17/12 Bagnor Feeder

Location: Bagnor Feeder CES2024/25.04

Session: 17/12/2024 07:45 to 11:10hrs

The Bagnor Feeder

Notes: If you think about it to survive the recent storms, living outside, with only natural shelter and foraging your only source of food, it would be difficult for humans to survive a day or so in such conditions without suffering from hypothermia etc. Now imagine that you only weight 11.0 grams, the wind is raging at 40+mph, the tree branches that usually provide shelter are thrashing about in a torrent of rain and you must fly to find food. Being so small your metabolism is fast, and you must eat to maintain body temperature. In such conditions how do you survive? We know from recoveries that birds travel from Snelsmore Common, Boxford Common, and elsewhere, a kilometres or two away, to the Bagnor feeder every day. Many Blue Tits and similar size birds probably didn’t survive such conditions which might explain why few birds visited the feeder today and that food uptake at the three feeders has slowed since the storms. Today’s 19 birds is one of the lowest December totals at this feeder which we have operated continuously winter 1985/86 (40 years) Unfortunately, the similar weather of December 2023/24 stopped us doing a matching visit for comparison, similarly we missed 2022/23 winter's late December Visit. The last matching visit was winter 2021/22 and is shown below for context. It will be interesting to see if numbers recover, they usually do. 

Present: JL,IW.

Weather: overcast, with a sunny period, cool, calm to light breeze

Nets: 2x6M nets, one each side of feeder up from 08:00 to 11:00hrs

Lures (Feeder): Peanuts, Sunflower Hearts, Fat Balls.

Recaptures: (11) 

Blue  Tit  ringed: 21/112023, 06/11/2024x3, 26/11/2024x2, 03/12/2024.
Long-tailed  Tit ringed: 23/11/2021x2, 07/11/2023, 26/11/2024.

Sighting: The light was very poor apart from one period when the sun came out. As we drove through the  gate into the field a Barn Owl flew up from the ground and we followed it along the track in the car until it pounced on something unsuccessfully then flipped across in front of us and disappeared in the trees by the stream. There was some movement during the morning that included a flock of about 30 Meadow Pipits over west, several small groups of  Lesser Black-backed Gulls headed south as did a couple of Cormorants, 20+ Canada Goose flew north and five Mallard flew east. An immature male Kestrel hunted the field for a while, the first I have seen here for some time.