Whoosh Netting

~ judyheiser

It has been some time since there has been any bird ringing in the meadows because John and John, the birdringers, have both been unwell. But thankfully they are now recovered sufficiently to start doing what they love again. This week John and another ringer Becky were in the meadows trying out an alternative way of catching birds to ring – whoosh netting:

The green net is folded at the bottom of the poles and some food put down on the ground below the top of the poles. Taut elastic cords are attached to the top of the net and tensioned on the ground. We were watching from some distance away with a rope reaching back to the net. When a pair of linnets were finally brave enough to go down to the seed, the rope was pulled and the net whoosed up the poles and landed on the birds
The net now spreadeagled on the ground once the linnets had been removed for ringing
Resetting the net. Both ringers have a licence to allow them to use this technique for catching birds
The net is reset and ready for action once more
A male linnet. A proud moment because this is the first bird that John has caught in a whoosh!

There are now plans to do more whoosh netting in the meadows this coming week.

Meanwhile, somewhere tucked deep within the thorny hedgerow at the end of the meadows, a litter of fox cubs is being reared. This vixen is clearly feeding young and has been going in and out of the hedgerow:

She has also been taking small mammals in. I suppose this must be a rat:

The pressure is now on for the parent foxes. Not only do they need to feed themselves, they also have other hungry mouths to find food for. There is often plenty of potential fox prey around, but first they have to catch it:

The northern edge of the meadows with a lot of good things for a fox to eat
A fox stalking its prey

I can now properly introduce you to this year’s single badger cub who was first allowed above ground on 11th April:

It does seem quite a large cub – apparently single badger cubs are often bigger because they get all of their mother’s milk

Some other interesting photos from the meadows this week:

A pair of mallards dropped by for a swim to recuperate during egg laying
This is a new beetle species for the meadows. A cereal leaf beetle, Oulema duftschmidi/melanopus agg. It’s quite small – those are 0.5cm squares it’s standing on
There was a substantial 3D spider’s web emerging from a stack of upside down flower pots in the potting shed. Sheltering within the topmost pot I found this noble false widow spider, Steatoda nobilis. She was quite large with a body length of around 13mm, and had the look and feel of something that I didn’t want to get too close to. This species is native to the Canary Islands and Madeira but was first sighted in Torquay in 1879 and is now well established along the south coast of England and is gradually moving inland and northwards. She can actually bite humans and, although her bite is painless, the subsequent release of venom isn’t and is similar to a bee or wasp sting
This peacock butterfly will have overwintered as an adult, and it looks like the poor thing has had some very close shaves whilst it was hibernating. However, it is clearly a survivor and was out enjoying some blackthorn blossom in the sunshine of this week
We also spotted a green-veined white this week. Damp lush vegetation is an essential requirement for this butterfly and so it is rarely seen in our dry chalk meadows. This species overwinters as a chrysalis

Now that it is April, it is time to recommence the monthly monitoring tours around the dormouse boxes in the wood. This week we did the thirty boxes in our wood and I will do the twenty boxes in our neighbour’s wood with her next week. Male dormice are thought to emerge from hibernation two weeks before the females and in fact we did only find males this time. We found two of them, both in otherwise empty boxes – I suppose they have not yet had time to make any sort of nest for themselves:

A 17g male dormouse in box 3. For the last few years the wood has been part of the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme, set up in 1990 to address the worrying decline in hazel dormouse numbers. It’s the world’s largest and longest-running small mammal recording programme, collecting data from over 400 monitoring sites across the UK. 

Twelve of the thirty boxes were found to have tit nests in them, although only one clutch of eggs so far. Blue tits do only have one brood a year and they will have finished with the boxes by the end of May, leaving them available once more for dormice. In box 28, however, a wren had filled the box with moss:

A male wren nesting in the south of Britain will apparently build five or six different nests. He will then take the female round so that she can inspect them and decide which one she wishes to use. So this nest in box 28 might well not be used by the birds after all that effort

I feel that there should be a drum roll before this next photo. This is the first time that I’ve ever caught a snake on a trail camera:

A grass snake at the pond that is situated out in the open in the marjoram grove. There are tadpoles in this pond for the first time this year, and the snake could well have been after some of these
If I zoom the photo in much more than I really should, you can see the characteristic pale collar and the two patches of black behind it. This was a much smaller grass snake than the one we saw back in the autumn that was over a metre long

Sparrowhawks also come to this pond daily to bathe. However, like all the ponds in both the meadows and the wood, it is getting rather low on water – we do need some rain:

On 10th April there was still a redwing in the wood. I have noticed before that the redwings are always the last winter visitors to leave:

This redwing standing in the water will surely be returning soon to Iceland or Scandanavia to breed

I finish this week with tulips. For several autumns now, I have been planting a hundred or so tulip bulbs in the allotment to use as cut flowers in the spring. However, I have had an ongoing problem with rats who view these bulbs as a good food source over the winter. The autumn before last I rolled the bulbs in chilli powder before planting which proved to be very effective at deterring the rats. Flushed with success, I repeated this last autumn as well. Although initially this approach seemed to be working again, towards the end of the winter I started to lose a lot of bulbs once more. I am guessing that the chilli had been washed away, allowing the rats to get going. Now, in April, although I do have still some lovely flowers to bring into the house, there are nowhere near as many as I had hoped.

A jar of tulips to brighten up the house. Really lovely, but is it worth the aggravation?

Walmer Castle grows tulips at this time of year and they never seem to lose a single bulb:

The kitchen garden at Walmer Castle. April 2024

Back in February, I noticed that, not only were the tulip beds at the Castle covered in a protective mesh, but a humane rat trap baited with bulbs was also being used:

18th February 2025

This is something that I would not want to do and so have decided not to battle with the rats anymore. I will still plant some tulips into pots by the house this autumn but from now on there will be no more bulbs going out into the allotment. The rats will just have to find something different to eat this winter or perhaps, even better, go elsewhere.

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