Magnificent ''Mountain Finch'' !!

 My last post centered on Pat's efforts in his garden. Not to be outdone, other team members; notably Paul, Jenni, Gareth and Kevin have been putting in a tremendous effort both for themselves and some of our trainees working within the current rules. Between them they have ringed well over 500 birds at our various feeding stations in the area. They have ringed some excellent species including Yellowhammer, Linnet, Lesser Redpoll, Goldfinch, Siskin and Reed Bunting--but within their catches has been a small number of Brambling. The rest of this blog is devote to this very interesting species.

For those of you not familiar with Brambling, let's have a look at a smart male bird almost in full breeding plumage:-

As you can see, the bird is a finch, and as such it has a generic scientific name of Fringilla- which is the same generic name of one of our commonest finches- the Chaffinch. The specific name of the Brambling is montifringilla- meaning 'mountain finch'. 

So Fringilla montifringilla is the scientific name of the bird we know as the Brambling. But why mountain finch? Well it's a tad misleading-rather than mountain finch it should be thought of as the finch of high latitudes. If you look at a map of the breeding area of this species it shows a very large swathe of Europe and Asia north of a line of latitude starting approximately half way up the west coast of Norway stretching way to the east. Essentially then this bird breeds in northern latitudes, but in most winters, millions of them spread south to find food--they love beech mast. Birds at this time of year are gradually moving back north and can often appear in gardens because natural food is often hard to come by  and gardens offer an easy option. So keep an eye out for Chaffinch sized birds which are essentially orange and black--as you can see in the picture, with a prominent white line down the back -look carefully at the picture.

We have caught a handful of Brambling this year, but Paul hadn't caught any at his feeders--until this morning when one bird of a small group popped into a net. As he extracted it he noticed it was already ringed--and that the ring was unusually on the bird's left leg. It called for spectacles to be donned!! On careful examination back at base, the ring number was recorded as :- EP 21606; but the address to contact was Museum Norway Stavanger !! Brilliant--an adult male as in the picture above, which had been ringed somewhere in Norway and was on its way back. I will post more details when we have had the information back from the Norwegian ringing scheme.

Brambling are relatively easy to sex and age. Females are much less colourful as males as you can see in this bird:-

Ageing is on several plumage features but the following two photos demonstrate the most obvious clues within the tract of feathers we mention a lot in these items--the greater coverts:-

This adult male bird shows greater coverts ( shown within the white bracket) which all have jet glossy black feather centres 

In contrast this juvenile ( less than one year old) male bird shows a clear moult limit as we call it --where the new adult feathers (1) are jet black, whereas the old juvenile coverts which have not yet been moulted out (2) have grey matt centres:-

We're really looking forward to finding out more about our ringed Brambling-of which more soon I hope; and more about our other feeder catching at the weekend.

 

  

Pat off to a flying start!!

 It's great to see any newly qualified ringer really getting to grips with their hobby and making the most of new opportunities. So it is with Pat who got his C permit around Christmas along with settling in to a new home just west of Welshpool. It quickly became apparent that his garden was a bit of a magnet for birds-especially Siskins which have a good population in many parts of Wales. 

In early January the BTO issued guidance which strongly urged all ringers to ring only in your own garden. This meant Blue Tits, Great tits and the odd finch for many of us--but for Pat this was a great time to really get used to ringing a wide range of garden birds on his own. Looking at his monthly ringing totals he has gradually become more confident and currently his garden total for this year stands at 415 new birds of 19 species!!

Of these the most abundant species is Siskin, with a superb 218 ringed. Goldfinch at 22, Starling at 11 and Greenfinch at 10 are a great supporting cast.

Having said that there is a healthy breeding population of Siskin in Wales, there is supporting evidence from what Pat describes as a cold foggy morning in March when along with plenty of un-ringed birds he caught 4 birds which had been ringed elsewhere:-

3 of them had been ringed variously over the last three years within a 25 mile radius of his house. However, the fourth bird had been ringed in June 2017 near Inverness--almost 500 miles away. So, as well as local birds, there is a wide ranging movement of Siskins going on with birds from all over the UK and Europe moving around searching out food sources during late winter--which makes this species such an interesting and exciting one to study.

Pat has also taken some great pictures of Siskins which serve to show how, even in the field it's possible ( given a decent view) to sex them ( quite easy) and age them up to 1 year old ( a bit more tricky). I hope these pictures illustrate the key features for you to try at home--if you have any Siskins feeding of course!

Here is an adult ( more than 1 year old) bird-the white line shows the greater covert feathers which are all yellow tipped

This is a juvenile male bird and the white mark shows that if you look carefully the outer 2 or 3 greater coverts are both shorter than the rest and white tipped

This is a female Siskin--no black cap, not brightly coloured and a streaky breast and belly. The line also shows that the outer group of greater coverts are much shorter than the rest--making this a juvenile female.

This is a slightly trickier bird. The cap is black but the feather tips of the cap are pale and the overall colour of the bird is not very striking. However, the breast and belly are not as streaked so it's not a female. Finally the white line shows the outer greater coverts are shorter and white tipped --showing this to be a (very) juvenile male.

Thanks for these pictures Pat!

Up and Runn........Walking

 We are so sorry for the lack of material over recent weeks. The lockdown conditions up until recently meant that we were strongly advised to only ring birds in our own gardens. For most of us that meant catching not very much if anything, although Pat out in Wales has had an exciting time because he has a good population of Siskin feeding in his garden and he has had quite a few potentially interesting controls of Siskins ringed elsewhere. I'll report on that when we have more details.

Since the ease of rules a little while ago, we have been able to respond to our good friend and farm manager Tim, who has recently been awarded Innovative Farmer of the Year on top of a previous Soil Farmer of the Year award. Tim is really keen on knowing how his 'no till' strategy is benefiting the birds and so he was really enthusiastic about us being able to survey his land-especially the area around a new winter feed 'spinner' mechanism:-

This mechanism enables us to stay away from the site for a few days as the hopper is filled with supplementary winter feed which the underlying mechanism spins periodically and sprays the seed out over a small area. It also has a solar panel to power the mechanism. The birds quickly get used to the undisturbed provision of lots of food!

The set up has been very successful in attracting farmland species and in just a small number of recent visits we have managed to ring a very significant 71 Yellowhammers!! This is around as many of this species as were ringed in many years in the whole of Staffordshire. It's great news that winter supplementary feeding stations like this and others are helping Yellowhammers survive over winter and we hope go on to breed in the area. Other interesting totals were 27 Linnet, 25 Chaffinch, 20 Goldfinch and 11 Reed Buntings.

A Yellowhammer

Many people know that feeding stations in their gardens also attract predators such as Sparrowhawks to the many small birds feeding there. It's no different to our farmland feeding stations where both Sparrowhawks and Kestrels have been seen. Our resident male Kestrel ( aka Kenny as we call him) got himself caught one morning:- 

He's a superb specimen and a very successful breeder having fledged 10 youngsters in the last 3 years on the farm, and we have already seen him 'food passing' to his mate  which is a sure sign that they are getting ready to rumble!! One of the reasons they are able to raise good sized broods is in great part due to the higher than average numbers of small mammals on the site--yet another benefit of the no till strategy. Every night when we survey the farm using the thermal imager it's really noticeable how many mice we see compared to the fields on nearby conventionally ploughed farms.