Out on a good note

We ended 2019 on a really positive note on 29th December at another of our favourite farms in South Staffs, with a thermal imaging session.
Things got off to a poor start with very little seen in the first two fields--but things got better and we ended up with 12 new birds ringed--the most significant being 2 Woodcock. Jen continues to improve her netting skills--well done.
These are really smart birds and returns from conventional ringing ( mostly of birds that have been shot for food) suggest that some of these birds come from as far away as western Russia--to supplement those birds which breed here.

As you can see they are a chunky handful with very strong wings. They typically feed in damp fields at night and spend their days on woodland floors especially those covered in dead leaves so they blend in and become virtually invisible.

The previous picture shows how high on the head their eyes are and this tries to show that even from behind we can see their eyes---meaning they have 360 degree vision without turning their heads. This is a great adaptation for spotting potential predators--but sadly not much use if being shot at with a shotgun.

Things get off to a start in the New Year with a trainings session at one of the  Belvide feeding stations in the morning--news of that will follow.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our readers.

 

 

Excellent few days !!

After the festivities I'm sure many folk like me can't wait to get out into the field. Two field sessions in the last two days and a couple of reports have brightened us up no end!!
Friday evening saw us at our favourite farm in pretty good conditions. It was nice and dark although the high humidity did affect the performance of our thermal imaging cameras--fortunately not enough to stop the session.
One of our Belvide birder buddies Nige helpfully agreed to come out with me for his first session as my netter. His field skills easily transferred to the task and between us  Kev and Jen we caught 10 Skylarks, 5 Fieldfare and one each of Jack Snipe, Blackbird and Redwing.

I've posted pictures of Skylarks previously--but I never tire of seeing these belting birds!

This was a great result for a session which was arranged only that lunchtime. We arranged it because I had decided to postpone a planned overnight session for Common and Jack Snipe at our regular site for these species. The forecast was for gusting winds--which didn't really arrive so I was pretty disappointed this morning and felt a big opportunity had been missed.
So a quick phone call to another Kev ( my good mate Dave's trainee) who jumped at the chance to check out the site with the thermal imager to see if we could find any Jack Snipe--and check on how many Common Snipe we could have possibly caught the night before.....
As things turned out, there were still 40+ Common Snipe, and around 30 Jack Snipe at the site so it's still worth trying if there is decent still weather soon. We had a record-breaking catch of Jack Snipe--with 10 new birds ringed and one retrap from last month.

This gives you an idea of how Jack Snipe use their cryptic colouration to avoid detection--by staying rock still. Image how difficult it would be to spot this bird if the oak leaves were not there and it was hiding against grass stems.

 

I have posted previously about our on-going Black Headed Gull colour ringing scheme. Over the last two days we have had two further sightings --one of a bird ringed in 2018 and seems to be wandering around not far from the colony. The second was a bird hatched and ringed this year and sighted in Cheshire. The following pictures demonstrate why colour ringing can be very useful. Observers can initially see that a bird has a colour ring with only binoculars:-

If they are keen, a quick look with a telescope can confirm the details on the ring and an email speedily puts observer and ringer in touch

 

 

 

New training programme off to a flying start

We have decided to try to systematise our training programme during the winter--just like we do in the late summer by trying to have sessions every Wednesday and Saturday mornings--weather permitting-- mainly at various feeding stations we operate. Other ad hoc sessions will also be offered but we hope that regularity will help especially those poor trainees who have to go to work--to be able to plan.

The first session was on Saturday in my garden and was a real success. We caught 27 new birds--Greenfinches, Goldfinches, Robins, Coal Tits and Blue tits ( obvs!!).

Jen and Liz were able to come along so they had good extraction practice, and because we were not in any particular rush, they were able to spend more time than usual in really getting to grips with some of the finer points of ageing and sexing birds. Some of which I would have loved to show readers here........but we got SO absorbed that we forgot to take any pictures--I will rectify this next time!!

Back in action -AT LAST !!!

The rain finally eased off, the winds slowed a little and the moon has both started to wane, and kept itself below the horizon until the early morning--so thermal imaging and lamping has started again--whoopee!!
Friday night saw us wandering the fields at our regular farm site, and although we had a few technical problems we ended up with a very interesting catch indeed. Only 11 new birds but of 6 different species:- 3 Skylark, 3 Fieldfare, 2 Jack Snipe, and 1 each of Stock Dove, Grey Partridge and Redwing

We have shown pictures of Skylark previously--but I never tire of seeing them so here's another from Friday:-

 

What we haven't previously shown you is the strange structure of the 'secondary flight feathers' These are the main feathers on the inner half of the wing--and on most birds they are fairly unremarkable. However, on Skylarks the secondaries are a beautiful and a different shape to any other common bird-that we've seen anyway!. You can clearly see on this isolated secondary feather that rather than having a smoothly rounded end as in most species, they have a distinctive dip between the inner and

.

outer webs of the feathers. Evolutionary biologists would point to this as an adaptation adding to the success in evolution of this species--but quite what advantage this bestows upon the Skylark I haven't a clue.

Our regular morning catches of large numbers of Redwing have stopped until late Autumn 2020--but there are still a lot of these Scandinavian thrushes around. Their favoured roosting places are in dense vegetation such as Rhododendron or Holly bushes--but occasionally we find them roosting on the ground as did this bird. It's usually when the weather is reasonably mild and the shelter of dense bushes isn't quite so important.

I've never really understood why they got the name because as you can see it' only part of the underwing that's red--and even then it's more of a rusty orange than 'red'. Look out for these birds in often large flocks feeding on invertebrates found on bare fields during the winter.

I have shown pictures of Jack Snipe ( 'Jack' an old word for 'small') previously, but again I never get sick of this delightful bird so here goes another:-

 

You can see how small these birds are against my own ( small) hands. Although the flash tends to bleach colours, it is possible to see the main stripes on the back and head as pale yellow--pointing to this being a juvenile bird ( along with other features)--adult birds have golden stripes.

Other team members have caught Stock Doves roosting on the ground but this was the first one that I have caught. Again the picture doesn't do it justice--especially the lovely metallic green lustre round the back of the neck. With imagination you can also just make out some darker feathers near the bend of the wing showing that this is a juvenile bird--the dark feathers are remaining from when the bird first left the nest.

 

AND THIS MORNING--Kev and son Gareth put sleep aside and visited another farm for some early morning lamping with the thermal imager--followed by a mist netting session at some feeders on the farm. They caught a very respectable 3 Skylark, 1 Fieldfare and 1 Redwing in the fields, then

 3 Linnet, 3 Chaffinch, 3 House Sparrow, 2 Dunnock and a Wren at the feeder. 

 

 

 

2019 Belvide Ringing Report

The 2019 Belvide Ringing Report

Overview:

A great year!! This is the first complete year when our ringing group has adopted the name Belvide Ringers as a sign of our commitment to Belvide. It made it even sweeter then, that 2019 was yet another record breaking year for the Belvide ringing project. We ringed more individual birds during the late summer/post breeding season than in any previous year. An unexpected new species in the form of a couple of Linnets increased the total species ringed at the site to 68 !!

Background:

It’s really fascinating to witness the year-on-year changes in the numbers and species ringed at Belvide. We can often only conjecture about the reasons why these changes occur—although with some species we can be a little more certain (see later).

Roger Clay’s operation at the West End continues to work well, and continued habitat work should result in increased totals as the years move on. This year he contributed 469 new birds. Within this there are some really fascinating differences from the main area—almost twice as many Blackbirds, SEVEN times the number of Song Thrush, half the Long Tailed Tits and an equal number of Bullfinch. To put these figures into context, Roger manages significantly fewer sessions due to work commitments, and only about a quarter of the total of nets. All of which points to the West End operation playing a great part in providing a much more complete picture of the birds at Belvide.

The two factors which appear to have the biggest influence on breeding success at Belvide are weather conditions during the breeding season, and the available habitat for nesting. Overall the weather was pretty good but yet again the water levels were very high until late in the season which inhibits reed growth thereby slowing down Reed Warbler breeding—as well as reducing the available nesting habitat for Sedge Warblers.

The weather during the ringing season was very good, good numbers of ringers were available and no sessions were lost—added to which passage was good with a constant movement of new birds through the site from quite an early date. 

 

Totals Summary Belvide 2013-2019                                                           

Species	2019	2018	2017	2016	2015	2014	2013
Mallard	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
Sparrowhawk	0	1	1	0	1	0	1
Kestrel	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Moorhen	0	10	2	2	0	0	0
Snipe	0	0	0	1	0	1	0
Water Rail	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Lapwing	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Oystercatcher	0	0	0	0	0	0	(2)
Black Headed Gull pulli	115	139	0	0	0	0	0
Lesser Black Backed Gull	0	1	0	0	0	0	0
Common Tern pulli	4	2	0	0	0	0	0
Swift	0	0	191	2	76	0	4
Kingfisher	9	3	6	3	4	11	6
Gr Spot W’peck	2	2	0	2	2	1	0
Sand Martin	28	5	42	3	9	20	0
House Martin	0	53	45	7	87	38	0
Swallow	2	5	6	19	32	1	3
Tree Pipit	0	2	2	0	0	0	0
Meadow Pipit	17	19	24	8	2	142	123
Pied Wagtail	0	0	0	0	2	0	0
Yellow Wagtail	0	0	0	0	1	0	0
Grey Wagtail	0	0	0	1	0	0	0
Stock Dove	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Woodpigeon	0	0	2	0	0	0	1
Tawny Owl	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Robin	36	23	41	14	25	32	22
Redstart	1	1	1	0	0	3	0
Whinchat	0	0	1	0	0	0	0
Blackbird	23	16	12	9	3	18	6
Song Thrush	7	3	6	1	2	0	0
Redwing	2	6	4	0	0	6	2
Fieldfare	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Pied Flycatcher	0	0	0	1	0	0	0
Spot Flycatcher	2	5	0	0	0	5	0
Dunnock	41	18	51	17	31	17	24
Wren	52	30	58	40	40	47	24
Goldcrest	40	13	36	3	12	31	1
Nuthatch	5	7	2	2	4	3	1
Treecreeper	9	5	1	0	4	3	4
Cetti’s Warbler	1		2	0	0	0	0
Chiffchaff	405	190	498	300	204	274	154
Willow Warbler	72	74	93	58	43	45	20
G’pper Warbler	1	1	10	0	1	0	0
Reed Warbler	344	269	336	178	169	199	93
Sedge Warbler	386	341	431	267	274	95	63
Lesser Whitethroat	18	10	20	17	5	10	8
Whitethroat	31	50	50	15	18	16	19
Blackcap	861	363	355	208	116	109	60
Garden Warbler	28	40	31	12	17	18	16
Blue Tit	299	147	156	69	73 (+93)	91	109
Great Tit	98	74	60	43	43 (+38)	55	57
Coal Tit	8	2	2	2	8	2	3
Long Tailed Tit	85	65	42	19	22	31	21
Willow Tit	1	0	1	1	0	0	2
Marsh Tit	3	1	1	0	1	2	2
Bullfinch	23	4	7	6	8	12	6
Chaffinch	10	1	1	2	3	2	16
Greenfinch	0	1	0	0	0	6	3
Goldfinch	10	3	18	13	6	8	5
Redpoll	0	0	0	0	1	0	1
Linnet*	2	0	0	0	0	0	0
Yellowhammer	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Reed Bunting	45	29	37	12	24	124	25
House Sparrow	0	0	1	0	0	0	0
Tree Sparrow	16	4	39	12	0	14	10
Jay	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Magpie	1	0	0	0	0	0	0
Starling	185	32	0	0	1	64	0
Total	3360 Of 44sp	2080 Of 45sp	2714 Of 44sp.	1367 Of 37 sp.	1374 Of 38sp.	1497 of 38sp.	925 of 37 sp.

Discussion Points:

There are many possible areas for discussion but the main ones are:-

--the stand out figure is the number of Blackcaps ringed (861), which is almost three times the previous record. This mirrors reports from other ringing stations in the country and was mainly a result of early arrival followed by successful breeding. Indeed, in September we were catching young birds with newly fledged type plumage, suggesting that many Blackcaps certainly had two broods and several possibly three!

 

-- Reed and Sedge Warblers had good totals but our feeling is that their numbers really picked up once migration started suggesting the water levels did reduce breeding success on site.

--less regularly caught warblers such as Lesser and Common Whitethroats appear to at least be holding their own after several years of low numbers

--local breeders, such as tits, Wren, Dunnock, etc all have had at least a reasonable and in some cases very good breeding seasons linked to the generally good weather.

--the low numbers of hirundines is more a reflection of the good weather during the ringing period –we catch big numbers when there are cold and damp conditions

--the high number of Starlings reflects the increased effort put in to ring these.

Reports of Ringed birds:

Despite records in newly ringed birds, the number of birds we ringed which were reported elsewhere was disappointingly low.

Others may come through , but as a write we have had only 5 reports of our ringed birds-all Sedge Warblers, and all from the various well known ringing sites in the big estuaries through northern and mid France. These reinforce what we already know about the route and speed of movement of our birds so I have not repeated the same type of data from these recoveries that I have included in previous reports.

We have had some reports of the 115 nestling Black Headed Gulls we ringed but these will be reported when we produce a report specifically on that project.

Finally, we ringed only 4 Common Tern chicks this year with both metal and colour rings, which enabled someone birding at Crosby Marina to spot one of those tern chicks as it dispersed from Belvide. Interestingly it moved north—before presumably heading south for the winter. We hope that in future years we will be able to ring more tern chicks and thereby produce a report on their dispersal and possible return to their natal colony.

STOP PRESS- we have a report of one of our Sedge Warblers found in Mauritania !! In case you’re not quite sure where that is—if you find Morocco, travel south through Western Sahara, then you get to Mauritania. This is our most distant recovery of a Sedge Warbler and another piece in the jigsaw of where these birds travel to spend the winter.

This juvenile bird ( hatched probably at Belvide in early July)—was ringed on 8^th August at Belvide, and was controlled by a ringer in Mauritania on the 9^th February 2019 – a distance of 4226 kilometers from Belvide. This is an interesting date—was this bird spending the winter in Mauritania, or had is started it’s northward migration back ‘home’? These questions will be much easier to answer when we are able to fit real time data loggers on to these small birds and track them in detail. For now though- a great record!

                        

In conclusion:

It’s only by concerted teamwork that an operation like ours can be successful. Most obviously we rely on our team of ringers to be available for what is a considerable time commitment over three months—thanks team.

However, there are many others we would like to thank:-

-- the committee of the West Midland Bird Club give us permission to ring on the site, and their moral support throughout is invaluable,

-- the Belvide management team provide lots of support, from calling in when we are ringing to see how things are going—to helping prepare the ringing site during the annual work party programme, their banter is always a welcome addition to our ringing sessions!!

--our dear friend Gladys Chappell is no longer with us but her support for our gull and other studies is still much appreciated,

--the many WMBC members who stop by at out our sessions and show interest probably don’t fully realise how much we appreciate their interest.

To all of those above we say a sincere THANK YOU, and hope to see you all again in 2020.

Colin McShane December 2019