Must Do Better

At the end of December the BTO encourage bird ringers to renew their ringing permit by submitting returns and confirming they are fit to continue ringing for the coming year. Fit in mind and body for now, but it gets more difficult each year, especially those 4am summer starts or scrambling up and down a quarry face to catch Sand Martins. 

So now my permit for 2018 just arrived hot from the Canon Pixma. This rather exclusive piece of paper will reside in the glove box of the car for the inevitable, often puzzled but mostly interested, occasionally irate questions from onlookers. 

Bird Ringing Permit

“Why are you trudging through that muddy field in the middle of a cold, grey January morning picking up wild birds from that funny looking net? Are you harming them? Are you catching them to eat ?” Then try explaining how the vital scientific work is also rewarding enjoyment,  see the look on their face as you show the rings, pliers, scales and other equipment, and then watch their reaction as the tiny Linnet they hadn’t spotted in your hand is released to fly away. 

Yes, each UK bird ringer must have a licence to capture and ring birds. They pay yearly for the privilege of being involved in the national ringing scheme, as well as buying their own equipment and the rings they use; unless of course they are fortunate in having sponsorship or a rich benefactor. A busy day of ringing 100 small birds costs about £25 for the “A” sized rings that passerines take. Donations readily accepted or just send a sort code. I’ll do the rest. 

A check of my personal ringing data on our Fylde Ringing Group database showed I processed 516 birds during 2017. An average of ten a week for a year is pretty pathetic by past performance of almost 25,000 birds since 1985 thanks to last year’s foul weather of summer, autumn, and early winter. But there’s a reasonable mix of species in that 516 and as it’s raining and snowing today, chance to recall a few of the highlights, guess where we went wrong and surmise how to be a ringing superstar in 2018. 

During 2017 Oakenclough near Garstang proved the most productive of sites and where ringing with pal Andy I processed 268 birds. Most encountered species was Goldfinch at 57 and Lesser Redpoll at 47 followed by 22 Redwings ringed during October and early November. 

Redwing

Redpoll

Goldfinch

In amongst the dross of tits and wrens that ringers choose to forget were singles of Sparrowhawk and Redstart; and always welcome, a couple of Tree Pipits, all worthy of bold lettering as is the custom of bird blogs in identifying the more exciting species. 

Tree Pipit

Redstart

Sparrowhawk

For the moment we have given up on Oakenclough, a very finch orientated but also weather dependent site where autumn migration hardly took place when many northern finches chose to fly over Yorkshire, Humberside and SE England on their way to the Continent rather than chance the series of storms that hit the West Coast. With luck there will be a strong movement back north in a few weeks’ time when we can return for Redpolls and maybe even Siskins. 

The weather also limited our visits to the Cockerham Sand Martin colony at the aforesaid quarry. Two visits only during the summer months resulted in my poor number of 33 Sand Martins, just half the full total shared with Andy. Normally we would hope to get in four or maybe five visits to measure breeding success but it wasn’t to be. 

Sand Martin

A few summer visits to Marton Mere realised 28 new birds including a small number of Reed Warblers and a couple of the recent colonist and now proved breeding Cetti’s Warblers. 

Cetti's Warbler

Regular readers will be familiar with, probably even bored by the blog’s continual mention of Project Linnet. Suffice to say that it is a very worthwhile project, so much so that during the year we had guest appearances from other ringers keen to get their hands on Red-listed Linnets. There was the added bonus last year of a single Stonechat to add to the Linnets and a handful of Goldfinches.

Stonechat

Of 70 birds ringed in my garden on lazy days, 51 were Goldfinches and just 3 House Sparrows. There are no prizes for guessing the most common bird in this part of Lancashire and probably the whole of the UK. How times change. 

Goldfinch

Here’s hoping for better ringing weather in 2018.

Linking today to  Anni's Blog , Eileen's Saturday Blog and Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

It’s A Start

I set off early to meet Andy at Oakenclough where we planned maintenance of net rides and bamboo poles in preparation for our autumn and winter ringing on site. We leave the 12ft poles there in all weathers so as to minimise lugging them around each time we visit. Insulation tape stops water seeping into the bamboo and also helps the net loops slide up and down. 

Bamboos

Although all seemed quiet we decided to put a couple of nets up as we repaired the poles one-by-one. To be truthful we didn’t expect much of a catch so were pleasantly surprised with the outcome. 

After four hours we called it a day with a catch of 29 birds of 11 species. This included one Willow Warbler recapture from April 2017, a resident male. Our totals: 8 Willow Warbler, 6 Goldcrest, 3 Chiffchaff, 3 Robin, 2 Great Tit, 2 Blue Tit, 1 Goldfinch, 1 Chaffinch, 1 Sedge Warbler, 1 Tree Pipit and 1 Redstart. 

Ageing autumn Willow Warblers in the field is well-nigh impossible but much easier in the hand. The potential problem is that adults go through a complete autumn moult while juveniles undertake a partial moult, so that by late summer/early August individual birds of different ages appear the same. In the hand, in general but not absolutely, adults have whiter bellies than first year birds but this on its own and because of the separate moult strategies and species’ races variation, is not enough to separate the two age groups. Reliable ageing of this species also involves checking the wear and shape of both tail feathers and flight feathers and then comparing the ground colour and the gloss of the same feather tracts. 

Willow Warbler - adult

Willow Warbler- juvenile/first year

Oakenclough is a strictly woodland site where we expect to catch woodland species. Imagine our surprise then to catch a Sedge Warbler, the first ever here. When we thought about it more, the emergent vegetation that lines the margins of a nearby reservoir fits the bill of a Sedge Warbler’s preferred reed scrub habitat, but we don’t expect to catch another.

Sedge Warbler

The Sedge Warbler had classic fault bars across the tail. Fault bars are translucent cross stripes where during the growth of the feather a disturbance has taken place, under stressful and adverse environmental conditions, usually hunger and/or bad weather,

Fault Bars - Sedge Warbler

We don’t catch many Redstarts, here or anywhere so were pleasantly surprised to find we had a juvenile/first year male. 

Redstart

Redstart

Our catch of Goldcrest included three juveniles/first year birds from on-site or very close-by. 

Goldcrest

We caught a single Tree Pipit, a species which bred here until about the early 1980s when habitat changes and range retraction led to quite marked losses in breeding numbers. 

Tree Pipit

 

The graph below shows the population changes of Tree Pipit found by combined results from Common Bird Census and Breeding Bird Survey 1966 -2009, BTO. 

Tree Pipit - BTO

Species noted but not caught today included Swallow, Pied Wagtail, Great-spotted Woodpecker, Lesser Redpoll and Kestrel.

Well, what do you know? two o' clock and it's raining again. At  least we made a start on our Oakenclough year.

Linking today to Eileen's Saturday and Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

CES Menorca Style

During my recent Menorcan fortnight I spent a morning with Javier Mendez helping out at his Constant Effort Ringing site near Mahon. It was the first visit of the 2014 Constant Effort regime whereby a comparable ringing session is carried out every 14-21 day period. The site is a working farm of crops and animals managed in an ecologically sustainable way.

Menorcan farm gate

Not only is Javier an extremely nice guy but he is very knowledgeable about Menorca and its flora and fauna. His website Menorca Walking and Birds offers tours of all sorts to experience the sights and sounds of Menorca. 

Javier Mendez

Javier Mendez

Javier and I caught 45 + birds including a good number of everyday “UK” birds like House Sparrow, Greenfinch, Goldfinch, Great Tit and Chaffinch, and also included more exotic fare like Turtle Dove, Nightingale, Cetti’s Warbler and Sardinian Warbler. We didn’t catch the resident Woodchats or a Hoopoe, and certainly not the Stone Curlews which provided a backing track to the morning’s work, but we did catch a migrant Redstart and a stunning Wood Warbler. 

Redstart

Wood Warbler

There are a good number of Turtle Dove in Menorca. Generally they are a shy species and keep a very safe distance, but in some resorts where pines and gardens flourish they seem to have lost their natural aversion to man and happily walk the footpaths with almost total disregard for passing tourists. 

Turtle Dove

Turtle Dove

The Spotted Flycatcher we caught was of the subspecies Muscicapa striata balearica, paler and smaller than the nominate race that migrates a long way north of the Balearic Islands of which Menorca is part. 

It is much harder to tell the two races apart in the field in early May when large numbers of migrants pass through Menorca on their way to Northern Europe. 

Spotted Flycatcher - Muscicapa striata balearica,

Spotted Flycatcher

Pied Flycatcher

Pied Flycatchers are strictly migrants on Menorca although they have been known to hang around nest boxes in the Spring until evicted by the Great Tits. There are no Blue Tits or Long-tailed Tits on Menorca. Apart from Ravens on the rocky outcrops and the single mountain El Toro, there are no crows on Menorca and the commonest birds during the summer months may well be the Nightingale, Sardinian Warbler and Cetti’s Warbler, which inhabit every clump of suitable habitat plus more besides. Menorca’s Cetti’s Warblers are not found exclusively in their normal reed and waterside habitat, but also in very dry areas which have the necessary impenetrable cover they require. 

Nightingale

Nightingale

Sardinian Warbler

Cetti's Warbler

My thanks to Javier for inviting me along to his CES session. I hope to catch up with him and his colleagues in 2015. 

In the meantime recent posts on Another Bird Blog feature Menorcan birds (click the tag "Menorca" or "Menorca birds") and there are still a number of photographs on my PC for a Menorca posting soon, so stay tuned.

Linking today to Theresa's Run A Round Ranch.