Ringing In The Braydon Forest & Beyond

I had planned to go out and check Barn Owl boxes yesterday but, of course, the wind decided to gust up to 40+mph, plus a few heavy showers of rain, put paid to that, so this morning Laura, Daniel and I went to do what we had intended to do yesterday. Our first stop was Echo Lodge Farm where, on our last visit there, on the 13th June, there were two chicks that were too small to ring. Two weeks later and they were just right, so we ringed two chicks. We invited the landowner along to see what her land management was helping, and she was delighted. It turns out that she is friends with the other farmer whose land is currently supporting the other two Barn Owl nests we knew have either eggs or chicks.

We went from there to check that a Jackdaw at Somerford Farm had fledged and cleaned out the nest box so that it was fit for a Barn Owl. This box has been up for a good few years but last year was the first time that it was successful. Hopefully it won’t be too late for them to try again this year.

Our next stop was one that we couldn’t get near to last time due to some mental Belted Galloways in the field at Ravensroost who just wanted to chase our car all over the place. I have spent enough time wiping Beltie drool off my car to want to do it again! This time we parked up on the verge, climbed over the gate and carried the ladder down to the box. They were still bouncy and enthusiastic, but were also scared of the ladder it seemed, so they never got close. This was a sad encounter: as we opened the box an adult Stock Dove flew out. There were two chicks in the nest: one was recently dead and the second was very floppy. The dead one had clearly starved, it’s crop was absolutely empty. I removed the dead bird and left the other behind in the hope that the adult might be better able to cope with just the one. I will check again in a few days to see how it is getting on. We didn’t ring it.

From there we headed to the two boxes on the west side of Blakehill Farm. These were just about the first boxes we visited this year, way back on the 14th April. There were pairs of Barn Owl occupying each of the two boxes. However, there were no eggs, no signs of breeding, so we gave them a good long time to get down to business without being disturbed. I think it is a good job that we did. From first egg laying it takes, normally, 32 days for the eggs to hatch so, even if they had laid in the next few days, that would have taken to mid-May before they hatched. Once hatched they are in the nest for, typically, 53 days and they become able to be ringed at approximately 30 days post-hatching. That is once their feet have grown large enough for the rings not to slip off.

Arriving at our first box, in Pouchers Field, we nearly caught the female in our hand net as she came flying out of the box upon our approach: a hopeful sign. A much better signal was the hissing we could hear emanating from the box! Upon opening we found four chicks: three were the right size for ringing, the other will need another couple of weeks, so we ringed three of them.

I know that some people who aren’t ringers worry about whether or not the birds are stressed by the experience. All I can say is that this one certainly wasn’t:

I suppose if I had eaten quite as much as this youngster has clearly done I would probably feel that sleepy myself. Just look at that belly!

Having ringed these three we then went off to Allotment Field to check on the box there. Absolutely delighted to find another three healthy and well-fed chicks.

Our final box of the day, final because the wind was really whipping up by then and Daniel, who will possibly be climbing rigging in these sorts of winds next week, was more than uncomfortable at the top of the ladder. This was at White Lodge. As we were driving down to the box, I have never seen the fields and sky so full of Jackdaws. Later, as Daniel was cleaning the box out, the sky became dark with two huge flocks of Jackdaw. We are not talking tens, we are talking hundreds of them! Unsurprisingly, this box had clearly been a successful Jackdaw nest again this year.

After this long delay in the commencement of Barn Owl breeding, it is such a relief to find that, of the 16 boxes we have checked so far this year in the Braydon Forest, we have ringed chicks in three, have another box to ring another three in in the next two weeks, and another on eggs which, hopefully, we will ring in about five to six weeks. It isn’t as though the other boxes have failed: although the Stock Dove probably will be a complete failure, at least three of them had Jackdaw chick success, with chicks ringed in two and one known Jackdaw failure plus, sadly, one containing a dead adult Barn Owl. However, five boxes out of sixteen containing breeding by the target species is a good proportion.

A big thank you to Laura for providing the car with a roof rack (how long does it take a roof rack to get to the UK from Belgium?) and to both Daniel and Laura for doing the vast majority of the grunt work today, in particular doing all of the dirty work clearing out emptied Jackdaw nests.

I am out with the Salisbury Plain team tomorrow: let’s hope we can get similar results tomorrow!

This is turning into a very nice week for me, Lapwing yesterday, hopefully Barn Owls tomorrow: and this morning was pretty good for Laura and Miranda as well. We have seen a significant improvement in the Firs since it reopened after the Ash dieback remedial work and opening up of the canopy. The three of us met up at 6:30 and set the following nets:

(One day the Ordnance Survey, Google Maps and Bing Maps will update their aerial views: this is OS and the best of the three.)

The wood is considerably more open since the Ash-dieback clearance in 2023 / 24. The Wildlife Trust had very helpfully mowed the central glade recently. Rides 1 and 2 are in the usual places for net setting in the Firs, ride 3 is on the slope down to the central glade / ponds area. Since the clearance the woodland on either side of the slope has developed a very decent understorey, including a bank of bramble down the eastern side, which is full of flowers, and I am hoping that will translate into a lot of blackberries in the autumn, and a significant catch of migrating birds, as happened in a similar habitat, with the same number of nets, at Lower Moor Farm in August 2014 (137 birds from 15 species). So I decided to set these three nets up to see how they went at this time. They performed better than I expected.

We had a few niggles with the nets and didn’t get them open until after 7:30. After taking the setting equipment back to the car, having a quick coffee to wake myself up, as the others did the same with their chosen poison, we did our first round. It was a good start: 17 birds from 8 species. Nobody was counting chickens, we have had reasonable starts recently that ended up with very little happening subsequently.

Once they had been processed we went off on round two: 19 birds from 9 species. Good grief: did this mean that we were going to end up with a decent haul? Well, yes. Over the next two hours we processed another 31 birds from 11 species. This is our best catch this year, and that includes catches inflated by the provision of feeding stations in the winter months. Out of 85 ringing trips to the Firs, since 8th September 2012, there have only been five bigger catches: each one fuelled by supplementary feeding.

Alongside the good number was an excellent variety, with lots of highlights. We ringed another three Marsh Tits, bringing the annual total for the Braydon Forest 16! Looks like it is going to be a bumper year for this red-listed species in the Braydon Forest.

However, the outstanding catch of the session was this beauty:

The story of ringing Spotted Flycatchers in the Braydon Forest is quite an interesting one. They have bred in the Ravensroost complex on and off for a long time: I saw my first ones, adults feeding young, in 2005 and have seen them on and off ever since. The Trust have put up nest boxes for them and we know they breed there. On several occasions, whilst Jonny was still training with me, we would watch them hawking insects, occasionally landing on the path 20m or so away from where we were sat ringing birds. To be fair, since the group came into its current structure at the beginning of 2013, we have actually only caught 12, until today. Of those, eight had been caught in the Braydon Forest, which is why it was such a pleasure to catch another today. Given that the Firs is the smallest of our woodlands, its record in Spotted Flycatchers is surprising.

As you can see from this graphic, the Firs is a tiny fraction of the woodlands we cover with our ringing activities.

Anyway, the first Spotted Flycatcher ringed in the Braydon Forest was a juvenile caught in the Firs on the 3rd August 2016: the first bird out of the nets in that session. Ironically, the second was the last bird out of the nets in that same session. That was followed by another juvenile in Red Lodge on the 21st of that month. The next was a juvenile caught at Somerford Common in July 2017, then a juvenile in Ravensroost Wood in August 2018.

Perhaps the most exciting find for me, because these juveniles caught could all have been on autumn migration, was in June 2019 when we caught another two in the Firs: a male and a female, both in full breeding condition. That was followed by a juvenile caught in a net triangle set for Meadow Pipits on the Blakehill Farm plateau, and then today’s catch!

So, to sum up, of the 13 Spotted Flycatchers caught by the West Wilts Ringing Group since 2103, nine have been caught in the Braydon Forest and five of those in the smallest site: the Firs! Because neither Laura nor Miranda have ever ringed a Spotted Flycatcher, I decided that they would draw lots for the privilege: Miranda won. Laura did the release.

Anyway, enough rambling, the list for the session was: Great Spotted Woodpecker (1); Nuthatch 3; Blue Tit [14]; Great Tit [2]; Coal Tit [1]; Marsh Tit [3]; Long-tailed Tit [1]; Wren [5](1); Dunnock [1](2); Spotted Flycatcher 1; Robin 1[4]; Blackbird [1](3); Blackcap 6[7]; Garden Warbler [1]; Chiffchaff 2[4](1); Chaffinch 1[1]. Totals: 14 adults ringed from 6 species, 45 juveniles from 13 species and 8 birds retrapped from 5 species, making 67 birds processed from 16 species.

We did the last round and closed the nets at 11:30, taking the last three birds out of the net, processed them, and then took down the nets and packed away, leaving site by 12:30, after a very satisfactory morning.

One of my productive Barn Owl sites is adding another string to its bow. The farmer, as well as providing lots of grassland, also sets aside large tracts for cover crops, and he is very keen on his wildlife, if a little reticent about advertising the fact, which is why, out of respect for his concerns, I am not going to give any pointers as to where it is.

Suffice to say that, of the ten Barn Owl boxes I have managed to check so far (roof rack for new car should be here in the next couple of days – it isn’t just Barn Owls who are a bit behind this breeding season!), he has two of the three with breeding in progress.

Last Wednesday he contacted Jonny and his project Peewit team and me to let us know that, whilst out deciding what to do about a failed cover crop, he saw some movement and identified four Lapwing chicks. He fenced off the area they were in, so the cattle couldn’t disturb them, and on Thursday evening the Peewit team and I went searching for them. It was very hot and they were well hidden and we didn’t find them. However, we did find this:

The team said that they would return on Monday or Tuesday with drones, thermal imaging cameras etc to try and locate the chicks and they would give me a shout if they found them.

We told the farmer about the nest and Friday morning he asked for a What3Words location so that he could put an electric fence around the nest. Unfortunately, in this instance, the W3W location was inaccurate and he couldn’t find it.

After my rather disappointing Red Lodge session on Saturday (sorry Song Thrushes, you were lovely but…), I went to the farm to see if I could find the nest. I was a little concerned when I arrived to find a flock of about 50 Lesser Black-backed and Herring Gulls wandering around the field foraging, and three pairs of adult Lapwing circling and alarm calling. The gulls pushed off as soon as I got out of the car, which was a bit of a relief. I sat back in the car hoping that an adult would return to the nest, but after 15 minutes there was no sign, so I decided to carry out a grid search of the area where we had seen it. After an hour of searching I had to admit defeat. It was also starting to rain and I was conscious of getting out of the way so that Mum could come and protect her nest from the weather.

At 7:28 this morning I got a text from Jonny: “Morning, we have chicks”. By 7:35 this morning I had got up, got dressed and was on site and was privileged to ring and weigh these beauties:

I was home and breakfasting by 8:30: that’s the way to go ringing! A huge thank you to the Project Peewit team for allowing me the privilege of processing this little group. That brings my total of UK pulli species ringed to 31 and my total UK species ringed to 112. One day I really must do some overseas ringing!

It is good to know that two of my Barn Owl sites are also supporting Lapwing and Curlew. There are some very good farmers in the Braydon Forest area who are keen to support their wildlife and have signed up to project Peewit and the longer running Curlew monitoring project.

The longest day! Not quite the shortest list – but a close run thing! This is only the sixth time that I have actually carried out a June session in Red Lodge in 12 years. With more time available since I decided not to continue with the Lower Moor Farm CES, it was time for a session in Red Lodge. It has been more than a little hit and miss: last time was 2022, and we only caught five birds. The three June sessions in 2014, 2018 and 2020 showed a slow decline in catch size: 61, 41 and 36. The three since then have been much worse (2021 15, 2022 5, 2025: I will reveal later). The forecast was for it to be hot and dry but overcast with a negligible possibility of rain (<2%).

With just the two of us meeting at 6:00, we set the following nets:

We had the nets open by 7:00 but, as we were finishing off , I felt a few spots of rain! We took two Robin out of the nets and then the rain started in earnest, so we shut the nets and processed the birds and then sat in the car for the next 90 minutes as the rain fell! We reopened the nets at 8:30 and then did our next round at 8:45. There were 6 birds in that round, including our second juvenile Marsh Tit of the year, taking our total of Marsh Tits ringed in the Braydon Forest to 13 so far. To put that into context, this is the most we have ever ringed in the first six months of the year. The previous best was nine in 2013. Excluding 2025, our average is 5.75 for the first six months, so this is very encouraging.

In these first two rounds, 95 minutes apart, we caught five juvenile Robins. They do seem to be having a good start to their breeding year.

Unfortunately, after that things went very quiet. Which is not to say that there were not highlights: no birds at the 9:00 round, two in the 9:15 round: a Nuthatch and this noisy beggar:

Our first of the year, beautifully showing the markings that make juvenile Song Thrushes easy to identify. You cannot see the tail from this angle but it was, equally diagnostically, with very pointy tips to the remiges.

That was followed by a break of 45 minutes until our next capture, and then another 30 minutes until we caught our second juvenile Song Thrush of the year. I had always planned to pack up at 11:00, before the heat settled in. We took a final Wren out, as I was taking in ride 2, which David processed whilst David’s dad and I continued taking down the rest of the nets and packing up. Between us we were finished and off site by 11:30. The list from the session was: Nuthatch 1; Great Tit [1]; Marsh Tit [1]; Wren 1[1](1); Robin [5]; Song Thrush [2]. Totals: 2 adults ringed from 2 species, 10 juveniles ringed from 5 species and 1 bird retrapped, making 13 birds processed from 6 species.

Following on from the fabulous Zebra jumping spider on Friday, I was rather pleased to find this little beastie, a long-horned beetle, crawling over my mobile phone case:

Usually found on nettles in woodlands and, it would appear, mobile phone cases! Apparently common but I have never seen one before. I really must take my macro lens with me next time: my 70 – 150 zoom had a bit of trouble getting it in focus, either auto or manual (and I picked up my new glasses on Thursday, so my eyesight is just fine, thank you).

With Laura’s two boys being off school today, and busy at the weekend, I agreed to run an extra session at Lower Moor Farm this morning. Because of the possibility of extreme temperatures and, later, rain, we started a bit earlier (at 6:00) and planned to finish at 11:00, with nets set in shaded areas. We set the following nets:

We caught our first bird straight away: a Garden Warbler, which was quickly followed by three Blackcaps and this:

Another first for the year for my team! Always nice to catch.

The next round produced another decent haul and by 7:40 we had 13 birds processed from six species. Adam and Daniel were quite excited, Laura and I were rather trepidatious as this almost exactly mirrored what had happened on Wednesday! Our trepidation increased as time ticked on and we caught nothing else. I did say that if things had not improved by 10:00 we would give it up as a bad job. Then, at 9:00, we caught another two birds and, for the next eight rounds we caught at least one bird in every round, ending up with 24 birds processed, as follows: Blue Tit [2]; Great Tit [2]; Wren [2]; Dunnock [1](3); Robin [3]; Song Thrush 1; Blackbird (1); Cetti’s Warbler [1]; Blackcap 3[1](1); Garden Warbler 2; Chiffchaff [1]. Totals: 6 adults ringed from 3 species, 13 juveniles ringed from 8 species and 5 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 24 birds processed from 11 species. Not the biggest or best catch but a pretty enjoyable morning.

So to the reason for the hyperbolic title:

I fell in absolute awe of this little fellow: jumping from bag to bag, across cracks in the table, and being hugely entertaining for a good five minutes before he disappeared. These were the last 30 seconds before he toddled off!

There was a lot of bird song all morning, Merlin was having a lovely time (we never did find the Redstart) but the loudest and longest was a male Song Thrush. Why they are called Song Thrush and not Cacophony Thrush I do not know! Anyway, he did not shut up all morning, until we caught him in one of the nets at 11:00: our penultimate bird of the session. He then remained strangely quiet until we had everything taken down and left site at 11:40.

There was some nice other stuff going on: a Little Egret over the other side of the lake – still fairly uncommon at Lower Moor Farm. A male Cuckoo still calling around the site. We had a Black-tailed Skimmer land on Laura’s packet of custard creams before flying off. Then we had the pleasure of watching a pair of them copulating as they flew around the ringing station. As ever, there were hundreds of blue damselflies. I didn’t take the time out for speciation today although, when taking down the last net, I saw the smallest bright blue damselfly I have ever seen. It looked half the length of any others around.

We saw quite a few froglets, and were exceptionally careful to ensure that we didn’t step on any.

One particularly nice sighting though was a large number of these lovely butterflies:

By 11:00 it was getting hot and oppressive and there were a few spots of rain, it was very humid and uncomfortable, so we got on with taking down after a very pleasant, if not very busy, session. It does support my decision to not continue with the Constant Effort Site there.

With temperatures forecast to be rather high, I wanted to go somewhere a bit sheltered from the sun and the forecast breeze and Somerford Common seemed like the best bet. Laura joined me at 6:30 to help set up and, hopefully, ring some birds before she had to leave at 9:00.

I chose not to set a lot of net as I knew that I would be taking them down on my own and that it would be hot by then (and I am lazy). We had the first nets (white) set up by just gone 7:00, as follows:

All nets were 5-Shelf. Rides 1 and 2 comprised 1 x 18m + 1 x 12m each. Ride 3 was 2 x 18m + 1 x 9m, ride 4 was 1 x 18m and ride 5 was 1 x 9m. I will explain the colour difference in a short while.

Whilst Laura was pushing up ride 2 and then 1, I went to get another furling stick to push up ride 3. Only, as I was walking past the ride, I noticed our first bird of the morning. I was pleased it was another juvenile Garden Warbler. It seems to be turning into a good year for them in the Braydon Forest. We have only ever ringed 21 juveniles in the forest since January 2013, 10 in Ravensroost Wood and 8 at Somerford Common. When I whittle it down to those not yet undergoing post-fledging moult (moult code J) we have only ever had six, three of them this year.

We did our first round proper at 7:30 and, delightfully, extracted 11 birds out of rides 1,2 and 3. Ride 2 produced the one bird: our first juvenile Wren of 2025:

This one still has a little bit of gape on show. Not really surprising as it hadn’t started its post-fledging moult yet. There are lots of ways of ageing Wrens but, at this time of year and this level of development, the easiest way is to look at the undersides:

Nice, warm brown tones. As they get older the undersides acquire white spotting but at this stage there is none. All 11 of the birds we extracted in this round were juveniles.

A good start we thought, only then it stopped! By 8:30 we hadn’t caught another bird, which is when I decided to set up rides 4 and 5. Unfortunately, we still didn’t catch any other birds until after Laura left at 9:15. Hanging on in hope!

By 10:00 I had had enough, it was getting very hot, and I decided to start packing up. Ride 2, the furthest away, was where I was going to start. I thought I would do a check on rides 4 and 5 before closing it down. Rides 1 and 3 were always visible from the ringing station, so I knew they were empty. Imagine my surprise when I found three of these all together in ride 4:

Another species with our first juveniles of the year in the Braydon Forest! (Laura has just reminded me that we caught one in her garden last Sunday – but that’s in Gloucestershire!) They were accompanied by another juvenile, a Robin. That was it for another 30 minutes, so I started the take down: ride 2 first. As luck would have it, I had the first net just about down when a Robin flew into the second net. I extracted it and finished taking the ride down. I processed it, our only retrap of the morning, and released it.

Next I took down ride 1 and, as I was carrying the equipment back to the car another bird flew into ride 3. That was the final bird of the session: an adult male Chiffchaff. The list for the session was: Blue Tit [5]; Coal Tit [3]; Long-tailed Tit [2]; Wren [1]; Robin [1](1); Garden Warbler [1]; Chiffchaff 1[3]. Totals: 1 adult ringed, 16 juveniles ringed from 7 species and 1 bird retrapped, making 18 birds processed from 7 species.

Both of the Long-tailed Tits were still very definitely in juvenile plumage, lots of brown where one would expect black in an adult or a fully moulted juvenile and lots of body moult going on. However, one of them was undergoing a moult of its secondary flight feathers already: one feather at stage 1 (just the tiniest tip of the feather emerging from the pin) and another at stage 2 (up to one-third emerged from pin), the rest were all what they came out of the nest with.

I would have liked a bigger catch but was happy to get the juvenile Wren and, even happier, to get the juvenile Coal Tits. Whilst we have caught juvenile Coal Tits in May in 2015 and 2019 in the Forest, it is still uncommon to catch any number in June at my sites. As for the juvenile Wren, there have been none in May and only three caught earlier in the month of June – all in 2014. In 12 years we have actually only caught 17 juveniles in June prior to this one. So this is quite a nice find.

I had everything packed away by 12:20 and was home at a decent time for lunch.

For the first time in ages the weather was calm enough for me to set nets in my garden, so I thought I would take advantage. I set the nets around my feeding stations. Pole A had a peanut feeder, a fat ball feeder and two mealworm trays; pole B had two Sunflower Heart feeders, a mealworm tray and a half coconut shell filled with fat and minced peanuts. The trees are as follows: i = Apple; ii = Plum; iii = Crab Apple; iv = Conifer; v = Holly; vi = Cherry. The rest of the area is full of shrubs, herbs and flowers, a magnet for moths and other insects.

I set the following nets (all 5-Shelf singles): 1 = 6m; 2 = 3m; 3 = 9m.

I had set the nets up the night before and opened them at 6:30. Between then and 10:00 I saw one bird in the garden: a Woodpigeon, and caught none. I caught my first birds at 11:00 two Blackbirds and two Goldfinch. That was followed by a juvenile Chaffinch at 11:45; a Goldfinch at 12:10; three Starlings: one each at 12:15; 13:00 and 13:30. This memorable morning was topped off with a final Goldfinch. One of the Blackbirds was a three year old retrapped female. All of the rest were new birds. Besides the Chaffinch, two of the Starlings were also juveniles.

The first Starling out of the net was a beautifully marked adult male. Astonishingly, it was absolutely quiet and calm during extraction and processing. The first juvenile made a bit of noise but the third was very loud. Interestingly, though, there was an absolute cacophony of Starling shouts and calls whilst I was extracting it. It was a bit like a scene from the Hitchcock film “The Birds”, with a dozen or more sat on the adjacent telephone wires shouting at me until I released junior. Once it joined them, they all flew off away from the garden in their little flock.

So a less than stunning catch of Blackbird 1(1); Goldfinch 4; Chaffinch [1]; Starling 1[2]. 6 adults ringed from 3 species, 3 juveniles from 2 species and 1 retrap, making 10 birds processed from 4 species.

With all that time on my hands between catches I spent a delightful hour net mending (he lied – delightful it is not) and it is nice to have decent coffee on tap! Anyway, it is my worst ever garden catch, who knows why! I regularly have 30+ birds from seven or eight species in the garden: Great Spotted Woodpecker; Woodpigeon, Stock Dove, Collared Dove, Rook, Jackdaw, Magpie, Greenfinch, Wren, Blue Tit, Great Tit and Long-tailed Tit have been in pretty regularly recently, feeding well and costing me a fortune. Less often during this time of year: Goldcrest, Green Woodpecker and Sparrowhawk. One in a blue moon: Grey Heron.

We were scheduled to be at Somerford Common this morning but I woke up to find it was blowing hard, so I contacted Laura to say “Sorry but..” only she replied that it was nice and calm in her garden. So we agreed that I would head to hers and we would get set up. We have been trying to do so for a while but, like my garden, it does need calm conditions. It was a good job that I sent the message when I did, as they were just getting into the car to leave for Somerford.

We set the following nets:

All nets are single 5-Shelf nets. Nets 1, 4 and 6 are 12m, nets 2 and 5 were 9m and net 3 was 6m. Inside the open triangle of nets 1, 2 and 3 were several seed feeders with variously, nyjer seed, mixed seed, peanuts and water.

With my arriving a bit later than we intended to start we had the nets open by 7:30 and started catching straight away: with a juvenile Blue and Great Tit at 7:45 and, five minutes later, an adult Dunnock,

We were never inundated with birds, but one or two pretty regularly throughout the morning. There were some notable first for the year. Our first first was this beauty caught at 9:00:

I have had plenty in my garden but it has just been too windy to set nets there, so this was a lovely first for the year.

That was then followed 30 minutes later, by this stunning addition to the list. Again, our first for the year:

The wind started to get up at about 10:40, so we closed the nets (a delicious bacon bap (thanks Mark), fabulous coffee) and a couple more birds later, at 11:20, took down and packed away. I was home before midday.

The list for the morning was as follows: Adult [Juvenile]: Great Spotted Woodpecker [1]; Blue Tit 1[4]; Great Tit [8]; Coal Tit [1]; Dunnock 1; Robin 1[1]; Chaffinch [1]; Goldfinch [2]; Bullfinch 1. Totals: 4 adults ringed from 4 species and 18 juveniles ringed from 7 species, making 22 birds processed from 9 species.

Now to what might have been. We had multiple birds, mainly Chaffinch and Goldfinch avoid the nets altogether as, although we moved one of the nyjer feeders into the open triangle, where it had originally been positioned the messy little what names had dropped more than enough on the floor to keep them fed all morning and put of the nets. We also had a Pied Wagtail, Collared Doves, another Great Spotted Woodpecker and other birds bounce off the nets and avoid the pockets. Flying over or flying through were Carrion Crow, Jackdaws and a Sparrowhawk.

To make it worse, we had these two unringed birds that we couldn’t ring:

Both of these birds were suffering from Fringilla papillomavirus and so could not be ringed. However, their suffering is nothing compared to this poor soul:

This youngster is not suffering from illness but looks to have had a close encounter with the neighbourhood Sparrowhawk: not while it was in our net, I hasten to add, just in case anyone thinks that’s how it got caught by the Sparrowhawk. Laura watched it fly into the net and immediately extracted it. We didn’t ring it.

I made the mistake of looking at the forecast for tomorrow and, apparently, it is going to be pretty calm in my garden tomorrow, so I guess the lie in is out of the question: I quite fancy some juvenile Greenfinches!

Today Miranda and I joined Dick and Jon at Westdown Camp before heading off to check a number of boxes on Salisbury Plain between there and Warminster. It was another fascinating session and it gave Miranda, like Ellie two weeks ago, a chance to get involved with the young of some species that we don’t (yet) cover in our Braydon Forest and beyond area.

We were out and about between 8:30 and 16:00 and checked on 25 boxes. These were as follows: 10 Barn Owl boxes, 3 Little Owl boxes and 12 Kestrel boxes. Of the Barn Owl boxes four were occupied by Barn Owls, one with a sole roosting adult, three with pairs occupying boxes but, as yet, no eggs or chicks.

Four of their boxes were full of Jackdaw nesting material but no sign of young. The Jackdaw breeding season is just about over now so the nesting material was cleaned out ready for occupancy by the late running Barn Owls. The other box was full of squirrel drey rubbish, which was also removed. Fortunately, Jon did all of the dirty work: I had my fill with my own boxes on Friday.

The three Little Owl boxes were all doing their job. One had an Owl on eggs, the other two held Little Owl chicks. The first was nice and easy to find, as it was in the box. As we approached the third box we saw the adult fly off. This was an interesting setup, to say the least. A couple of photos to explain the situation:

This wall was about 30′ long and 6′ tall. It then had a 90^o turn, leading to the pillar at the far right of the photograph. The entire wall was topped with large flat coping stones. So, we checked the box for chicks, eggs having been found previously. Nothing to be found. Now Jon, knowing the place well, lifted a couple of the coping stones, which revealed a gap between each of the outer wall stones. We checked the stones, those that would open, and we found them: three stones away from the pillar pictured:

They had clearly left the box and climbed along the top of the wall, found a gap and climbed down into it. This was Miranda’s opportunity to ring her first ever Little Owl:

I love that “You wait until I get hold of you!” look.

The twelve Kestrel boxes were busier in the main, although only five of them were actually occupied by the target species, only one other had been occupied at all: with another squirrel drey to clear out.

In total, we ringed 14 Kestrels from those 5 boxes:

Most of them were showing signs of more development than the chicks ringed on both the Plain two weeks ago and in the Lower Wylye Valley on Tuesday. The primary and tail feathers are growing very nicely:

All in all, a long day, but very satisfactory, and Miranda can add two new species to her experience. I am looking forward to the next one. Mind, I will need to ring the odd Kestrel chick otherwise they might end up with more records for Kestrel chicks than me!

Continuing my busy week, today I ought to check on what is happening in my personal Barn Owl boxes, having spent three sessions checking on the situation on Salisbury Plain and the Lower Wylye Valley. My thought was that we were likely to be further behind than the Plain, because they are usually a couple of weeks ahead of us with their Barn Owls. Laura met me at 9:00 at my place. We had to take her car: I have to get a new roof-rack as my old one doesn’t fit. Fortunately, her Kuga has a proper Ford (i.e. expensive) roof-rack that can be quickly fitted, so we loaded up the ladder, ringing gear etc and headed off.

Our first ports of call were two sites on the edge of Webb’s Wood / Echo Lodge. The first one is such a regularly successful site that I was hugely disappointed to find that it was full of Grey Squirrel rubbish. Absolutely no sign of the owls. I emptied it all out in the hope that, as the summer goes on, the Barn Owls will try again. So we went over the road to a box in Echo Lodge Farm. In all of the years that I have been doing this I have occasionally found adults roosting but only one occasion have I found and ringed a brood of chicks there: on the 12th September 2019. So I was delighted to find two of these:

A bit too young to be ringed yet, so we will come and have a look at them again in two weeks time.

From Echo Lodge we headed to Somerford Farm to finish off what we started when my car decided to die on me for the last time. The first box was absolutely full of squirrel drey material, which I had the privilege of clearing. Good grief, it was awful. I wouldn’t mind but: 1) it was cleaned out last autumn and 2) there was no sign of breeding. It is the end of the Jackdaw breeding season, so I suppose they could have fledged, but it really didn’t have any debris I would associate with successful breeding (poo, etc). I did find a bright blue egg, speckled with dark spots. I have worked my way through two field guides since, I can’t find it. It was about 30mm long and 25mm at its widest. Afraid, it got lost in the debris, so I have no photo.

From there we went to the second box along the farm lane: that was the saddest part of the day. The box had been cleaned out in the autumn and, on first opening, there was a thin layer of nesting material and nothing else. Laura had a feel around and found this tucked up in the corner:

She was completely desiccated. There was no sign of trauma: perhaps it has been a hard year for adults all round. We then headed to Upper Waterhay Farm. The first thing we did was check on the Swallow nests. It looks as though all of their first broods have fledged and flown. Under each nest was an astonishing amount of guano! There are still plenty of adults flying and around the nest sites, so I am expecting to see second clutches laid soon. We will make sure we keep a close eye on their progress and ring these birds before they fledge. From there we went to check on the owl boxes. The north box was the first, where we found three of these:

They were so close to fledging, not predated, I would suggest starved. Either abandoned by the parents, due to them not finding enough food, or perhaps one or both adults were themselves predated. Of the three other boxes, the west box showed signs of Jackdaw breeding success, the Chancel box had some non-Jackdaw nesting material, so there is hope there – but no pellets or Barn Owl feathers. The paddock box had a part-built Jackdaw nest but no sign of an actual breeding attempt. All four boxes are now clean and waiting (and hoping) for some Barn Owls to occupy them.

So far, so like the experiences elsewhere! Our next port of call was Plain and Drill Farms (both worked by the same farmer). They are regularly productive sites. We went to the Drill Farm box first. As we approached the male flew out. Holding of breath!!

We opened the box to find the female sitting on four warm eggs! A proper clutch at last. She only caused a little damage as I extracted her and Laura put a ring on her. I was absolutely delighted. So to Plain Farm and a decent chat with Malcolm, the farmer, who is going to put up a couple more boxes for me, and a worker from Thames Water who let me know that there was a water main burst affecting the village I live in. There was I, covered in dust and goodness knows what else, and all I had been looking forward to for the last hour was getting home and having a nice long shower to get rid of the muck!

Anyway, Malcolm suggested we could drive all the way down to the box, as he has put down a makeshift track! He did warn us though about his Houdini calf. She clearly doesn’t like sharing space with her compatriots and has proven impossible to keep penned, so he is just letting her roam around the farmyard:

She really wasn’t bothered by the car. We drove down to the Plain Farm box and checked in on it. As we approached, the female flew out, and we opened the box to find:

Sorry about the quality of the photo but we didn’t want to disturb them from their sleep. Ironically, before we actually opened the box, after mum had flown, we could hear them hissing, and yet, that is how they were.

In the end we checked 10 boxes, three of which are looking potentially productive for Barn Owls: a 30% “success” rate, which is somewhat better than the figures for elsewhere. I have another 15 to 20 to check, fingers crossed! I know that two of them had roosting pairs and I will be checking them next week. So a mixed session, but some good hopeful results.

You will be pleased to know that the burst water main was not affecting our water supply and I had a very pleasant cool shower to clean off all the muck and to cool myself down. Off to the Plain tomorrow: hopefully we will get a similar success rate. Kestrels are a certainty, Little Owls a possibility and let’s hope there is good news on the Barn Owl front.