Meisen Wood: Happy Days

Date: 28^th April, 2019

Nets: 130m

Sound: None

Weather: 7C rising to 9C

Ringers:  CS and EB

The dawn chorus was splendid with all resident birds in full voice and the visiting Blackcaps seem to have completed their rehearsals and remembered their lost chords, their melodious song is most enjoyable.  This was all quite encouraging to a damp, chilly start with the temperature initially dropping. Our catch was numerically in line with expectations as was the species variety, almost.

Species	Ringed	Re-trapped	Total
Blackcap	3	2	5
Blue Tit		2	2
Bullfinch	2		2
Chaffinch		2	2
Coal Tit		2	2
Dunnock		2	2
G S Woodpecker	1	2	3
Great Tit	1	5	6
M S Woodpecker	1		1
Nuthatch		1	1
Pied Flycatcher	8	6	14
Robin		1	1
Song Thrush		1	1
Wren	1		1
Total	17	26	43

There was a surprise in the first round: three Great Spotted Woodpeckers in the same net laying almost within touching distance of each other.  Previously, and rarely, we have had two male Great Spots in a net simultaneously and had presumed they were enacting a territorial dispute when trapped.  Today’s three Great Spots were two females and a new male – a territorial dispute is not inconceivable with a pair protesting at the intrusion of another individual.  Both females had brood patch scores of three; and the male’s abdomen and thorax were clear of feathers, an apparent brood patch too, but not wrinkly; hinting at a paternal brooding role.

Ringing sessions in late April, early May are always interesting because they are at a cusp in the avian annual cycle: some birds have started breeding; some have just arrived to start breeding; and others will be migrating through to breeding grounds elsewhere.  Several of today’s captures aptly illustrated this mix of breeding behaviour and preparation; even within the same species, such as the Blackcaps and Chaffinches. 

One of the re-trapped Blackcaps, a known breeding female from last year, today had the beginnings of a brood patch.  In contrast, a new ringed Blackcap had a fat score of four and weighed 21.1g – a bird still on migration.  Both re-trapped Chaffinches were females.  One female was initially ringed in spring 2016 and has been caught each spring since; today she had a nice wrinkly-red brood patch – so presumably is breeding here, or hereabouts.  The other female Chaffinch had been caught a couple of times through the winter but today her weight was significantly greater at 24.2g with a matching fat load clearly she will be heading for a breeding site elsewhere.

Catching and ringing eight new Pied Flycatchers is always a pleasure and a privilege; each year we are stunned by these essentially brown and white beauties with such slender black legs. We do not capture many of the stereotypical black and white variety.  In sexing the males we look for two white spots on the forehead (which are often buff) and black upper tail coverts.  The six re-traps were all from previous years – this is somewhat gratifying in that we have numerous nest boxes through the wood for them and other species too.  One of these re-traps was a nestling from last year.  Unfortunately, somewhat perplexing and slightly worrying (though it is early days yet) all the re-traps were from last year only!  In previous years we have captured older birds in early April (from various years) with younger birds figuring in the late April and early May catches with females also arriving later. That pattern has not been repeated this year.  Both sexes arrived simultaneously and two pairs (at least) have already completed nests – markedly earlier than previously.

The penultimate round produced a stunner!

Approaching a net we thought a fourth Great-spotted Woodpecker for the day had been trapped.  How pleasingly wrong that thought was – it was quickly apparent that it was a Middle-spotted Woodpecker.  And, O Happy Day, it was a female! 

A few weeks back we had caught a male Middle-spotted Woodpecker whose capture had indicated a range extension for the species in this part of Germany.  Well, here was a splendid female with a wonderful red, vein engorged, brood patch.  Exciting, hopefully their breeding effort will be successful.  We have seen a male, presumable the same male we caught, on several occasions; though his legs, and hence the ring, have been hidden from view.

The female Middle-spotted Woodpecker was a fitting closure to a very interesting and happy week’s ringing.  Throughout the county we monitor twenty-six Tawny Owl boxes; it was more but during the winter several were lost in storms, forestry clear-cutting and, we think, a theft.  On Wednesday and Thursday, slightly earlier than planned, due to an unfavourable weather forecast, we visited seventeen of the boxes; we’d hoped to have visited them all but joyfully many boxes were occupied, several with broods of five and six owlets.  These good numbers had been semi-expected because we have noted an abundance of mice and voles this year.  Our total numbers were much better than in any previous year and hopefully give the local population a boost after several poor reproductive years. Such numbers of fluffy, beauts took longer than anticipated to process; and why rush such moments of beauty!