West Wilts Group

Webb's Wood, Wednesday, 3rd February 2016

With the weather set to become wet and windy again (until next Wednesday), and was forecast to be dry but breezy today, I decided to have a go in one of the woodland sites this morning. Whilst topping up the feeding stations yesterday Somerford Common was hosting good numbers of Lesser Redpoll, and Webb's Wood had lots of Siskin. Having missed out on Siskin completely in 2015 Webb's was the obvious choice. I set 3 x 12m nets, one through the middle of the feeding station and the other two guarding the approaches. To improve the odds of catching Siskin, I set an MP3 of Siskin song playing next to the nyjer seed feeder and, because it seems to bring them in from miles away, I put an MP3 of Redwing on one of the approach nets.  To be honest, a couple of Siskin were in the trees near the feeder before I put the lure on, but it did the job - as did the Redwing lure.

The list for the day was as follows, New (Retrap): Nuthatch 1; Blue Tit 13(5); Great Tit 4(6); Coal Tit 1(4); Robin 2(2); Redwing 6; Chaffinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 1; Siskin 11; Bullfinch 1. Totals: 41 new from 10 species and 17 retraps from 4 species.

The Siskin were predominantly male, with a single female in the catch. I don't know if the males were responding to the lure as some sort of territorial response but, given the time of the year and the location, I doubt it. I frequently find Goldcrest in largely single-sex flocks, and perhaps this is the same with Siskin, or perhaps it is just totally coincidental. 

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With the wind getting stronger by 11:30 I closed the nets and packed up for the day.

A footnote to the session: whilst I was in the woods, Jonny Cooper was out with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust team cannon-netting for Shelduck.  After a considerable wait they had a successful fire, catching some 35 Shelduck. Jonny was lucky enough to ring 18 of them.  They have been fitted with satellite tags, to enable their movement to be tracked - of course, I am not at all envious.

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