coverts: specifically that in the juvenile bird the white tips to the feathers retain a central black spike not seen in full adults, as seen in the photograph below:

I hate to say it, but we did have a fatality this morning. It doesn’t happen very often, perhaps once in every 1,500 birds, but this was particularly poignant. At 8:55 Lucy ringed our second Wren of the morning. It had been extracted from the 3 net complex. Our ringing station was relatively equidistant from each net set, about 100m from each. Having processed the Wren it was released at the ringing station and left to its own devices. Just after 10:00 we noticed a Kestrel come flying across the fields to the south. We watched it stop and hover a couple of times, and then it stooped. I knew it was heading for the net, so I ran for it. As is par for the course, I got over halfway there when it managed to free itself from the net and fly off. I knew it had to have been after something (Kestrels are just as happy to take small birds as they are to take voles and mice) so went over to check the net. Sure enough, it was the same Wren that Lucy had ringed over an hour earlier. Wren mortality is naturally in excess of 70% for juvenile birds and 50% for adults. We were checking the nets every 15 minutes this morning, so I don’t feel guilty about it, it is a very unusual occurrence for our group and my team in particular.

The following blog piece has been written by Alice Edney, one of the group’s C-permit holders, currently carrying out her PhD in Oxford – hence the current location of her activities.

At the start of lockdown three, I was determined to attract birds to my urban garden in Oxford. I built a makeshift bird table, topped up the feeders, and waited… And waited! And waited! It was no use.

There were plenty of birds out the front of the house, overhead and in neighbouring gardens, but alas, not a single one came into mine. A combination of next door’s cat and my housemate’s new puppy were clearly more of a deterrent than I had anticipated. I left the feeders up but reluctantly resigned myself to no ringing during lockdown three. (I should note, the puppy is adorable and has done wonders for house happiness during this challenging time, so I can’t really be annoyed about the lack of birds).

When I received an email in mid-February, to say that BTO guidance on bird ringing had changed, I was surprised and excited to say the least. After being granted permission to resume ringing at my local site, Hogacre Common, I planned my first session for the 25^th February. Hogacre forms part of my local patch and I have been visiting it somewhat religiously since October and recording the wildlife seen. On the 18^th November, I saw my first Lesser Redpoll here, and have had two further sightings since, all being spotted in the same patch of birch trees. On the morning of the 25^th, I therefore decided to set up a net amongst the birch in the hope of catching my first Lesser Redpoll at Hogacre. The day previously, I had also seen my first Chiffchaff of the spring here, so I set a net in the area it was seen, along with two others at the feeding station.

The morning started off well, with a lovely little group of Long-tailed Tits along with the usual Blue Tits and Great Tits. Quite honestly, after a two-month ringing hiatus I would have been happy with that. However, at 08:20 one Lesser Redpoll was caught and at 09:50 a Chiffchaff – both firsts for the site.

In total, the morning yielded a modest catch of 22 individuals from 6 species: Blue Tit 5(2),  Great Tit 4(1), Long-tailed Tit 1(6), Robin 1, Chiffchaff 1, Lesser Redpoll 1. Totals: 13 birds ringed from 6 species and 9 birds retrapped from 3 species.

Overall, it was a lovely session, and I was very grateful to be able to get back out. My body, however, said otherwise. The following day every muscle seemed to ache, after a severe lack of exercise during lockdown and then suddenly asking it to lug a load of heavy equipment across a field. I guess I’ll just have to do lots more ringing over the coming weeks to get back in shape! I am excited to discover what species will visit Hogacre this spring. 

After the BTO relaxed the ringing restrictions for England in an email on the 12th February, quite naturally the weather was then dreadful for about the next week, just adding to the frustrations caused by the lack of activity – and the lack of birds visiting my garden. It is as if they knew!

Perhaps more surprising: despite the restrictions and the weather, we actually carried out more sessions than we managed in 2020!  The average catch wasn’t much bigger, but overall it was a happy return to activity. As the Beast from the East was in 2019, I really cannot remember why February 2020 was so bad: we weren’t in lockdown by then, it must have just been bad weather.

The results for the month were:

There were quite a few highlights: Alice caught her first Lesser Redpoll for the Hogacre Common Eco Park, Ellie got to ring her first ever Siskin. The colour saturation on a male Siskin’s wings and tail are superb:

David found, extracted and ringed his first ever Brambling. The Brambling catch was very welcome. They have never been a common bird for us: two caught in 2018 by Jonny and Andy, near Chippenham and Warminster respectively, being the first two since the group split at the end of 2012, and they had only been caught three times since then in the Braydon Forest: twice at Somerford Common and once at Ravensroost, all in 2019. Last year was a blank, so, even though it was only one, to get another at Somerford was very pleasing.

I was pretty delighted to catch my first Sparrowhawk of the year in my first outing since New Year’s Day, even if the photograph did spark a lot of other ringers on Facebook telling me we were asking to get spiked by its talons because they are so mobile (my little team has ringed 14 in 5 years, which is a good average for catching free-flying Sparrowhawks, without any undue injury from their talons, I am pleased to say). Everyone’s an expert!

As blog followers already know, March has started well – but that’s a story for next month’s round up!

With the continuing good ringing weather, I decided on a trip to the Firs this morning. I was joined for the session by Jonny and Lucy.

Lucy had hoped that we might catch a couple of Lesser Redpoll as she hasn’t ringed any of them yet. Unfortunately, we didn’t, but she did get to both extract and process her first two Great Spotted Woodpeckers: one new and one retrap.

When Lucy looked at the tail feathers she noticed that there was some unusual matter collected along the feather shafts:

I have asked for opinions on the ringers’ group on Facebook and had a few suggestions: a mix of resin and lichen particles from one, algae plus bark debris from another. I thought it might be the result of feather mite abrasion and someone else suggested the products of abrasion. Any other suggestions are welcome.

The list for the session was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1(1); Nuthatch 4(1); Blue Tit 11(9); Great Tit 11(13); Coal Tit 2(3); Long-tailed Tit (1); Wren (1); Robin 4; Song Thrush 1; Blackbird 1; Goldcrest 1(2); Chaffinch 4(1). Totals: 40 birds ringed from 10 species and 32 birds retrapped from 9 species making 72 birds processed from 12 species.

We seem to be doing quite well for Chaffinch in the Braydon Forest. At a time when many ringers are saying that they cannot ring Chaffinch because of the prevalence of Fringilla papillomavirus, we have not seem a case of it in Chaffinch for a long time. In the last two sessions we have ringed eight and processed one retrap, all of which had completely clean legs and feet. The retrapped bird was ringed as an adult at this time last year, so has survived at least 3 years without catching it.

It was another good catch of Nuthatch. Unlike Saturday’s catch, in which all four were recaptures, all bar one of today’s were new birds.

My highlight of the session was a Coal Tit ringed by me as a full adult in April 2016. This makes it at least 6 years old. The oldest known is 9 years 2 months but the typical lifespan is just 2 years. It is doing well.

One other point of interest: it is not often that Great Tit outnumbers Blue Tit in the catch.

With the catch falling off after 10:30, we closed up and took down at 11:15.

After yesterday’s cold start, today’s was every bit as cold! When I was anticipating going to Somerford Common on Wednesday I went and topped up the feeders Tuesday lunchtime. The seed feeder there is rather large: it holds 8 litres of seed mix. As the wind put paid to that session, I rescheduled for today and yesterday, after the Lower Moor session, I went to top up the feeders again. The big seed feeder was EMPTY! I was quite surprised, and was a little concerned that we might be a bit overwhelmed this morning. Fortunately, we had a good session with a decent sized, but entirely manageable, catch.

I was joined for the session by Ellie and David. We started on site at 6:30, in minus 2 degrees Centigrade. It warmed up slowly, and by the time we were ready to close up, it was positively warm!

Ellie was very keen to get the chance of her first ever Siskin, and this is the site most likely to deliver it since the original Webb’s Wood feeding station area was thinned by the Forestry Commission. It was the double-edged sword of the laudable act of removing non-native conifers to replace with new native species, but which haven’t yet established enough to provide the same attraction to this species.

The first highlight of the morning was about 9:30 when David shouted “Brambling”, and got to extract his first! This is only the fourth time this species has been caught in the Braydon Forest, with the first and third catches of two birds each being at Somerford Common in February 2019.

As I like to be fair, I insisted on drawing lots to see who, between the two of Ellie and David, would get to process the bird. David won that as well, so his first Brambling extraction and processing. It was a beautiful adult male.

I put a lure for Siskin on at the feeding station and, because we could hear them squabbling in the trees, Jay on the nets on the main path. Neither lure looked like it was going to work and I changed the Jay for Lesser Redpoll but left the Siskin lure running.

Perseverance paid off: at 10:25 a little flock of Lesser Redpoll arrived and four of them flew straight into the net by the lure. A fifth was chuntering away in the tree line behind the net. I removed the four and went off to see how David and Ellie were getting on with the Blue and Great Tit extractions. As I walked up to the feeding station net, where Ellie was extracting aforesaid titmice, I suggested to Ellie that she might like to take a bird out of the top shelf. To be fair, the sun (by then) was in her eyes but she couldn’t understand why I was expecting her to remove a Blue Tit when I was just stood there. So I extracted her Siskin for her!

She did process it. So, two firsts for two of my team this morning has to be pretty good.

As we went back to the ringing station I noticed that the fifth Lesser Redpoll had ended up in the net, so I extracted that as well:

All in all, it was a cracking session. The list for the day was: Great Spotted Woodpecker 1; Nuthatch (4); Treecreeper (1); Blue Tit 13(3); Great Tit 9(3); Marsh Tit 1(3); Long-tailed Tit (1); Dunnock 2; Goldcrest (3); Brambling 1; Chaffinch 4; Goldfinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 5; Siskin 1. Totals: 38 birds ringed from 10 species and 18 birds retrapped from 7 species, making 56 birds processed from 14 species.

That is a tremendous variety for our woodlands at this time of the year. We closed the nets at 11:30 and left site by midday (the beauty of only having 6 nets set and 3 of you to do the work). I went along to the Firs and topped up the feeders for Monday’s session. Who knows? Perhaps more of the same on Monday!

Whilst looking to make up for lost ringing time I had planned to be out on Wednesday and Thursday, only I woke Wednesday morning to find that the tail end of the howling gales of the night before was still too high for setting nets, and Thursday, well you don’t turn down urgent NHS appointments, following a GP’s referral, no matter how much you missed ringing! (Sorry, people, I will be around for a while longer yet.) So I moved Thursday’s session to today.

So this morning I headed out to Lower Moor Farm for a session. During January and February you usually acclimatise yourself to getting up earlier and earlier as the dawn breaks ever earlier. With the long gap from lockdown this has rather been missed: going straight from nice, civilised 7:00 starts to 6:00 already. It isn’t going to get any better for a couple of months (when the clocks spring forward). It was somewhat surprising to find the car frozen when I exited the house. In fact, the temperature was at minus 2 degrees Celsius until about 8:30, when it reached a balmy zero. But the skies were clear, the sun was out and the wind was non-existent. By 10:00 it was lovely and warm. I only set my usual two rides of 2 x 18m and 3 x 18m plus one additional 12m net opposite the 2 x 18m ride. This was because I had set up a small feeding station between the two rides a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to catch the birds coming to the feeders from either side.

I was joined by Steph and Lillie (and Beatrice) for the session and it was a pleasant morning with a reasonable number of birds from a small spread of species. We caught: Blue Tit 5(7); Great Tit 3(3); Long-tailed Tit 6(1); Wren (1); Dunnock 2; Robin (1); Song Thrush 3; Goldcrest (1); Bullfinch 1(1). Totals: 20 birds ringed from 6 species and 15 bird retrapped from 7 species, making 35 birds processed from 9 species.

We did actually catch two other Bullfinches: a male and a female. Unfortunately both of them were suffering from Fringilla papillomavirus and could not be ringed.

The highlights of the catch were twofold. One was a small flock of Long-tailed Tits that needed ringing. Since 2016, when they had a bad year on my sites, we usually catch more already ringed than unringed for this species, so this made a nice change. Out other highlight was a catch of three Song Thrushes. We often catch one or two but three is very unusual for this site.

One other potential highlight is a retrapped Great Tit: it is not wearing one of our rings. Checking previous recoveries with rings starting ADL8, I found a Reed Bunting, recovered at Blakehill Farm that was ringed at Waterhay. I suspect that is where this bird was ringed.

It is pretty clear that a lot of pair bonding / mate advertising was going on. A Great Spotted Woodpecker spent the morning flying around and drumming. Both the Egyptian and Canada Geese were flying around making a devil of a racket and the Canada Geese were particularly belligerent towards each other. There was a flock of at least 20 Black-headed Gulls making one heck of a racket while I was putting up the nets. They then settled down and, whilst they were still in evidence hunting over the lakes, I heard little from them for the rest of the morning.

Steph and the girls left about 11:00 (Lillie had to get back for her online schooling) and I packed up at 11:30 before heading off to Somerford Common to top up the feeders for tomorrow’s session. I have a large feeder there: it holds 8 litres of seed. I topped it up on Tuesday afternoon, after our Red Lodge session. I was a little surprised to find it completely empty this lunchtime. Should be a busy session tomorrow.

The following blog post is by Jonny Cooper.

With the guidelines for ringing being revised I was keen to visit some of my sites to see how the birds were doing. Near the top of the list were Green Lane & Biss Woods. This reserve complex on the outskirts of Trowbridge consists of two woodland areas linked by mature hedgerows and areas of scrub. For the purposes of ringing each woodland is treated as a separate site.

The weather for Sunday and Monday was looking a bit hit and miss, so it was with some trepidation I headed to Green Lane Wood on Sunday. As it happens, the forecast rain never really materialised with, at worst, some light drizzle. The session was as expected: very heavy on the titmice, with a few other species in between.

The highlight was a bird that evaded the nets: a lovely male Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, which made itself known towards the end of the session. Overall, 53 new and 28 re-traps were processed, giving a total of 81 birds.

I woke up Monday morning ready to ring, to see heavy rain out of my window, so back to bed I went. Thankfully, the rain passed over and by lunchtime the sun was shining, so I headed to Biss Wood to do a short afternoon session around the feeding station. The session was very similar in its make up to the previous day, with large numbers of titmice caught. Overall, 55 new and 32 re-traps were processed, giving a total of 87 birds.

The full breakdown for both catches was as follows: Great Spotted Woodpecker 2, Nuthatch 4, Blue Tit 67(37), Great Tit 13(16), Coal Tit 4(2), Long-tailed Tit 3(5), Dunnock 4, Robin 2, Song Thrush 2, Blackbird 2, Goldcrest 1, Chaffinch 4. Giving 108 birds ringed from 12 species and 60 re-traps from 4 species giving an overall total across the two sessions of 168 birds processed from 12 species.

Two sessions that were very much as expected, but it was great to be able to get out ringing again.

Back on the 6th January bird ringers in England were instructed / strongly advised by the BTO that, although being a voluntary activity excluded from lockdown by the government guidelines, we should confine ourselves to within the boundaries of our property to avoid “reputational damage” to the BTO and the ringing scheme. Subsequently, the birds seemed to desert my garden and between then and today I had processed precisely 2 birds: both recaptured Blue Tits.

On the 12th February we received a second email from the BTO which said that our surveys were legal and unlimited, with no mention of the previous concern about reputational damage and sticking to the boundaries of our property. Naturally, immediately upon receipt the weather took a huge turn for the worse and ringing was impossible anywhere, either in the garden or on my sites. Today was the first day since then that I have been able to get out. I knew it would be windy so I decided that Red Lodge would be the best site: a small number of nets focused around 2 feeding stations.

On Friday last I set up the feeders at my various local sites and yesterday I went over to top up the feeders at the sites to be visited this week. I was pleased to see that the birds had been tucking in to the food at Red Lodge and was looking forward to a good catch. Lucy joined me for a 7:00 start and we set up just 4 nets: 2 x 18m in a line plus 1 x 9m and 1 x 12m each adjacent to a set of feeders.

It was clearly going to be Blue and Great Tit heavy and, in fact, outside of those two species we only had birds from 3 other species. The first non-Blue / Great Tit was a new first winter Marsh Tit, our second of the year. Next into the nets was a Robin hotly pursued by this guy:

Fortunately for the Robin it hit the net just high enough away from the Sparrowhawk to be out of its clutches. Whilst Lucy removed the Robin, I took out the Sparrowhawk. Both birds were processed and released unharmed.

The list for the morning was: Sparrowhawk 1; Blue Tit 25(5); Great Tit 4(5); Marsh Tit 1; Robin 1. Totals: 32 birds ringed from 5 species and 10 birds recaptured from 2 species.

The wind became excessive at just after 10:30, so we shut the nets, packed away and were off site by 11:30. The weather is looking good for the rest of the week, so I am planning to get several sessions in, starting at the Firs tomorrow, then Lower Moor Farm on Thursday, Blakehill Farm on Friday and Somerford Common on Saturday. That should cure my withdrawal symptoms!

Not our best January, with just three sessions away from our gardens, at Langford Lakes, Meadow Farm and Somerford Common on the 1st and 2nd January. Lockdown instructions from the BTO on the 6th January put a stop to any ringing away from your own property.

It isn’t our lowest ever January catch: between 2013 and 2017 only 2016 was a better January than this. Since then we have had much higher catches but compared to last year though it really was a low catch – so I haven’t done a year-on-year comparison, as there is no real value in it.

Jonny was lucky enough to get our first Water Rail since 2009 (apart from my first on Skokholm in September 2019) and his first, and the first caught at Langford Lakes. 

Although I have done plenty of Pied Wagtails as a trainee, and one at Blakehill Farm, I was fortunate enough to catch my first one for my garden this month:

It doesn’t look like we will be getting out again any time soon and, I don’t know about anyone else, but the birds seem to have abandoned my garden: 2 birds yesterday, and Ellie had 1 bird caught in her garden today. It is not looking good for February!

The ringing recovery maps and data have been updated with the 2020 recoveries.

These include new UK movements for Goldcrest; Blackcap; Reed Warbler; Cetti’s Warbler and Blue Tit plus our first long distance raptor recovery: a Merlin.

New foreign recoveries are a Spanish Reed Warbler and, astonishingly, an Icelandic Meadow Pipit.

A big thank you to Jonny Cooper for his hard work in collating the data and producing the maps.