Little and Large?

 Lapwing is a species of much concern as their numbers are under threat, so we have been working closely with a couple of farmers who have had nesting Lapwing on their land. 

On one their were three early nests and two broods hatched. The parents moved the chicks quickly away from the ever present threat from corvids and we haven't seen them since, so we have no idea of their success. The third brood was a bit later in hatching and we watched the adults take them into an adjoining early cereal crop where we are pretty sure they still are--fingers crossed. As I write there are another two sitting birds which we are keeping a close eye on.

At our other farm, there are definitely 3 nests, with another 2 or three also sitting. The first of these hatched in the last few days and yesterday we manged to quickly find the chicks to ring them using our thermal imaging camera. This enables us to find and ring the chicks within minutes and ensures the adults are back on the scene very quickly.

To say Lapwing chicks are adorable is a bit twee--but so accurate as I think you'll agree!

Here are the 4 bundles of fluff--each showing the white collar by which the adult birds locate the chicks. To help the chicks hide from predators even in quite open land the chicks stay still and hide the white collar as soon as the parents alarm call:-

And suddenly they take on the appearance of a lump of soil or dead vegetation. This is where the thermal imager comes into its own because it can take ages to find the chicks with the naked eye. However, these little mites still have a tough journey ahead of them towards fledging from a predators ranging from crows to weasels to foxes to squirrels--good luck little ones.

In the meantime we managed to catch a Buzzard!! This is only the second full grown Buzzard we have ringed in 40+ years. It provides an interesting challenge to new ringers who need to be very carefull of the talons while safely handling and ringing these birds. Apart from being a little angry with having its day disturbed the bird flew off after only a few minutes of ringing and a quick picture.

This shows the classic colour pattern of a Common Buzzard, with a dark brown chest leading to a white belly with brown streaks, getting gradually darker to the tail. There are many colour variants of this species but most of them show this basic pattern,

 

Brilliant April

I've mentioned in previous posts that April and May tend to be very quiet months as we generally don't get in much ringing as we leave birds to get on with their breeding season. However, this April has been a bit different in that it has been one of the coldest on record--meaning that many birds have still been using our feeding stations and probably leaving their breeding activities until it gets a bit warmer.

So it is that we have had probably our best April on record in terms of both numbers of birds ringed and the range of species. So I thought I would produce a bit of a round up with some pictures of birds not published on the blog so far.

Overall we ringed 518 new birds of 29 species. Within this there have been some real quality birds--ie those for which there are particular conservation issues-such as Yellowhammer, and those which are rarely ringed other than at the nest such as Grey Heron; as well as the many Siskin and Redpoll already reported from Pat's garden in mid Wales.

Yellowhammers have been a feature of ringing this winter at one of our farms, where we have ringed over 100; with 22 ringed in April alone. Along with these on the farm, almost 200 Linnets have been ringed with 126 ringed in April alone. I have posted pictures of these species recently. One interesting feature of ringing at this time of year is catching birds which signal the change of season. So, during a session at the feeder a couple of weeks ago we were catching finches and buntings, when up popped the following warblers:-

This is a Chiffchaff, regularly the first warbler species back in the UK each spring

 

This is a Common Whitethroat--returning from further south in Africa, and it's a male as can be seen by the grey head and slight pink tinge on the breast.

Meanwhile at our other sites a variety of other interesting birds have been ringed.

Jays are really colourful birds, but they are quite aggressive and do take eggs and chicks. You can get a sense of the power of the hooked bill from the picture and from the damage to the ringer's finger.....

Often overlooked because they are so common is the Woodpigeon; but as you can see they are very colourful birds close up.

So April is now over and we have moved into May. The weather is gradually warming up and feeding stations are much quieter as breeding takes over. Gareth got us off to a nice start as I posted last week, and focus now turns very much onto breeding. We had some great news last week that Kevin and son Gareth have taken on a very long-standing Pied Flycatcher nest box scheme near Ludlow and we will be reporting on that in June. The next blog takes us into the breeding birds and a surprise.....

Great for Gareth!

 It gives Pete and I ( as the real old timers in the group!) tremendous satisfaction when our younger team members ( especially those who have recently qualified) start to reap the benefits of their labours. Gareth has spent a lot of time over the last few years, nurturing a new farm site, and has spent quite a few sessions there where the rewards haven't always reflected the effort he and his dad have put in.

As just one example here is a picture of their ringing base illustrating the work they have put in:-

However, this is changing as the site improves along with his knowledge of where the best bird areas are. Last week, Gareth visited the farm and got our May ringing off to a superb start with a good catch of really high quality birds. The catch also showed the transition between winter and summer birds.

A smashing male Linnet was an example of the outgoing winter birds using the feeding station:-

One of the small number of resident British warblers was next on the agenda. Cetti's warbler has become established as a regular breeder over recent years, and this one we hope will settle and breed on the farm. Not very colourful, but rather special!!

What Gareth was really hoping for was some evidence of the incoming summer migrants which have spent the winter in Africa. Probably our least colourful warbler of all is the Garden Warbler--however, it's also a bit of a favourite of ours for many reasons. 

But the real icing on the cake was not one, but two, Lesser Whitethroats. This species is special in so many ways--one of which is that they don't fly to western/sub Saharan Africa like most of our warblers. Instead for some reason they fly south east and spend the winter in either the Middle East or east Africa. They look pretty special too with their bandit like dark mask over their eyes.

So, well done Gareth--here's hoping for many more good days like this over the coming months and years!!

A visit to Siskin City

 On Thursday, Pete and I took our advanced trainee Liz to visit recently qualified ringer Pat at his new home just west of Welshpool. I have reported recently that Pat has been catching big numbers of finches in his new garden--and Liz needed more experience of ringing finches--so this seemed like a good idea. We took a bit of a risk in going for an afternoon visit--hoping that the birds' behaviour would follow what Pat had been reporting, ie that the birds often visited later on in the day for a feed before bedtime.

We arrived at 2.30, and Pat had just opened the nets--within 15 minutes we were extracting birds in big numbers:-

As you can see Pat only has one net, but its in a superb position and the birds just kept coming! After only a couple of hours Liz had managed plenty of experience with finches--over 80 in fact, of which 63 were new Siskins, with a handful of retraps and controls!

In this part of Wales, Siskins are common breeders, and most of the previously ringed birds Pat has handled have been from within a 20 mile radius. However, these local birds appear to attract passing birds and he has already had a bird which had been ringed in north west Scotland; and we are sure there will be lots more from far and wide as time moves on.

The other finch species regularly visiting Pat's feeders is Redpoll. I've produced several pictures of Redpoll over recent weeks, but not one of a rather special variant.

Here is a picture of a classic Redpoll--with a red ''poll'' which gives the species its name.

However, there is a mutant gene in the population, which changes the colour of the cap to a yellow/gold colour:-

I've not found any research papers on this aberration, so I don't know if it affects an individual's ability to attract a mate. I estimate from our experience that it occurs in about one in a thousand individuals so it's quite a common mutation.

Having ringed 80+ new birds on Thursday afternoon, Pat decided to open up his net for a short session  on Friday--another 21 Siskin and 4 Redpoll just demonstrates how popular his garden is!!