Saturday 3rd October 2015

I spent the weekend back in Swindon, and on Saturday joined my old group the North Wiltshire Ringing Group for a full on ringing session at Hens Wood in the Savernake Forest nr Marlborough.
The usual team were joined by Malcolm from South Africa and Charlotte from Canada.

Autumn colour is really starting to show through with the reds and golds in the leaves of the trees and shrubs.

 

A typically early start being on site for 06:15hrs with around 800ft of net put up around the wood at feeding stations and a few carefully selected sites.

As expected the morning filled with Coal Tits, Great Tits, with a few Blue Tits as well as the more interesting Marsh tits, the highlight of the tit family though was to catch two WILLOW TITS, a new bird hatched this year and a retrap of a bird hatched and ringed in 2014.

With Willow Tits on the brink of local extinction and suffering across most of their range in the UK it was heartening to see that there is still breeding in the area.

Marsh Tit (left) Willow Tit (right)



Willow Tit

However for me the absolute highlight was to walk to a net and see, trapped, for the first time a stunning male FIRECREST....., then to ring it was the icing on the cake, the Firecrest is the joint smallest British bird with its congener the Goldcrest, this little chap weighed a mere 5.4grams. This scarce breeder and passage migrant is a real jewel!

Male Firecrest  Regulus ignicapilla



simply a jewel of the forest