Jen is up and running!!

 It's been a pretty poor week for ringing with awful weather affecting most of our planned sessions. However, we did manage to squeeze in a thermal imaging session midweek at a local farm, a new feeding site, and a Starling roost at Belvide last night.

The roost of many thousands of birds has almost broken up completely now as the reedbed has been almost flattened by the large numbers. We had almost given up when a few birds dropped in and we ringed a useful 16 Starlings and 1 Reed Bunting--a very manageable catch for a small team including a trainee.

The most interesting/exciting event this week has been that our newly qualified ringer Jenni has now got her rings and ringing kit together and has started on the exciting business of ringing on her own. This is a really interesting time for any ringer--but we think few ringers at her stage of development would have such species as :- Woodcock, Grey Partridge, Skylark and Great Spotted Woodpecker on their totals list in their first week!! We have some very good sites which new ringers can take on and further our operation. Well done Jen and here's to the future.

Here's a picture of Jen holding her first solo Woodcock:-

They are brilliant birds and seem to have arrived from Scandinavia in big numbers.

Like most ringers, Jen has also started ringing in her garden, and one of the first birds she ringed was this splendid adult male Blackbird:-

It's obviously a male due to it's black plumage and an adult because ( among plumage features) it has a completely yellow bill and complete yellow eye ring.

I hope that we will get some ringing in over the Christmas period--which I'll post on here as soon as possible.

Here's wishing all of our readers a Merry Christmas in these very strange times and a hope that 2021 will bring us all better times. From all of the team here at Belvide Ringers

Elder Statesman defines the meaning of Commitment !!

 Pete established the group years ago and has been ringing since colour tellys were still a novelty! But he is still so enthusiastic--providing a great role model for our trainees. During the summer months he was as usual a stalwart of the post breeding ringing sessions twice every week with unholy time starts--but not content with this he's made a habit over recent years of leading the way on ringing Redwings. Before we had the current sound lure for Redwings, we call the Latvian Love Song; Pete, I and others would venture forth in the midst of winter to one of the coldest places on earth ( Sandon Estate). We would put up 7-10 nets in the cold, wait for dusk when the birds came in to roost and catch maybe 10 Redwing if we were lucky; then come home frozen but well pleased with our efforts. Fast forward then to the operation nowadays. Pete has two or three nets set up ready to unfurl in his walled garden site. He rises at a leisurely 05.30 (!!!???) EVERY morning since mid October, turns on the Love Song and the Redwings keep on coming.

Around this time of year for some reason they seem to lose interest so this week Pete has called time on his exploits for this year. His commitment has been tremendous, ably supported by Paul, Sam and other trainees, and his total number of Redwings ringed over the past couple of months is.....948 !!! This is one of his highest totals ever, and but for some site issues at the start of the season and some terrible weather over recent weeks he would probably have ringed well over 1000 birds. Hats off to his efforts as a sign of his continued enthusiasm. Well done Pete!

On other fronts, Kev has been ploughing his own isolation furrow at his sites and also helping with others to offer our trainees quite a bit of experience over the last week, with sessions involving feeding stations, Jack Snipe, Starling and farm roosts. We have ringed over 200 new birds including 83 Redwing, 30, Goldfinch, 22 Skylarks, 14 Jack Snipe, 12 Starlings, 7 Reed Buntings, 7 Fieldfare, 2 Woodcock, and one each of Goldcrest, Green Woodpecker and Yellowhammer. It's great to see our trainees taking up as many of these opportunities as they can--work, family and other commitments allowing of course.

Some feedback on Controls/Recoveries

 It's always exciting when you catch a bird that is already wearing a ring which has been put on by someone else--we tend to refer to these as 'controls'.

I have mentioned two birds recently, a Starling and a Fieldfare which we caught and were already wearing rings. We have now had the details of these and as always they tell interesting stories.

First the Fieldfare we controlled last weekend had originally been ringed by members of the West Midland Ringing Group at a farm site only about 10 Km from Belvide, in December 2019. This may not at first sight seem particularly interesting but given a moments thought.....It was originally caught as a juvenile bird on it's first migration to the UK from it's breeding site somewhere north and east of here--Scandinavia and points east. In April 2020 it would have flown back to its natal area and probably spent the summer raising its first brood(s) of chicks. What is quite interesting is that it has returned to practically the same area in the UK this winter--having flown several thousand Km on the return journey. I'm not sure I've read that much about wintering site fidelity in this species--but here's a bit of evidence that it may exist more widely.

Second a couple of weeks ago I reported excitement at our control of a Starling at our Belvide roost carrying a Lithuanian ring. As I suspected it had been ringed at the large observatory at Ventes Ragas in Lithuania. It was originally ringed as a juvenile bird in July 2017- probably as part of one of the massive juvenile flocks which Starlings form post-breeding. This observatory has some of the huge cage traps which can catch sometimes thousands of birds at a time. Whether, like the Fieldfare, this bird has made repeat visits to the Belvide area to winter we don't know, but it sure enough has spent this winter here--again with several long distance return migrations to breed back in Lithuania.

Finally one the other way! This week we heard of one of our Sedge Warblers which we ringed as a juvenile on 16th July at Belvide--probably a bird which had just fledged from a nest at the reserve. It was controlled  in August by one of the French ringing groups which operate a number of sites at some of the very large estuary reed-bed sites across France.

As you can see this bird was controlled in northern France no doubt on its first southward migration to Africa. This is part of a well documented pattern for 'our' birds as we have had several similar recoveries over recent years. Records such as this have, over the years, been the backbone of the study of migration. By putting together large numbers of individual records such as this science has been able to build a pretty comprehensive picture of where many species migrate to and the routes they take to get there. However, there is still much to learn. For example for all three of these birds we know nothing about where they were in the intervening time between ringing and recapture. Over the coming years we will be able to get much richer data from the use of satellite tracking. Unfortunately this isn't yet possible ( or affordable) for such small birds and for amateur groups--but it's coming and I can't wait!!

We have been active during the last week and I shall provide a run down on our results shortly.

 

Commitment and Fortitude in Abundance!!

Apologies for this late post--it's been a very busy period one way and another. 

The weather since my last post has been variable to say the least, with sun, rain, frost and fog really testing the resolve of team members--but they have come through with flying colours!!

Pete has been battling through with help from Paul and Sam and has managed to get out pretty well every morning on his Redwing project and has managed to ring over 140 this week in not brilliant conditions. One of those birds was potentially a bit more interesting than the others:-

The bird on the left is actually a tad bigger than normal and generally much darker on the breast which you can just make out. The general consensus is that such birds originate from Iceland--it would be great if someone in Iceland could pick up our bird next breeding season!

Pete usually catches a small number of other species, including Blackbirds--including one this week with a wing length exceeding 140 mm which points to it probably being of Scandinavian origin; showing again how important the UK is for supporting birds from far and wide especially during the winter.

Kevin burned the candle from both ends on Tuesday! Up before first light he was at our Patshull site catching 20 Redwing, 2 Fieldfare and 5 Yellowhammer as well as other birds. Just to demonstrate how unpredictable ( and exciting!!) our hobby can be; Kev turned his back to set a net and when he turned back this beauty had flown into a net:-

We've shown you Woodcock at night but it's pretty unusual to catch them in the daytime. One aspect I don't think we've mentioned is the tip of the bill. You can see that the upper mandible is slightly longer that the lower and so forms a sort of cap to help push the beak through the soil in search of food. The end of the bill is very sensitive ( pretty useful as the bird obviously can't see the worms !) and it is also flexible so that it can open the end few centimetres in order to get hold of food-- how cool is that!

Kev stayed on site all day in an attempt to catch Redwing going in to roost. It didn't work but he did catch a nice range of other birds including 12 Goldcrests giving an indication of just how many of these tiny birds must be wintering in the extensive woodland on the site. Son Gareth ventured out to one of his farm sites but was unlucky not to have a bigger catch --just one of those things --and I'm sure he will continue undaunted!

Also on Tuesday I gave a Zoom presentation to the annual ( virtual) BTO conference on the work we're doing on censusing Jack Snipe. The feedback has been positive and the talk can be found on You Tube under BTO Conference Session 2--the third talk of three in that session if you are completely devoid of anything better to do! 

We had some good news last week in that two of our trainees have now qualified as 'C' ringers and can now operate on their own while still overseen by our trainers. We are still doing our best to give our other trainees opportunities and on Saturday we had sessions at two of our feeding stations. These provide lots of tits for them to practice their extraction skills, and currently lots of Goldfinch which provide interesting challenges to their ( and our!!) ageing and sexing skills.

On Sunday we again put on a session for trainees at a Starling roost. Unfortunately the best laid plans can go wrong--in this case the Starlings ( apart from 2) all landed a few metres from the nets... damn!! However, we did catch 13 Reed Buntings which always prove demanding in terms of getting their sex-but particularly their age correct.

Last night I took some of our birding team from Belvide out to show them the lamping/thermal imaging process. It was a bizarre evening with patchy dense fog but we managed a small but beautifully put together catch of only three birds. The guys really enjoyed a Skylark in the hand and I never cease to be amazed by these little beauties:-

Finding Jack Snipe feeding on stubble fields is one of the novel things thermal imaging has discovered.

The last bird was a Fieldfare:-

They are always really smart birds--the next picture shows how we sex them in the hand:-

The shape of the black centres to the crown feathers is key and the feather circled shows the black to be fatter at the base of the feather with a tapering black line up the feather shaft--making this a female. The males have a much fatter black centre to the crown feathers.

However more exciting was the fact that this bird was already carrying a ring!! It had been ringed in the UK in December 2019, but we will have to wait a while to get more details--it's the first 'control' Fieldfare I've ever had--just goes to show that even after 40+ years there's still new experiences to be had in this brilliant hobby!! 

 

 

Weather not kind this week

 It's been a frustrating week with the weather conspiring to either stop any activity or severely reduce success. Early morning rain and frost really hampered Pete's progress with Redwing and he ended the week with a creditable 113 new birds plus a couple of Goldcrest and a Blackbird-testament to his tenacity and effort.

Kevin also put in the effort and managed to squeeze in 3 sessions at the racecourse and 3 at a couple of farms. It's fair to say that at least two of these were a lot of effort for little reward--however he managed a creditable 50 Redwing, 5 Blackbird, 2 each of Starling, Great Tit, Yellowhammer and Fieldfare and 1 each of Dunnock, Wren and Reed Bunting.

We don't have much in the way of pictures from this week--but Kevin has sent a couple from one of his sessions:- first a juvenile male Blackbird

You can see it's a male because it's predominantly black, and juvenile because although it's yellow eye ring is almost complete, it's beak is not fully yellow--and key is that the outer wing feathers are brown because these are the feathers the bird first grew in the nest. It will moult these out into jet black feathers next autumn.

This is a Fieldfare:-

Suffice to say these are simply just stunningly beautiful birds.

Yesterday we trusted the weather forecast ( which hadn't worked earlier in the week!!) and fortunately it paid off as the rain and mizzle cleared enough for us to try again at the Starling roost. Numbers have built up this week and we were pleased to ring 43 new birds plus 6 Reed Buntings and a Redwing. Sadly none of the Starlings were carrying foreign rings but who knows where ours will distribute to next year. We will post details of our Lithuanian control when data comes through.

Here's hoping for some better weather--and what might be a purple patch for lamping as the moon phase and setting times are looking good from the end of next week.

 

SO MUCH ACTION----and a Cracker from Kaunas!!!

 Notwithstanding the lock-down, team members have been working within the guidelines and putting on a range of activities to keep our great trainees active and making progress. In summary we have ringed around 300 new birds of around 25 species this week--a remarkable effort! Activities have been of 4 main types:-

Pete and Kev have battled manfully against poor weather conditions ( windy) but have still managed to ring about 120 new Redwings this week-- Pete had now ringed almost 650 Redwings this autumn so far. It just shows what can be achieved with determination and dedication. As well as Redwing, Pete also caught a few Goldcrests and a Blackcap this week. Who knows how many of these birds winter in UK--ringing has shown that most of them have bred in eastern Europe and manage to find sufficient food here to get them through without migrating to north Africa. Pete also caught this stunning male Blackbird:-

You can tell it's a male because it is black--but you can also tell its a first year bird from the black bill, no yellow eye ring and brown outer wing feathers.

Kevin Gareth and Paul have operated at feeding stations this week with the usual (very important for trainees) array of common birds. However, K and G had a good bird this morning in the form of a Cetti's warbler--not a great looker; but a sign of the increasing colonisation of this essentially southern European species. Some early reward for the effort put in to constructing their snazzy new feeding station!!

The Cettis warbler caught this morning

The new feeding station.

Teams have also been out with the thermal imagers on several nights this week with considerable success. We have ringed over 80 Skylarks, which is impressive on it's own, but the big news this week is the arrival of Woodcock in good numbers. We have a breeding population of Woodcock in the UK, but numbers are raised massively in winter by the arrival--usually from mid November of birds from northern Europe and maybe even as far as the Urals. This week we have ringed 8 Woodcock of which one is shown :-

Tonight we added a fourth activity which is really important in a trainees progress--a Starling roost. This requires several important skills as well as extraction, ageing and sexing these superb birds. We also usually catch a few Reed Buntings ( 7 tonight) which can also be challenging to age and sex. We ended up with 18 new Starlings--a suitable number to handle--but without doubt the star bird already had a ring on it, and it was on the bird's left leg so I knew it wasn't one of ours.......................

Here's the bird--an adult male Starling:-

And here are three pictures of the ring:-

You can see this ring says

                                            '' ZOOL. MUS. KAUNAS (ie Zoological Museum of Kaunas)

                                              LITHUANIA

                                                KH 72923

So this bird was ringed in Lithania, and is spending this winter in the UK, at Belvide!! We will get further details when we have put the number through the system and we will report it here.

PS I mentioned the prospect of some pretty finches in my last post--we had to put that off for a while but we hope to have news in a couple of weeks.......

  

Back in action!!

After some debate about exactly WHERE we can ring during the lockdown, the BTO has now clarified the rules and the great news is that so long as we comply with limiting the number in effect to two people, we can continue. As readers will know we have a number of trainees and in ringing it certainly is of paramount importance for trainees to literally keep their hand in-so we are putting on as many sessions as we can and limiting attendance to 1 trainee per trainer. You'll see from the following notes that we have been pretty successful both in terms of numbers/species ringed and providing training opportunities. Just by way of providing a flavour of this, we've put on sessions at feeding stations, Redwing sites, roosts and evening thermal imaging. Within the group we've ringed 204 Redwing when according to most contacts it's not the best year for Redwing numbers. One of the exciting birds caught at these sessions was this superb juvenile male Sparrowhawk...

 

There are two clues to it being a juvenile-first the vertical blotches on the breast ( horizontal lines in an adult), and second the bright yellow iris which becomes orange in adults. We determine the sex of Sparrowhawks--like most birds of prey, on size--generally males are significantly smaller than females.

Thermal imaging sessions have been very successful--even in conditions of bright moonlight when we wouldn't normally try. However there have been a series of evenings with no moonlight recently and catches have been good as a result. One evening in particular saw us break our own record in catching 40 new Skylarks in a couple of hours. To put this in context until recently when a few of us started

using thermal imagers to help catch Skylarks, there were only around 200 caught in the whole of the UK every year!!

One of the most surprising catches however, was in a well grown crop of something where we felt we wouldn't see anything....We did see a bird, caught it and found it was this little beauty......

This is a most unexpected juvenile male Stonechat. A cracking little bird and certainly the first we have caught like this--and we'd be very surprised if anyone else has caught one of these using a thermal imager.

We are hoping to catch more Skylarks and Starlings this week--and we hope a rather pretty finch --more news on all of these later.

Bye bye for a while

Hi all--as you all know we are in Lockdown version 2 at the moment; and the full implications for our operation aren't completely clear just yet. When things are a bit clearer I will start posting again--but until then I'll sign off for a while Colin

Netting, Lamping, Training and Twitching--a busy week!!!

 We have now moved well and truly into our Autumn/Winter programme with a range of sessions at various times so I have decided to complete a weekly round up of what's been going on--here's the first of the new approach.

The weather this week has been pretty bad with strong winds and frequent rain so it's a testament to the dedication of the team that we have achieved so much.

Throughout the week Pete and Paul have hosted a daily Redwing catching session in the walled garden which affords a bit of protection against the wind. Trainees have been to every sessions and over 100 Redwings have been ringed--with Kev chipping in with a few more when the weather has allowed at his racecourse site. Sterling efforts!!

On the one decent day Gareth was able to have a ringing session and added a range of typical winter birds from his farm site. Glynn had been clearing out his garage and found some bamboo ringing poles that he offered to all in the team. Gareth was quickest off the mark and is now the proud owner of some virtually new poles--as you can see:-

One of the better aspects of dull weather is that it can give the opportunity of decent lamping with our thermal imagers. It's been building up to a full moon this week so we need some cloud cover to not be too obvious to the birds when we are trying to see and catch them at night. 

Gareth and dad Kevin went out early in the week and had a decent catch--with the star bird being the first Woodcock we have ringed this season. In fact its the only one we have seen so far.

They are fabulous birds--of which more details as the season progresses I hope. A last minute decision on Thursday afternoon prompted a lamping session on one of our local farms as part of us surveying their land. It turned out to be a pretty successful evening with 14 Skylarks and a Song Thrush ringed--but star status was a Common Snipe as you can see :-

These are usually very skittish and fly off readily but this one stuck around. You can see the long bill which it uses to probe into he soil to find invertebrates. Finding these birds feeding on arable fields at night is one of the discoveries our lamping efforts have uncovered. It was very exciting that just as we were about to leave the last field I picked up a thermal signal from what I initially thought was my first Woodcock of the season--exciting enough. But as we got closer it became obvious it was a Short Eared Owl !! This is a pretty rare bird around these parts but unfortunately for us it turned its head away from the lamplight and flew off with what looked like a Skylark in its talons.

With the poor weather at home and rare birds turning up nationally, Kev decided to put in a touch of twitching. Unfortunately his day trip to Scilly to see the American Indigo Bunting proved fruitless--but ever the optinmist he then went just a few miles south where a Red Flanked Bluetail --an Asian relative of our Robin had been seen and ringed in a small wood. After a long and nail biting wait the bird eventually appeared and Kev managed to get a record shot:-

This is a photo taken through his scope--you can see it's a bit like a Robin but you can also see the blue tail even in this juvenile bird. This is one of the species which until about 10 years ago was a mythical bird hardly ever seen in this country. But for some reason it has expanded its range and now they are breeding in Finland in big numbers and also in Norway. As a result we are getting almost annual records of sightings in this country.

Last night I offered 4 trainees a session trying to catch Reed Buntings at our Belvide reserve. These birds roost in reed beds sometimes in big numbers. They are also a bit of a challenge to age and sex so an ideal opportunity for training. We ringed 20 birds and caught another which had been ringed elsewhere which is always exciting-more news of that when we find out the details. The Starlings are starting to build up their roost also but I didn't really want to catch any of those as they are difficult to extract and I didn't have any other experienced ringers in the team so I put a sound lure for them away from the nets. As luck would have it a few of them decided to ignore the sound and 13 bundled into the nets--fortunately a reasonable number for us to handle. In fact Starlings also are great birds for trainees because they are a challenge for them to extract-and they show some interesting ageing and sexing features. One fairly simple way of sexing them is shown in the two pictures below:-

This is a male Starling as can be seen by the fact that it's iris is uniformly black. The lighter crescent on the right of the eye is actually part of the eyelid. Compare this to this female Starling's iris colour:-

In a few moths time sexing will be even easier as the base of the beak will change colour--aptly a blue base for males and pink for females.

A netting session for trainees at one of our feeders wasn't very productive but it did produce a Nuthatch which already had a ring on. It wasn't one which had been ringed elsewhere--but it had been ringed at the same site 6 years ago!! The average lifespan for this species is around 2-3 years so this girl has done very well. The record for Nuthatch is 12 years so she has some way to go! Longevity is another aspect of ringing birds which not everyone realises.

Finally, at last night's roost session, Jen took this really beautiful picture of the sunset at Belvide:-

I will post next week's roundup probably at the weekend--assuming lockdown arrangements allow up to do anything..........

The Clements on Tour !!

Last week, team members Kevin and son Gareth Clements went on a birding holiday to Shetland. At this time of year, the archipelago offers the prospect of finding rare birds from as far as Asia and North America.

The week didn't disappoint, with the duo identifying only the fifth North American Blackpoll Warbler to be found on Shetland, as well as finding an Arctic Redpoll (also from North America) and a Little Bunting (from northern Eurasia). 

With permission of our colleagues in the Shetland Ringing Group and the landowner, Gareth and Kevin were able to spend some time ringing birds in a garden and adjacent plantation on Bressay, one of the smaller islands lying to the east of Shetland mainland. 

The cottage and ringing site on Bressay

During the week, they ringed a total of 77 birds, as follows:

7 Siberian Chiffchaff 
1 Woodcock
9 Goldcrest
2 Common Chiffchaff
24 Wren
12 Robin
8 Blackcap
7 Blackbird
3 Redwing
1 Lesser Redpoll
1 Siskin
1 Song Thrush
1 Starling

Siberian Chiffchaff is regarded as a race ( called the 'tristis race) of Common Chiffchaff that breeds in Asia east of the Ural Mountains. Birds winter mainly in India, but several stray to western Europe each autumn. But 6 caught on one day must be something of a record!

The 'tristis' race of Chiffchaff is white and fawn/brown -with no green as found on the common race

The Woodcock no doubt had just arrived from Scandinavia following a nocturnal crossing of the North Sea, and appears to have been one of the first recorded on Shetland this autumn.

Shetland hosts different races of Starling and Wren to those found locally. Both are darker, heavier and longer-winged than their southern cousins, and they make an interesting comparison to those that we normally catch.

The 'zetlandica' race of Wren is bigger and darker than the ones in your garden

The dynamic duo are hoping to return to Shetland next summer and autumn, so be sure to look out for more updates of their travels. 

Lots of group activities!!

 With the onset of autumn and the influx of new birds it's time to target new species. Pete has a long-standing site which is very good for Redwings from now until Christmas time; so he has been out most mornings and has already topped 100 birds with the hope of catching many more--there is still a lot to learn about the travels of these birds. A couple of days ago however, as well as plenty of Redwings Pete was really pleased to see a most unexpected bird in the net......

Of course this is a magnificent Green Woodpecker. We don't catch many of these-in fact in over 40 years of ringing I've only ever caught 1 and that was a long time ago--so this is a pretty special bird!! Pete will carry on his efforts and give our trainees some great experiences at handling mainly Redwing.

Another of our team Emma has a site at the zoo where she works and she has had a couple of nice sessions recently having the excitement of handling a Jay ( and keeping all her fingers....) and a couple of Redwing.

The group has also re-started with the autumn and winter bird survey in a joint venture with the WMBC to provide a major new farm with a baseline survey of birds in order to help them develop a plan to improve things. Our first survey showed a couple of stubble fields with good numbers of Skylarks and Meadow Pipits. So a couple of nights ago we started the programme of thermal imaging to try and catch and ring these species. It was a really successful evening with 8 Skylark and 2 Meadow Pipits ringed but the star bird was  Jack Snipe found by a small wet patch in the field. As well as ringing we also provide the farmer with the numbers seen on these fields to complement the daytime counts we do. For example we didn't see any Jack Snipe during the day.

They are cracking little birds and knowing that the absolute nearest they have come from is the taiga forest of Norway makes them doubly exciting.

Here's one of the Meadow Pipits too.

Finally while on the subject of Jack Snipe, I recently visited our prime site for this species and found 8 birds so they are arriving for the winter. I was fortunate to be invited to present a paper on using thermal imaging to census Jack Snipe, to the International Wader Study Group. This is THE group studying waders and has about 600 members from 57 countries--so it was a pretty nerve wracking event. Sadly it was from my spare room on Zoom rather than from the original pre-Covid venue in Germany. Anyway it seems to have gone down well and I've had contacts as a result from all the home countries as well as Finland, Lithuania and New Zealand. I'll be reporting soon on how the numbers of Jack Snipe are doing at our site.

What a difference a week makes!!

 Apologies for my lack of posts recently--lots going on so lots to report now that I'm having a breather!

After my last post it became obvious that we were breaking all sorts of records for our post- breeding/migration season at Belvide. There will be a run down on this in the next WMBC newsletter so I'll not dwell on it here. What the title to this post alludes to is that a couple of weeks ago we were concentrating on migrant warblers-Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs mainly as they were moving off to warmer climes. It has seemed no time at all until we are now firmly into a new season--dominated by birds coming TO us not AWAY from us in the form of birds from northern and eastern countries with much harsher winters.

We have never continued catching at Belvide  this late in previous years, but this year there have been so many incoming birds that we have decided to continue as long as there are birds to ring. Consequently I've had three sessions over the last couple of weeks which have really brought it home how the season has changed. We have caught almost 100 Redwing and good numbers of Redpoll. A real surprise last week was when a couple of Tree Sparrows turned up in a net having been largely absent from the reserve for long periods. We hope this is a sign of their return to what has been a 'hot spot' for this species.

I can't leave you without an insight into ageing birds, now can I ?? Redwing are generally quite easy to age--the first picture shows two of the key features of a juvenile ( ie bird of this year) :-

The yellow ring shows the tips to the so called tertial feathers and you can see they have white tips--but crucially the white also moves up the central feather shaft. This along with the obvious pointed tips to the tail feathers are juvenile features. The adult tertials in the next bird by contrast have no white on the tips so it is an adult ( ie born before 2020:-

Redwings are still moving through the country in big numbers. If there is a dark misty night why not stand outside for a few exciting minutes in the dark and listen for the high pitched 'seep' calls as the migrating birds keep in contact with each other!! So I hope we will have a few more at Belvide. More of which in later posts--the next post will be about other activities Belvide Ringers have been up to in the last couple of weeks.............

Just one more to go!

Yesterday we had our penultimate Belvide session of 2020. In many ways it was a typical end of season/early October session. We were all full of eager anticipation given the masses of rare birds around the country--but we were also aware that the reality would probably be run of the mill.

In the end we struggled to make 36 new birds--and of course there were no rare birds. However, there were a couple of high spots. First was our first Redwing of the season. These are small members of the thrush family which breed in northern latitudes and far west as Iceland and as far east  as Russia. So its always exciting to see them with us as harbingers of the winter. We should be catching many more over the coming months--watch here for results!

Here'e the very bird. You can see the two key features--first the cream stripe above the eye and second you can just about see the red ( actually orange) patch under the wing which gives the bird its name.

October is typically the month when countless numbers of Europe's smallest bird--the Goldcrest--fly over the north sea from Scandinavia to spend the winter with us alongside our resident Goldcrests. We can't say if the 5 we caught were British or Scandinavian ( unless one gets recaptured over there next year)--but we thought you may be interested in seeing how you can tell males from females.

Most of the time you can only see a yellow stripe down the centre of the crown as shown here. However, sometimes if the bird gets aggressive, or the wind catches the head feathers you can see orange feathers under the yellow ones. If you see orange then the bird is a male.

This bird is a male. During the breeding season males display to females and they are able to open up the yellow patch and erect the orange feathers to show off--pretty cool!!

Finally, I've banged on a lot over the weeks about ways of ageing and sexing birds--sometimes using quite subtle features of feathers, tail shapes and so on. So it's really refreshing to show you a species where ageing and sexing is really 'in your face'. This bird is a Lesser Redpoll--the fact that it has so much pink on the breast tells you straight away that it's male ( pink breast) and adult ( the amount of pink. What a little stunner to end the session with!!

  

 

 

Back after a break

 Sorry that I've been absent for a couple of weeks--family holiday followed by poor weather with little action to report on.

We had intended to round up the Belvide post breeding/migration season on Saturday or Sunday last week, but the weather was so atrocious we decided to abandon Plan A and move to Plan B. We will finish at the end of this week come what may; so when it looks like we've got some decent weather we will go for a session.

So it was that a team assembled for a session this morning--and quite successful it was!! Migrants are tailing off just now, but there is still enough going on to make it worthwhile. We ended the session with 59 new bird of a remarkable 17 species. The most numerous group were tits as can be expected at this time of year. However, 9 Blackcaps and 6 Chiffchaffs showed these are still passing through.  We also had a remarkable 6 Wrens, bring this years total to 79--a record total for yet another species. I'll round up all the numbers after this weekend.

We re-trapped a couple of rather late Reed Warblers--one of which looked newly fledged just a week or so ago-- and we hope they will be able to get themselves into top condition ready for a late flight south--they have a long journey in front of them if they are to get to South Africa!!.

Ageing birds is usually based on the appearance of some feathers--here are two clear examples.....

First a Coal Tit. The greater covert row of feathers has been marked travelling left from the tip of this pointer:-

You can see that the outer couple of feathers are longer than the rest and the shape of the white patch at the tip is different. These outer feathers are remnants of the feathers the bird had when it left the nest earlier this year--the other feathers are adult type which it has moulted in recently. This therefore a juvenile bird hatched in 2020.

Next a bit more tricky. This is the back of a Reed Bunting. You can see that all of the edges to the feathers are the same shade of chestnut brown, with no wearing away or lightening of the feathers. This is because it's an adult bird. Adults moult all of their feathers during the autumn and replace them with a uniform fresh set such as these......

The other adult feature is the broad and rounded shape of the tail feathers--juvenile tail feathers are typically worn and pointed.

Assigning a sex to Reed Buntings at this time of year is also a bit tricky. These are gregarious birds during the winter months and they don't want to waste energy squabbling --especially males--with each other. To avoid this the head feathers are brown so that they all look like females....

However, if we part the crown feathers, we can see that the majority of each feather is black with only the upper tip coloured brown. This brown gradually wears away during the Winter so that come the Spring, the black head is obvious, and the males become more territorial as Winter flocks disperse--clever or what!!

Kevin and son Gareth have been operating on several sites over the summer, and were pleased to hear of one of their birds had been re-trapped ( controlled as we call it) by some other ringers.

The bird in question was a Chiffchaff which they originally ringed as a juvenile at Patshull on 18th July this year. The bird was controlled on 13 September on Cannock Chase. Now Cannock Chase is only about 25km from Patshull and more interestingly it's NORTH of Patshull so what was this bird doing? Well we can only speculate but ringing recoveries such as this point to a phase in the life of many migrants between fledging and migrating--typified by them generally wandering. These wanderings can be long or short distance and are thought to be exploratory in nature with birds looking for prospective nesting areas for the future to ensure a mixing of the gene pool. Chances are that this bird will now be on it's way south to spend the winter in southern Europe or North Africa.  

Another surge!!

After a couple of fairly quiet days, my friend Stu in Malvern dropped me a note wondering if migration was nearing an end. I sent back hoping for more migrants based on my notes from the previous few years.

A relatively small team met on Monday and as we opened the nets we could see and hear birds in the bushes so it was game face on. It was one of those days we hope for with a steady stream of new birds until we left at about 10.30. We ringed 223 new birds of which 139 were Blackcaps and 43 were Chiffchaffs. These two species--which typically migrate later than most warblers are now becoming the predominant species with only a hand-full of other warbler species. 

The only other species of note were 4 new Robins and 5 new Dunnocks. We are pretty sure that we have ringed probably all the resident birds of these two species so it looks like these had somehow got caught up in a big migration push.

Yesterday morning I had a late and fairly modest catch of 5 Meadow Pipits, and the team met again this morning just as the sun was rising.

Although we weren't aware of birds in the bushes as on Monday, it soon became apparent that there had been another movement as birds quickly appeared in the nets. Again it was mainly Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs, but the latter almost eclipsed Blackcap for the first time ever at Belvide.

We ended the day with 122 new birds with 51 Blackcaps and 45 Chiffchaffs. We caught another 9 Meadow Pipits bring the Belvide total this year to 100. The most unexpected bird was this stunning Lesser Redpoll which appeared without the usual calling and again unusually for a highly gregarious species it was alone.

Over 350 new birds in 3 days--what a fabulous year 2020 is turning out to be--for Belvide ringing anyway!!

Kevin has been putting in the hard yards at his racecourse site yesterday and managed a very creditable 29 new birds including 9 Meadow Pipits and a stunning juvenile Sparrowhawk

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS WEEKEND'S SESSION WILL BE ON SUNDAY

Up and down few days....

 We decided to create a new site for trying to catching Meadow Pipits and on Thursday morning Pete stepped up to the plate to give it a test run. It was perfect morning and Pete ended with a respectable 27 new birds--one of which was a classic adult bird which had completed it's post breeding moult as you can see in these two pictures:-

As you can see all of the coverts are wide buff fringed and all the same--compared to this wing of a juvenile bird with w mixture of white and buff edged coverts:-

This adult tail has broad feathers with rounded tips...

Compared to these pointed feathers on a juvenile tail:-

Friday morning looked for all the world as good a day for 'mipit' migration so we set up again--but no--the birds knew better and passage was sparse--leading to only 16 new birds ringed--but great fun nonetheless.

Just to underline how little we really know about predicting bird migration we saw that the forecast for Friday into Saturday predicted fine weather with a cloudy rainy front passing over around 3-4 am. I couldn't wait to get to the nets and was looking forward to a bumper catch--sadly the birds had other ideas!! We ended with only 55 birds which wasn't a bad total but nowhere near our expectations. I guess it's things like that which add a touch of spice through uncertainty.

Monday looks good--to us--but we'll see if the birds thinks so during the morning. I'll post the results after the session as usual.

AH SO Grasshopper !!

 It was an absolutely perfect morning for ringing as predicted by the weather forecast!! ( Not often I say that....). I'm so glad we decided to arrange an extra session because we ended with another 146 new birds.

The make up was pretty predictable with 129 migrant birds of which 74 were Blackcaps. We also managed another Lesser Whitethroat, but the picture below records an historic moment:-

These are two Grasshopper Warblers and this is the first time we have ever caught more than one at a single session. We have now ringed 8 of these at a site where we don't even manage an average of one per year. It's going to be interesting scanning the end of year data to see if this is a some local effect or part of a UK wide good showing of Grasshoppers.

My last post showed items about ageing Meadow Pipits. We caught another 11 this morning but with this group was a slightly different specimen. I've mentioned previously that Grasshopper Warblers have 3 variations of base colour--yellow, grey and brown. Meadow Pipits have the same range for some reason. We call them ''colour morphs''. The picture below shows two of these. The right hand bird is the most usual --the brown/buff morph. The other bird is one of the greyer morph birds:-

Some suggest that the greyer birds are perhaps from Iceland--but having ringed several thousand Meadow Pipits in Arctic Norway, I've seen all three morphs up there.