Ringing the birds of Little Wittenham Nature Reserve
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Marsh tit |
Marsh and willow tits |
During the summer months (April to October) ringing is carried out on the Nature Reserve. Each bird is fitted with a light metal ring, engraved with a unique letter/number combination. These are obtained from the British Trust for Ornithology(BTO), on conditon that the details of ringed birds are reported back to them.
Ringers must hold permits issued by the BTO in order to capture wild birds, under the provisions of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Training takes several years, during which learners are first Trainees, then hold "C" permits allowing them a limited amount of autonomy, and finally "A" permits for complete independence from their trainer ( who holds a special Training endorsement on his own "A" permit.
Information about the birds, including where possible age, sex, wing length, whether breeding, moult stage and physical condition, is stored in a BTO-supplied computer database managed by the local ringing team. Regular updates from this are sent to the BTO central database, for use in their research and to allow identification of birds retrapped or recovered away from Little Wittenham.All the Little Wittenham data since 1984 has been computerised and sent to the BTO.
In spring the fledglings in our 120 nestboxes are ringed; the boxes are checked again in early autumn to make sure all the young have actually fledged; a very few fail to make it but usually at least one youngster leaves the nest.
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Great Tit |
Blue Tit |
For adult birds, mist nets are set up in specially reserved areas away from the public and monitored at frequent intervals. The birds are gently removed from the nets by trained personnel and taken to a nearby area to be examined and ringed.
Since 2000 12 of the ringing visits every year have been made as part of BTO's Constant Effort Survey, which is designed mainly to monitor the breeding population of an area; visits must be within a set of given dates, always with the same number of nets in the same positions. This allows comparison between years at the same site and between sites around the country; Little Wittenham is one of only 2 CES sites in Oxfordshire.
The run of only 5 years is really too short for any meaningful trends to emerge, but it is already clear that blackcaps are unusually abundant compared with similar sites elsewhere. This has been confirmed by the BTO.
Details of numbers of birds ringed on the reserve(including both Constant Effort and other visits) are given in the table below.
Blue and great tit have always been the major species, with blackcap a close second. Kingfishers have always been present in good numbers.
During winter some ringing is carried out at Little Wittenham Manor which provides (among other things) more information about the birds ringed in the summer. About 1 in 10 of the birds ringed on the reserve are retrapped one or more times on or near it, which provides some insight into the life expectancy and site fidelity of the different species.
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Bullfinch |
Blackcap |
Ringing totals for Little Wittenham Nature Reserve
| Species | 1983-1999 total | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 |
| Sparrowhawk | 6 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Kingfisher | 41 | 5 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 5 | 2 |
| Great Spotted Woodpecker | 7 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Wren | 406 | 22 | 15 | 29 | 19 | 16 | 13 |
| Dunnock | 248 | 13 | 12 | 23 | 9 | 11 | 4 |
| Robin | 267 | 17 | 21 | 27 | 15 | 17 | 15 |
| Blackbird | 234 | 9 | 9 | 10 | 17 | 11 | 8 |
| Song Thrush | 58 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 8 | 6 | 2 |
| Whitethroat | 12 | 1 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Garden Warbler | 91 | 5 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 4 |
| Blackcap | 455 | 45 | 34 | 47 | 46 | 41 | 32 |
| Chiffchaff | 305 | 22 | 21 | 22 | 16 | 43 | 36 |
| Willow Warbler | 56 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Goldcrest | 264 | 11 | 7 | 34 | 63 | 17 | 28 |
| Longtailed Tit | 308 | 16 | 17 | 33 | 29 | 29 | 14 |
| Marsh Tit | 137 | 11 | 13 | 13 | 6 | 22 | 7 |
| Coal Tit | 132 | 8 | 12 | 15 | 10 | 12 | 7 |
| Blue Tit | 1157 | 84 | 48 | 145 | 82 | 121 | 35 |
| Great Tit | 733 | 82 | 40 | 82 | 37 | 66 | 36 |
| Nuthatch | 25 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Treecreeper | 98 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 11 | 6 | 3 |
| Chaffinch | 351 | 57 | 8 | 13 | 36 | 17 | 12 |
| Bullfinch | 270 | 9 | 9 | 4 | 18 | 6 | 12 |
Also small numbers of the following have been ringed: Mallard, moorhen,wood pigeon, kestrel, tawny owl,Cetti's warbler,sedge, reed and grasshopper warblers, lesser whitethroat,wood warbler, brambling, magpie, carrion crow, jay, redwing, green woodpecker,firecrest, pied and spotted flycatchers, willow tit, greenfinch, goldfinch, reed bunting, siskin and redpoll.
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This page last updated 8th February 2006 by E M Gill