Now it's the terns turn

As well as a colony of Black Headed Gulls on our islands at the reserve, Common Terns are breeding. These are summer visitors and as such they arrive at the colony later than the gulls. Several pairs have attempted to breed with varying degrees of success. However, we decided to visit the island on Thursday evening to ring the six well grown tern chicks we could see from the hide. We ended up only ringing four chicks because two of them were so well developed they flew off as we got to the island. Good news for the terns but not so good for us. However, we were pleased with four as the first birds of our latest colour ringing scheme. This will last for up to five years and we look forward to sightings of 'our' Common Terns.

Lapwing chicks are superb

 

Back in mid February, using the thermal imaging camera to detect its presence, Gareth and Kevin caught their first Lawping at Great Bridgeford, Stafford.

During subsequent visits through the spring, they saw at least two pairs of Lapwing displaying over a sweetcorn field. After allowing time for the birds to nest and incubate any eggs, Gareth and Kevin returned in early June to see whether the birds had been successful. Armed with the thermal camera once more, they found that the Lapwings had indeed bred, with the heat signatures of five chicks found quite readily amongst the young sweetcorn plants.

The chicks were too young to ring, so Gareth and Kevin returned last weekend and found two amongst the sweetcorn - the others could have easily moved in the intervening time into the adjacent wheat fields, which are too dense for the camera to detect them.

As well as the standard metal rings, the birds were fitted with coded colour rings as part of a project across the West Midlands. The codes are white digits BR13 and BR14 on black rings, which makes them easier to identify in the future and help monitor their movements.

Please do let us know if you see either bird or message Kevin @Kevin_Clements or Gareth @BirderGaz directly on Twitter.

The thermal imaging camera makes finding these gorgeous chocks so much easier than in the past. As soon as the parent issues an alarm call the chicks crouch as low as possible and angle their heads back to cover the white collar at the back of the neck. The result is a soil coloured lump against soil coloured soil!! Before we had the camera we needed at leasy two observers with telescopes to get a fix on where the chick was last seen then guide the ringer in--regularly unsuccessful.

Very satisfying Kestrels

We put a box on a telegraph post on one of our farms a couple of years ago and last year it was taken up by what we suspect was a young pair of Kestrels--probably having their first breeding attempt. They were successful but produced only two eggs then fledging two chicks.
We suspect the same pair occupied the same box this year and on a preliminary inspection we were delighted to find a much more usual brood of 4 nestlings not long hatched.
I must admit it was with some trepidation that we visited the box this week hoping to ring the chicks. Trepidation because the previous couple of weeks had been consistently foul weather with lots of rain and below average temperatures. I wondered if the parents had been able to find sufficient food to help keep the chicks growing--while still being able to keep them warm.
I was delighted on reaching the top of the ladder to be faced with four very feisty chicks adopting their usual aggressive posture with talons whipping out to slash the unwary fingers. The chicks were well developed as you can see in the picture, and I fully expect all the chicks to continue developing well to fledging--especially now that the weather has picked up significantly.
It will be great to see if any of these chicks become paired and set up home in some of the other boxes we've put up on the farm.

 

Black Headed Gull Project Year 2

Last Summer we colour ringed 125 Black Headed Gull chicks in an effort to understand the movements of chicks from a new colony at our Belvide site. We have had some very interesting results some of which I've outline both here and in West Midland Bird Club newsletters. I decided that we would only ring chicks in two consecutive years because as time went on it clearly would not be regarded as a 'new' colony.

Terrible wet and windy weather on Saturday meant a complex but worthwhile change to Sunday when we were treated to sunny calm conditions perfect for the job. So it was that 17 souls in 4 teams with specific jobs mustered at 6 am ready for a detailed briefing.

The first team in action were our good friends from Cannock Sea Scouts whose very important job was to control movements of any chicks which decided they wanted to be elsewhere. They did a superb job and reported how much fun it had been doing something completely different. Tracey and son Henry seem to be enjoying themselves in the pictures below:-

Henry and Tracey on duty

The rest of the teams were assigned to ringing chicks on the island, on the shore and managing transport to and from the island. The birders also did a great job collecting those chicks hiding in the shore vegetation and passing them to the ringers.

We allowed ourselves just under an hour to get the job done and we were very successful with 108 chicks ringed. The picture below shows a well grown chick sporting a BTO metal ring on its right leg and a colour ring on its left which can be seen by birders with telescopes. This is why we get such a lot of reports from projects like this.

Now we wait and see where they disperse to. Big thanks to everyone who played a part yesterday!!  

From Africa with love

Whenever an email from the BTO ringing unit drops into your inbox, there's always a frisson of excitement--but most times it relates to a relatively common bird that you have ringed such as a Blue Tit, which has been found a few hundred metres from where you ringed it. Obviously still useful in its way ........ but every now and then something a bit special arrives.
Here is the notification form sent by the BTO a couple of days ago:-

 

I appreciate its not too clear but the key details are that a Sedge Warbler (recently fledged) was ringed by us at Belvide Reserve in Staffordshire on 8th August 2018. It was subsequently recaptured on 9th February in Mauritania over 4000 kms away!! In case, like me, your African geography is a bit sketchy--most of Mauritania is the western part of the  Sahara, between Morocco to the north and Senegal to the south.

 

This is the most distant recovery we as a group have had for Sedge Warbler, although it fits with what we know about the migration of this species. The date is a little intriguing in that it seems a bit early for this to be a bird on return migration from south of the Sahara--so maybe it has found suitable habitat in Mauritania and spent the winter there. Another piece in the migration jigsaw. It will be fascinating to see if we handle this bird back at Belvide later this year--watch this space!!