Sunday service

 After a brilliant day on Thursday it was a tad frustrating that the weather on Saturday ( strong north west winds) meant that we had to abandon the regular session and hope that things got better on Sunday. As it turned out the day started well with very light winds--but the wind soon picked up and a bright cloud-free sky dampened down catching fairly quickly.

However, the good start meant we did ring a very respectable 98 new birds.-of 17 species! 

The most prolific species was again Blackcap with 52 new birds. We also had the usual range of warblers although Willow Warblers were lower than of late. However, another 2 Lesser Whitethroats were excellent but star of the day was without doubt our FOURTH Grasshopper Warbler of the season!! Given that we don't even average one per year this year has been brilliant for this species. One of the features of this species we haven't shown previously are the prominent undertail coverts:-

As you can see, not only are these feathers quite long, but the central dark triangles are really diagnostic--but often not seen in the field.

There were a few martins around until the air warmed up and we managed  a small number of House and Sand Martins--but we also caught our first Swallow of the season:-

This is a typical juvenile Swallow as can be seen by the throat and forehead, which are creamy white rather than deep red in adult birds--and the lack of tail streamers is obvious.

Tomorrow looks like a good day so we are rounding off August with another session--more news tomorrow I hope.....

  

A record day

 We decided to swap our usual Wednesday session for one today because of the strong wind yesterday--it turned out to be a great decision--for once!!

We had a short session on Wednesday early evening while doing some maintenance work and ended up with an encouraging 26 birds. The wind dropped overnight, and there was some quite heavy cloud cover. Birds had obviously embarked on migration but must have decided to drop until the cloud cover cleared.

It was a steady but productive morning with plenty of birds about and by home time we had ringed 166 new birds, again mainly migrant warblers, but intriguingly 10 Robins !? The star bird was our second Redstart of the season--a juvenile male.

We also caught a Reed Warbler which was originally ringed in 2017 by another ringer so it will be interesting to find out where--details as soon as we know.

As most of us left for home, the cloud got even thicker and the temperature dropped a little producing good conditions to try to ring some of the many House and Sand Martins over the water. Kevin decided he would stay on and see how many he could catch--ending up with another 33 new birds including 5 Sand Martins and 19 House Martins.

So when things were totaled, we ended up with 199 new birds ringed today, which is a record total ( although relatively modest compared to some group efforts); adding last evening's birds gives a 24 hour total of 225 birds--another record. Within these totals I've already mentioned the remarkable 19 Robins, but 105 Blackcaps was another record.

There is some importance to some of these numbers. For example, last year we caught a record season total of Blackcaps--but as data from around the country came it it became apparent that most ringers were finding the same. It was a great breeding season and it looks like plenty have made it back to the UK this year. One unexpected total this year is Willow Warbler. We are headed for a record total 4 or 5 times more than in recent years. In fact more than in any year since we started at Belvide in 2007. It's going to be interesting to see if this is reflected around the country for a species which has been in steep decline in lowland UK. 

STOP PRESS !! Strong NW wind forecast for Saturday means we are moving the session to Sunday.

More larking about.....

 After a successful first attempt for the season at counting and catching skylarks last week--we decided to open the account at another of our farms last night.

After a short session our relative novice operators were very happy at having counted around 30 skylarks and monitored which fields they were in for the farmer. They were even more satisfied at having caught and ringed 9 birds. At this time of year it is possible to age some birds as juveniles and some as adults. However, pretty soon all age groups of skylarks will finish a complete moult of all of their feathers-at which point we can't age them--that will be the situation in a couple of weeks time. 

---and again!!

 Wet and windy outside so a bit of time to do some catching up--but first a quick record of our session on Monday at Belvide.

A perfect day was rewarded with another good catch. 101 new birds including another 63 Blackcaps. That's the same total of Blackcaps two days in a row--the answer to the Blackcap universe and everything?.....There was the usual excellent warbler supporting cast including another two Lesser Whitethroats.

However, the picture today is of an unusual species for this time of year at the reserve--Coal Tit. This species for many years back in the day was regarded as being rather difficult to age--but with study of known age birds and better communications between ringers they are now much easier--especially in good light. One of the key features to look for is in the greater coverts:-

I have drawn lines pointing to 3 of the outermost greater coverts and you can clearly see the outer web of these feathers are a greeny buff colour ( these are juvenile feathers)--while the rest of the feathers to the left have bluey grey outer webs ( these are adult-type feathers which have already been moulted in). The centres of the feathers are also different--almost black in the adult feathers and much lighter grey in the juvenile ones. As I say--easy to see in this light but often more difficult on a grim winter's day or even under torchlight at a roost.

Blackcap City

We postponed yesterday's session at Belvide for what turned out to be  not such a bad day after all. So it was a bit of a concern if we had made the right decision. As things turned out we had a really good morning with 131 new birds ringed of which 63 were Blackcaps--entirely consistent with their increasing migration at this time of year. We hope there will be plenty more over the coming weeks.

Star bird of the session was our second Grasshopper Warbler of the season. We get fewer than one per year so two in a couple of weeks is special. This bird was a classic juvenile, fledged this year with pristine feathers and no fading of colours:-

Compare this with the adult bird for a few days ago and you can see the difference in the colour and wear on the plumage

At this time of year young Hirundines ( Swallows and Martins) often gather over the res on cool mornings. This was the first such morning and a few gathered and we were lucky to catch 5 Sand Martins and one House Martin. The appearance of their plumage makes them very easy to age:-

You can see the wing and head feathers have buffish white outer edges ( as have most of the back feathers)--which makes this a juvenile--adults are plain brown.

House Martins are just as easy to age:-

The thre feathers in front of the thumb are called 'tertials' and are where the wing meets the body. In juvenile House Martins these feathers have white tips as can clearly be seen, The rest of the wing is dull brown also-unlike the glossy blue in adults.

 

Larking about....

 As part of an on-going project to provide a new farm owner with detailed numbers of birds on his farm, Kev and son Gareth ventured forth last night for the first thermal imaging session of the autumn to count and try to catch Skylarks.

They had a really successful session with 30 birds counted and allocated to specific fields to help analysis of farming practice--and they caught 12 birds to add to the growing number of these birds ringed since the inception of this technique a few years back, using the imager provided by WMBC.

Prior to this I had some net repair work to do and 4 members of the team joined me so we set some nets in the sheltered parts of the Belvide site. A very useful 34 new birds were ringed-again comprising mainly warblers.

ANOTHER wierd weather system is tracking across the country and we have had to postpone tomorrow's planned session. We hope to be able to run it on SUNDAY 23rd. All members of WMBC are welcome

Cracking few days!!

 The first three days of this week have been really good. The period started well when Kev had a session at Belvide on Monday. With only a small number of nets open he managed to ring 35 new birds, of which 13 Blackcaps and another Cetti's warbler were the highlights.

While setting the nets for this morning on Tuesday evening Paul ringed another 8 new birds.

As usual, we had been watching the weather forecasts avidly with respect to this morning as it was clear that some really windy and wet conditions were on their way--but when? To be fair the forecasters got it pretty well spot on this morning--after a pre-dawn start, we kept a close eye on the rain radar and decided at 8.40 to wrap up. Although we were sorry to finish so early, it turned out to be exactly the correct decision as steady rain started as we walked back to the cars.

Even though it was a truncated session, such was the movement of birds that we ringed 104 new birds. Most of which -again-were migrant warblers. Blackcaps are building momentum with 42 ringed this morning, and strangely Willow warblers outnumbered Chiffchaffs, by 11 to 3. It's looking as though we will have a record year for Willow Warblers.

Without question the star bird of the morning was this season's first ( and probably only) Grasshopper Warbler.. As you can see from the picture, these are not especially stunning looking birds but they are tricky to see in the field because of their skulking behaviour..

This picture shows most of the salient features--short wings, mottled back, head and shoulders, and a quite long rounded tail. The very heavy wear on the tail and wings on this bird show it is an adult.

We also caught yet another Kingfisher--there is a family party neat the ringing site, and this time we caught a juvenile male.

Although there is a suggestion of a tinge of red on the lower mandible we are inclined to call this bird a male, as the juvenile females we have caught have much more obvious red on the lower mandibles. The ageing feature I wanted to show on this bird is the 'greeny-blue' colour of the wings compared to the 'bluey-green' colour of the adult wing in my previous Kingfisher picture

Just like bonfire night !!

 This was how team member Sam described his night sleeping in one of the hides while a series of violent thunderstorms crashed all around.!! Fortunately they petered out and gave way to a beautifully calm morning. Quite often meteorological events like last night 'stir things up a bit' after some settled weather and birds often decide to move. That obviously happened last night as there were many more birds around this morning than for the past few days. Also our ringing session produced fewer re-traps compared to new birds than recently demonstrating an influx of migrant birds.

Of 104 new birds caught 90 were migrant warblers with a surge in Reed Warblers to 22, Sedge and Blackcaps were both on 19, but very unusually Willow Warblers on 11 outnumbered Chiffchaffs on 8.Another 3 Garden warblers and 4 each of Common and Lesser Whitethroat are bringing several warbler species near to record numbers for Belvide. Bring them on!!

 

What a 'Start' !!

 The weather forecast this week suggest that we need to get sessions in when we can. So with this in mind when I woke up around 6 am to still, dull conditions I decided to have a try at Belvide. I opened only 3 nets as the wind was starting to increase but within a couple of minutes our newest net site  produced its very first bird--and what a start it was. To be precise it was our first Redstart of the year--and if previous years are anything to go by it will probably be our last.

This picture shows the key features of a juvenile male Common Redstart. The name red'start' comes from the old English name for a backside/tail which is this lovely orange-red colour. These birds accentuate this feature every time they perch by quivering the tail in a very characteristic way.

We can sex the bird as a male by the dark head and throat and the richness of the orange breast and belly.

I've closed in on the throat and breast to illustrate a feature of this and several other species. During the winter period the birds don't need their bright colours as they are not setting up territories or trying to attract a mate. SO-you can see that the colours are muted by having lighter/buffy tips to all the coloured feathers. These tips gradually wear off during the winter and hey presto! the richer colour further down the feathers are exposed just in time for the breeding season WITHOUT the high energy need to grow another set of feathers--how cool is that!!

Lots of learning

 The wind yesterday was unhelpfully from the north and we feared a poor catch--but managed a reasonable 66 new birds--as usual composed mostly of migrant warblers again.

Now that most of the team are very familiar with these species we can spend a little more time examining the birds in a bit more detail and showing our visitors some aspects they have probably never seen before. Here are a few random pictures of the kind of insights we were able to pass on:-

First up was a kingfisher. Always a crowdpleaser anyway, this turned out to be an adult male. It was a male because the lower mandible was all black ( females have an orange patch). There were three clear adult features. Overall the wing is bluey rather than greeny in a juvenile; second the legs and feet are all orange with no dark patches--finally and crucially, as you can see in the picture, the flight feathers were being moulted--you can see a secondary feather regrowing in this picture and there was a primary feather also being moulted on each wing.

Next up was a Blackcap--which at first sight looked like an adult male with a complete black cap. However, on close examination you can see the tiny remnants of brown juvenile feathers. This was obviously from a very early brood and has already moulted most of its cap feathers.

Juvenile Robins always cause confusion. This was a very recently fledged bird--so why no red on the breast? The general consensus is that while the young birds still need some help from their parents, they have brown breast feathers so as not to elicit aggression especially from the adult male--it's dad! Over the coming weeks this bird will replace these brown feathers with red ones--at which point the parents will force it away from the territory.

Lastly here is a shot of the crown feathers of two Sedge Warblers:-

The upper bird is an adult, the lower a juvenile. Adults Sedge Warbler heads are darker, with less obvious cream eye stripes ( supercilia), and hardly any cream streaks in the crown feathers themselves. Juvenile heads show the opposite features.  

 

 

A bit of a struggle

The story of the season so far is the stop/go nature of the migration pattern. On Tuesday birds had been moving but that had largely stopped when we arrived on site yesterday. However, when we finished around 10am it was a pleasant surprise to find that we had ringed 69 new birds--again mostly warblers of the range we normally get.

We did ring 4 juvenile Reed Buntings which had clearly bred on the reserve, and here is a picture of the tail of one bird showing a couple of interesting features:-

We often see quite a bit of other wildlife on the reserve and this beast of a caterpillar walked calmly through the ringing site :-I've mentioned previously that the quality and shape of juvenile feathers helps in ageing many songbirds-and here is a prime example. Most of these feathers are very pointed-juvenile feature--but the central two are more rounded at the tip--these are adult type feathers which this bird has already moulted in. Secondly you can see small holes in the feathers -most juvenile feathers are not as robust as adult ones and any slight change in the quality of food is often reflected in weaknesses in feathers

A quick check on Google identified it as an Alder Moth caterpillar-superb.

That's more like it !!

We decided to alter our strategy a bit this week because it looked quite windy on Wednesday while Tuesday and Thursday looked good for ringing. 

So --Wednesday's session at Belvide is postponed and will now take place on Thursday

The change of plan has so far proved entirely vindicated after we had a superb morning of ringing today. It was clear from the first visit to the nets that there had been some migration overnight--and the thick cloud cover which came in early morning had caused some birds to drop down to rest, feed and wait for better conditions.

We ended the morning having caught around 150 birds of which 126 were new birds. Not only that but 107 were migrant warblers. The spread of species was very encouraging. With 24 birds, Sedge Warblers continued being the most common migrant at Belvide--closely followed by Chiffchaff with 22 ringed. At 14 Blackcaps are increasing but we think there are many more to come. The most interesting species for us were Willow Warblers with 16 newly ringed, Common Whitethroat and Garden Warblers with 7 each, and Lesser Whitethroat with 5 ringed.

We are all looking forward to Thursday to see what the weather brings--more about that on Thursday  

It's all a bit odd

We have now moved into August and typically we would expect migration to start to warm up--especially with a change to better weather over the last few days. So it was a bit of a disappointment on Saturday morning with absolutely perfect conditions that we struggled to a modest total.

The recent pattern of rather more Sedge Warblers that Reed Warblers continued but only one Blackcap was a real puzzle.

However, there were a couple of silver linings. First I think I have mentioned previously how exciting it is when we ring Lesser Whitethroat. We only caught one on Saturday, but we also caught a few Common Whitethroats which gave us the opportunity of showing a picture of the two to show how different they look in the field. These are both juvenile birds with the Common on the left:-

You can see how much greyer the Lesser Whitethroat is, as well as showing a kind of highwayman's mask through the eyes--with the Common wing showing lots more chestnut.

Whenever we take a bird out of a net which has already got a ring on there's a bit of a frisson of excitement. Every now and then the excitement level is raised when we spot something unusual written on the ring--as we see here on an adult Sedge Warbler:-

In the middle you can just make out the letters PAR--because this is a bird ringed in France--PAR..IS. This is great, but what is even better is the history of this bird. A female, she was first ringed as a juvenile on her first migration south at Finistere in France on 4th August 2018. ( Note how early this bird had set off --presumably from somewhere in England). On 10th July 2019, we caught the bird at Belvide, where we assume she was breeding. And now on 2nd August 2020 we have caught her again at Belvide. Again we assume she was breeding here but she must have been nesting at the other end of the reserve or else we would have expected to have caught her earlier. We released her to get on her way--Bon Voyage!!

Sunday morning saw Kevin and son Gareth operating at their racecourse site where they had a good catch of over 40 new birds, including 26 migrants of which 7 were Blackcaps--obviously not as elusive as those at Belvide!. They also ringed 7 House Sparrows-although a very familiar species we don't ring so many like this one....

Finally, Ron sent me another picture of the Swifts from last week--this one shows an even better view of the throat pouch rammed with insects ready to take back and feed to the chicks