As posted back in early April,thanks to funding support from SNH, we began and have now completed the renewal of the Bain Trap.

The Bain trap is arguably one of the most successful traps on the island for catching migrant passerine birds for ringing. It was first built between 1948 and 1949, single handedly by John Bain, one of the Lighthouse Keepers. Perhaps he felt he had a lot of spare time?

In 1949 the trap materials cost £73 – equivalent to around £2500 today by my calculations, and yes it can be confirmed that building a heligoland trap is not cheap and a good deal more than inflation might predict! We are grateful to SNH for a grant towards the cost and to donors who provided funding support and not least to those volunteers who undertook the task of building it in their own time without them it would have been an impossible task. Built in a period of around 4 weeks it was a speedier job than that of John Bain and has meant the trap is already in action and catching migrants. The finishing touches of course take longer as the bushes and vines need to grow to provide that attractive cover, on the otherwise treeless island, for those migrating small birds as they stopover.

The trap will be used by bird ringers for decades to come and will maintain the catching effort on the island that we’ve seen over the previous 69 years since it was first put in place. The images below tell a little of the story…

and there is a piece also on the SNH NNR Blog which covers the work – click here