Wash Wader Ringing Group

Friday 24th June

PLI and NAC arrived at base from mid morning to do various jobs, including re-organising the now expanded store. Appropriate shelving and racking was installed to allow the cannon netting equipment to be in the new part and the garage to be used for mist netting and mainly for things to do with dealing with a catch.

This work was interrupted by a succession of trades people calling to give quotes for upgrading the power supply to the annex and to replace rotten window frames, again in the annex. Since the last visit, the annex bathroom has been redone to provide hot water and the bath replaced by a shower, but to use them a better power supply is required.

Other people arrived in time for an evening meeting of the Operations Committee, which was followed by food and drink. With the weekend billed as being equipment maintenance, there was no pressure to get to bed but this was still managed before midnight.

Saturday 25th June

During the previous evening it had been realised that it was early July in 2004 that a recce of Heacham had found a large summering Knot flock which had resulted in a catch of nearly 500 birds. As NAC was having difficulty sleeping he got up in time to recce the Heacham area and found that there was, as in 2004, a flock of ca. 4,000 Knot present and using the beach. Consequently plans were made for a catching attempt on the evening tide.

The morning and time up to the 15.45 departure for setting was used to get many of the equipment and house maintenance / sorting jobs done. Phone calls were made to several people to drum up a larger team for what could be a large Knot catch; about 15 people were present for the catching attempt.

At Heacham, footprints in the sand revealed the Knot flock had also been there on the falling tide, which was surprising as they had flown inland when disturbed before high tide in the morning. This did give a good indication of where to set! The four small mesh nets were set well below high tide to make a catch as soon as the birds came off the mudflats. NAC was under the impression that the group had just one small mesh net of a colour that would merge well with sand and all the others were a bright red for which he had come up with ingenious means of camouflaging. However, unknown to NAC, when preparing the equipment for setting it had been discovered that four new nets, which had been delivered to NAC at work and which he had not opened, were all of the better sand-matching colour. Consequently when he discovered the team had "forgotten" to put in the special materials for camouflaging he was not best pleased until it dawned that all the nets were coming out of the sacks the right colour!

Set in good time for a snack before NAC went to the firing position and long stops were sent in both directions. SD was positioned in the dunes behind the nets to help decide of which net birds were in front. New non-CB radios were tried for the first time and worked very well. A small number of Oystercatchers went in with the decoys almost immediately, with a hundred or so on the mudflats. These and 50 Bar-tailed Godwit came ashore ahead of the tide but mainly to the south of the nets. A substantial number of Knot (rather under half the 4,000 present in the morning) had now arrived on the mud and, from SD's perspective, were directly in front of the nets. JC applied some pressure on the Oystercatcher flock but those that reacted lifted and most flew inland. Did not do any more, expecting the Knot to walk towards the beach under pressure from the tide. However, when about 20 metres from the beach they lifted and flew to join the remaining Oystercatchers. Only about a minute later they all took off again and headed directly over base camp to an inland field. With a small number of Oystercatchers still present, there was a short wait just in case anything happened and when the water was at the eight yard marks, meaning it would soon be time to pick up the nets, fired hoping to catch a few Oystercatchers for some newcomers to see. With a fairly strong wind these managed to out-fly the net. Hence no catch!

Equipment picked up and back to base for a Chinese meal.

Sunday 26th June

The main activity was a visit to the Outer Bund to ring Gull nestlings for English nature. Prior to this more gardening and tidying up at base with a visit to the local tip.

A team of 12 did the gull ringing, leaving JC and PLI to continue jobs at base.

Meanwhile, out on the bund………….
The team met at 12:00 at the end of the Nene road ready to drive around to the seawall to begin the walk out to the Bund. Slight hitch - locked gate. So there was a much longer walk than anticipated, which was no bad thing as it turned out - the tide seemed very slow falling off. Approaching the bund it was apparent that there were plenty of large chicks running around the island, getting our quota was not going to be a problem.

Once on the island we operated as a team to herd chicks together and crèche them for ringing. At times we were very effective in this and managed to herd as many as 80 chicks in a single attempt. For the first year ever we worked anti-clockwise around the island, leaving the worst nettle patch until last in the hope that we had used all the rings by then! We trialled a new system of issuing rings for each species which worked very well - a black marker pen line drawn down the Lesser-black backed rings helped ensure rings were issued for the right species and reminded people of which rings they needed to overlap. The colony seemed reasonably healthy and, for the first year since we began this project, no recoveries were found amongst the few corpses. Four and a half hours flew by during which time we'd ringed:

The extra 40 minute walk to the cars from the seawall was more of a drag on the return leg! A few returned to base to finish tidying up and finally departed c8pm.