Redpolls and records

 We have had lots of Siskin on our feeders as have many people around the country. Although nowhere near as many, we have also had quite a few Redpoll also. These two species often wander together--but Redpoll ae much less obvious--often simply looking like " little brown jobs" from a distance without binoculars.

However, they are very attractive birds. They all have the characteristic, red patch on the head ( or poll a it was called in olden times) just like this female....

Males, especially at this time of year are quite unmistakeable, with a bright pinky/red breast. This is a particularly bright example...

Thanks to Paul for these pics from BPF this morning.

This morning the BTO journal Ringing and Migration dropped through the letterbox. It's research papers are a bit 'heavy', and it will be some time before I fight my way through them all. But at the rear of the journal once per year is the collection of data from ringers around the country. Having one of your birds in there is always a bit of a thrill--and this time we had a recovery of a bird which I had forgotten about. 

You can just about make out that it was a Chiffchaff ringed at Belvide at the end of August 2019. It was found ( unfortunately killed by a cat!!) in Switzerland mid March 2021--only the second ever British ringed Chiffchaff to be found in Switzerland!!

That in itself is cause for celebration--but I wonder what the back-story is here. I'm pretty sure it was probably bred near Belvide and caught before it set off on it's way south typically late September. So why did it turn up in Switzerland in March a couple of years later? Several possibilities..... was it slightly off course and on it's way back to the UK?; had it paired up with a Swiss mate and was settling down to breed there?; had it wintered in Switzerland for some reason.? The reality is we don't know--but it's fun thinking about the possibilities!!

Superb Siskin results!!!

 In my last post I mentioned that we had had controls of Siskins from abroad--now we have had feedback on those controls.

The German bird was originally ringed on 7th March 2023--there have only been 56 records of German Siskins found in the UK.

The Czech Republic bird caught on the same day had been ringed on 9th April 2023, there have only been 7 Siskins found in UK from there.

The Lithuanian bird was ringed 5th April 2021,there have only been 12 birds caught from Lithuania.

Close by ( around 2 miles) at one of our other sites we had a bird originally ringed in Poland, from where only 8 birds have ever been recovered.

SO--4 eastern European ringed birds within 1 week was an incredibly significant catch compared to the number of bird recovered here from those countries in over 100 years of the ringing scheme!!

It remains to be seen how many of the around 2000 Siskins we have ringed over the last month or so will be controlled in those same countries, where, presumably these birds will be returning to breed.

On a more domestic note--activity at our feeders is predictably dropping off as birds move out to breed--and summer visitors arrive back from wintering in southern countries.

This morning I had a male Blackcap, which showed an interesting feather feature......

It's often very difficult to age birds at this time of year--but this Blackcap showed a distinctive group of feathers on the wing.

You can see from the blue bar that the feathers under the bar are slightly browner than the grey feathers to the left of the bar. It actually was even more obvious on the real bird --the grey feathers are adult and the browner ones are remnant juvenile feathers so we can be confident this bird was reared in 2023.

More of a curiosity was this Goldfinch which Paul caught this morning...

Although rather more common in Redpoll, this Goldfinch is showing some gold feathers in the rwed head. It's probably a simple mutation. but I really have no further details than that. 

And now from a little further......

 We haven't heard yet any details from the 3 foreign controlled Siskin I reported on in my last mailing; but we caught another ringed bird 2 days ago which sheds a bit more light on the derivation of all these birds.

On the middle line of this ring you can clearly see the letters LITH; this bird was originally ringed in Lithuania, which is even further east than our previous birds.!!

A couple of us have visited the Kaliningrad region of Russia, which borders the eastern Baltic and is directly south of Lithuania. From our experiences, many thousands ( probably millions) of birds migrate along the Lithuanian and then the Kaliningrad coast before entering Poland and spreading out over Europe. Our suspicion is that at least some of the Siskin roaming around the UK at present are birds from Russia, this one of which was ringed en route in Lithuania. Time will tell, but we are quite hopeful that of the 2000+ Siskin we have ringed in the last 2 months, some of them may be controlled in eastern European countries where we think they have come from. Fingers crossed!!

Returns from far and wide!!

 This last few weeks have been crazy!! Every now and then we have a ''Siskin Year'', when for whatever reason, many more Siskins visit our gardens and feeding stations than is normal. The last time this happened was about 15 years ago.

We're not really certain what causes it but it must be something to do with the availability of their natural food ( Alder cone seeds), and the size of the population/success of breeding. It appears that the result is a mass emigration of these birds in all directions, with lots coming to the UK.

The result has been that we have ringed around 2000 in the last few weeks!! But it remained a mystery where they had all come from. Our only hint was a bird which had been ringed near Inverness, which we caught near the start of the invasion.

However, in the last 2 days we have ringed almost 150 new Siskin, but we have also controlled 4 birds already ringed by others. One is a British ringed bird, but the other 3 are very exciting........

You can just make out ND in the top line and SK in the middle line. The top line tells us the bird was ringed in POLAND, and the ringing centre is in GDANSK !! Looking forward to hearing more deatils in due course. The next one.........

Not quite as clear, but the middle line is HIDENSEE and the bottom line is GERMANIA--so this bird was ringed in Germany!! and finally 

The middle line here says PRAHA--so this bird was ringed in the Czech Republic!! 

It looks like this invasion is from birds in the central European area, and it's going to be really interesting to see exactly where they have come from--and how many more have been caught throughout the UK.

On a much more local note--but nonetheless valuable data, we re-trapped a Blue Tit a couple of days ago, and thought the number looked familiar. On checking we found that we originally ringed it on 14th December 2019, at Brewood Park Farm. Then again at the same site on 25th April 2023, and now on 23rd March 2024. A survivor!!

More news soon--especially when I find out where the Siskins came from.

It's a Siskin year!!

 In recent years I've posted quite a few comments about how our member Pat, who lives west of Welshpool, catches big numbers of Siskin in his garden. As an aside, here is a picture he sent a few days ago of a patch of lawn under his feeder....

A mouth-watering selection of Siskin, Chaffinch and Brambling! He sends these to the group now and then just to make the rest of us envious......

But over recent weeks, many of us have found numbers of Siskin visiting out feeders. Every now and then there is an expansion of the population and/or a crash in their natural food availability and they seek food in gardens. So over the last 2 weeks team members have caught several hundred of these delightful birds. A small clue as to their origins came from a bird we caught at our Kingswood Trust site, which was carrying a ring which had been put on 3 years ago just outside Inverness.!

Alongside Siskins, there are often numbers of another small finch, Redpolls. At a ringing demonstration last weekend at Jubilee Wood, we caught 40 Siskin and a dozen Redpoll---but one of the Redpoll was quite special. It was greyer, and bigger than 'our' Redpoll and it had a noticeably pale rump--which you can see on this picture...

Redpolls have a complex genetic system where birds from different areas of their wide breeding range, look slightly different. This bird was one of the Scandinavian race, called either a 'Common', or sometimes 'Mealy' Redpoll--from who knows where?

Paul is tearing his hair out at the spinner feeding stations at BPF, because he's getting good numbers of farmland finches and buntings coming ti feed, but the weather has been either too wet, windy or bright to catch many of them. However, he has caught a few such as this female Linnet

And this male Reed Bunting which illustrates an issue which I have posted previously....

We are almost into the breeding season and this male is almost showing its full breeding plumage -especially the black head. However, you can see that the black feathers actually have brown tips, which during the winter hide the black and prevent any bickering between males as they feed in flocks to find food. The brown tips wear off so that as w get to spring the birds then start to compete for females--clever eh?

 

Belvide Ringers 2023 Full Report

Another pioneering step !

 From 2016 when our group got the first thermal imager (loaned to us by the West Midland Bird Club) which has started a growing trend of using these machines in ringing, birding and general wildlife study, we have been looking for another major project to carry on similar pioneering work.

So it was that a few weeks ago we became the first group to attach GPS''ultra'' tags onto Jack Snipe at our study sites. Unfortunately tags which are small enough for deployment on Jack Snipe, don't yet have the technology to send a continuous signal to a satellite to enable us to follow the birds as they move around and migrate. However they do collect GPS data from satellites and so they are very accurate; the main issue being that we need to re-catch the birds in order to take off the tags and and download the data.

We are still working on this, and sorting out some red tape around data storage--but as soon as I can I will publish this really innovative work; and give a flavour of what we have found. Below is a picture of one tag which gives an idea of how small ( 1.2 gm) they are--how on earth do they get all that technology into a tag that size?? It's even got a solar panel to charge it's battery!!

In another unexpected turn, Gareth finally got details of a Sedge Warbler he caught in the summer at his new ex quarry site. Here is a photo of the recovery form we get via the BTO....

It's probably difficult for you to read but in essence the bird was ringed on 8th August 2024 at a site on the estuary of the river Seine in France. Astonishingly the bird then flew NORTH for 386 km to be recaptured by Gareth on 20th August 2024! Quite why it flew the 'wrong' way is anyone's guess but it's just one of the mysteries of migration which so fascinates us. We hope it managed to re-orientate and find it's way to Africa--but we'll probably never know; unless it's caught again......

Group members have been working hard again and we have managed some good catches this month--especially of finches as their natural food runs out and feeding stations become more important to them. I hope to provide more information next time on this, but for now I want to show a couple of pictures of Siskins, which are starting to visit feeders around here ( as well as at Pat's Siskin City in mid-Wales!!). These pics show the difference between males ( top) and females....

We are noticing a big imbalance between lots of adult birds compared to very few juveniles This often means they have had a poor breeding season--we will need to see the wider data from around the country before we can be definitive about this. More news as I get it.