11/11 Bagnor Feeder

Location: Bagnor Feeder
Session: 11-Nov-2016 07:45 to 11:20hrs

Headlines: Very cold when I arrived and the catch on one of the gates was jammed; good job I had a hammer in the car, don’t think I woke the village! After completing three visit to the winter feeding stations there is more evidence of a poor breeding outcome for particularly blue and great tits. The low numbers so far this year seem to be because there are very few first calendar year (CY) individuals; these normally make up the bulk of tit family captures throughout the winter. The Bagnor feeder is a kilometre or two from the nearest woodland habitat so you would expect that captures here would be lowest of the three feeders, birds having to travel along mature hedgerows to reach it. A capture of 16 is therefore not too bad in what is looking to be a bad year. I was able to get a handle on the likely shoot days from the gamekeeper; it is always a worry that we will coincide to no ones benefit.

Weather: Cold, sunny, clear, calm
Present: JL, IW
Nets: 12metres in two rides one 6M each side of feeders up from 08:00 to 11:00hrs
Lure (feeders): Peanuts, Black Sunflower, Fatballs
Capture (New/Recapture) 16(13/3):

Species New Retrap 1st CY Adult Blue Tit 6 1 4 3 Great Spotted Woodpecker   1   1 Great Tit 5   4 1 Nuthatch 1 1 1 1 Robin 1     1

Recaptures: (3) Blue Tit 1y 172d pulli from Snelsmore Box CP29 Great Spotted Woodpecker 4y 3d Nuthatch 332d

Five Year History of first November visit:

2015 65 BLUTI 31 COATI 6 DUNNO 2 GOLDF 2 GRSWO 1 GRETI 16 GREFI 1 LOTTI 6

2014 34 BLUTI 16 CHAFF 3 GRETI 11 GRSWO 2 NUTHA 1 WREN 1

2013 19 BLUTI 12 GRETI 3 NUTHA 2 ROBIN 2

2012 59 BLUTI 30 BRAMB 1 COATI 3 GREFI 2 GRETI 17 GRSWO 5 NUTHA 1

2011 46 BLUTI 23 BRAMB 1 CHAFF 1 GOLDF 1 GRETI 10 GRSWO 4 NUTHA 1 SISKI 3 TREEC 2

The bulk of the capture from previous years is of Blue Tit followed by Great Tit and most of these were 1st CY birds; few are being captured this year so far.


Adult female Nuthatch ringed as a bird of the year 332 days ago

Sightings 39 Species: We have a good viewing vista of the valley and surrounds from our ringing station. There was a steady flow of Lesser Black-backed Gulls west and a trickle of Black-headed Gulls south over the four hour period. A Chiffchaff calling early is not unusual for this site, some individuals have winter here in the past. A very big female Sparrowhawk stooped on something behind the feeder trees; we tried to make it into something more interesting!  There was the usual to and fro of crows east west and winter visitors appear  thin on the ground as yet.