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.