15/12 Bagnor Feeder

Location: Bagnor Feeder, Winter CES 2023/24.03

Session: 15/12/2023  07:45 to 11:30hrs

Nice to ring a few Goldfinch today, this is a 1st Winter Female

Notes: A busy morning. As the Snelsmore Fdr visit on the 10th, Blue Tit dominated and seem to have had a very good post breeding survival including a good number of adults unlike the Snelsmore visit. Great Tit numbers seem low but a look back through matching visits to 2009 shows numbers generally are low-ish. Coal Tit visits to this feeder are few as feeders too far from high woodland for all but the occasional wanderer to visit. A Marsh Tit or two called from the scrub but did not visit the feeder while the nets were up. The sunflower hearts we are having to use have increased the number Goldfinches here and at the Greenham Feeder The exception is the Snelsmore feeder where I think the closeness of the café seating area may discourage visits from the more cautious finches and ground feeders. Robin are scarce in the surrounding scrub this year so two including a Nov 2022 bird was unexpected

Present: JL,IW.
Weather: Overcast, calm, cold.
Nets: 12M of nets, 6M each side of the feeders up from 08:00 to 11:00hrs.
Lures: Feeders with Peanuts, Sunflower Hearts, Niger, Fat Balls.

Recaptures:(21) note box prefixes CP and WH Snelsmore Common, others Bagnor Est Mount Hill

Blue Tit    ringed: 21/01/2020, 05/12/2021 (Snelsmore Fdr), 09/11/2022, 10/02/2023,

                            21/02/2023,21/03/2023, 07/11/2023, 21/11/2023x7

                pulli ringed: 24/05/2023 nest box WH19, 26/05/2023x3 nestboxes, A01,D03x2,D11,

Great Tt  pulli ringed: 25/05/2023 nest box CP11

Robin      ringed: 09/11/2022

Sighting: We definitely missed species and counted lower than was probably there. The crow scarer on the adjacent Mount Hill field put up a lot of corvids, thrushes and small finch types too far away to be sure of ID. Visits here earlier in the week to top the feeder produced mid double figure flocks of Meadow Pipits, Chaffinch, Linnet, and others feeding on the recently seeded field. Thought I heard Brambling, but it only called once so not sure. On previous visits I thought there to be several flocks of racing pigeons northwest and did not record them, however I now think them to be feral pigeon flocks flying out from Newbury to feed in the surrounding fields. Yellowhammer once bred here but are now very scarce, also this winter there are usually up to six Pheasant in the area, refugees from Shoots further west.