A Brilliant Day on the Common

Today, Molly Heal accompanied me for a ringing session on Fygyn Common. She is the third trainee with the Teifi Ringing Group and was looking forward to her visit since the boys Dai and Andrew from the group had already been and enjoyed their mix of species.

The most important determining criteria whether to ring or not is the strength of the wind. It was from the North East today, not ideal and resulted in wind chill, and a cold start a few degrees above freezing. The site being at the top of the surrounding hills and being very open and exposed means anything over about 8mph can cause difficulties.

The strength of the wind was in our favour today but at 6.00am the star filled sky worried me a little in the knowledge that when it got light and the sun started to rise it would be bright and the birds would be able to see the nets. As the sun started to come over the horizon a blanket of cloud arrived as well and altogether the conditions at this stage were now perfect.

I put up and furled 5 nets last night for a quick start this morning. The plan being three nets with Redwing sound and one with Yellow Browed Warbler/Goldcrest mix. After about an hour of daylight if the Redwing were slow I would replace two of the Redwing sounds for Meadow Pipit and the third to a finch mix in the feeder net ride and keeping the Yellow Browed/ Goldcrest mix as it was.

We arrived on site and all the nets were up and ready just before 07.00am. The plan worked well for Redwing and Goldcrest but with just one Meadow Pipit and a few finches these were disappointing.

Nevertheless as can be seen in the table below we caught and processed 69 birds over 15 species.

I mentioned on Facebook a few days ago I was in awe of the numbers of Redwings being caught over the border in England because at that stage I had not seen one, never mind catching one in the net. The morning started off well and the first round we had 9 birds and by the end of the session 14. Total for site now is 31, of these 9 were adults.

The Goldcrest above is our smallest bird but today the biggest in numbers at 27. We were probably 2 hours into the session before we caught any and at this time the air temperature had risen a few degrees. Molly felt ringing large numbers of any one species in a few hours helps to get your "eye in"  and remembering this for any future birds that may be caught. The total number of Goldcrest for the site is now 93 birds 26 of which were females 64 males and 3 unsexed that were aged 3J.

I did expect we would catch more than one Meadow Pipit having had 30 birds from previous sessions. Nevertheless it was another bird for Molly to work with.

This male Woodpecker is the first pecker to be caught since June 2015 and the 4th bird for the site. Always feisty in the net and hand

On the last net round of the morning we caught two Redpoll which are not a regular to the area. This brings the total for the site to 7 new birds all caught this year.
Molly clearly and confidently aged and sexed both birds. You can see the inner Greater Coverts have been replaced, then there is a break of un-moulted Coverts and unusually the last outer Greater Coverts have completed their moult.

A good day, 69 birds being the highest numbers caught since I started ringing here in November 2013 and 15 species as well

I asked Molly what her thoughts were of the day and also was there any particular bird she really liked.

She said "The highlight was the variety/number of birds, no one bird in particular. It was just a brilliant morning all-round, and nice to be kept busy. The Meadow Pipit was beautiful though."

Molly Heal
Species	Full Grown	Retraps	TOTAL
Robin	2	3	5
Goldcrst	27		27
Willow Tit		2	2
Blue Tit	3	2	5
Coal Tit	1	1	2
Redwing	14		14
Greater Spot Woodpecker	1		1
Wren	2	1	3
Chaffinch	3		3
Dunnock		1	1
Meadow Pipit	1		1
Long Tailed Tit	1		1
Redpoll	2		2
Song Thrush	1		1
Goldfinch		1	1
Grand Total	58	11	69
Total Species	12	7	15