Ben takes the honours on a group big day

 Simon helped Ben clear an area for a couple more nets last night, and a small group of us caught a small number of birds at a Sand Martin roost. However, Ben decided to hunker down for the night for an early start at his Witch's Oak site and boy did he do well this morning!! He texted me early on to say things were looking good--but by his close of play he had ringed a superb 141 new birds on his own!! What a mega effort!

Another team rocked up for the regular Belvide session which was disappointingly quiet and we only managed 53 new birds.

Pete and Tom had classy little catch at Chillington of 13 birds but included mainly warblers plus a brilliant Kingfisher.

Last but not least Paul and Sam ran a demo for a small group of friends and ringed 36 new birds-while providing some superb insights into birds and their movements which really captivated the audience.

So--after a belting day in the field the group managed a superb total of 243 new birds ringed. Most were migrants including a splendid 60 Blackcap; 31 Reed Warbler; 28 Chiffchaff and 21 Sedge Warblers.

What a great effort by a great team--well done all!!  

Kevin finally gets the JYNX off his back!!

I was just brewing a mid morning cuppa yesterday when I got a What's App message from Kev. It consisted of only one word.....BOOM! He had clearly had caught a special bird but being a tease he wasn't letting on straight away. I was so delighted a couple of minutes later when he informed the world that he had just caught a WRYNECK. The scientific name is Jynx torquilla--hence the title of this post. I'll leave Kevin to talk you through his fabulous catch which he has been dreaming about ever since he became a ringer:-

After a fairly modest ringing session at Wolverhampton Racecourse on Monday, I was back there again Thursday morning. Things began quietly once more, but soon escalated rapidly!

Having caught just seven birds, which did include a Reed Warbler, two Chiffchaff and three Blackcap, I started to take down the nets. On reaching the last two, five birds had been caught - the best round of the morning - had I decided to pack up too soon?

As I began extracting a Greenfinch, I noticed that a bird at the very end of the last net was at least as bulky, but it wasn't green! It looked brown, but was too small to be a thrush - what was it? Overcome by curiosity, I went to have a look.

As I looked down, a cryptically patterned brown, grey and black bird looked up at me - it was a Wryneck! Shaking, I carefully removed and bagged all of the birds and began the process of ringing them. I broadcast news of the Wryneck and six local birders arrived in time to see it released shortly afterwards. 

Wryneck is a scarce spring and autumn visitor to Britain, mostly round the coast, though one or two are seen across the Midlands most years. A couple of hundred or more are recorded annually, with about 50 noted in the past fortnight alone. However, the last record in the West Midlands county was a brief garden visitor in 2013.

Wrynecks are far more rarely caught, with fewer than 2,500 ringed across Britain from 1909 to 2019, with an average of 24 birds in each of the last ten years.

None appear to have been caught in the West Midlands county before, though at least a couple have been in adjacent Worcestershire.

It's also the first Wryneck to be ringed by members of Belvide Ringing Group in Britain. It goes to show what's about, as the Wryneck would likely have never been seen had it not been caught. 

I've just about stopped shaking with excitement--what a bird !!

So what's all the fuss about--it's just a medium sized brown bird, right? Here's a picture of Kev holding the bird....

It's a member of the woodpecker family--now no longer a breeder in Britain but reasonably common across Europe. The wonderful cryptic plumage makes them almost invisible against the bark of many mature trees. Their name derives from a curious habit of squirming their necks when handled--it's possibly a defense mechanism to either puzzle a predator or perhaps mimic the movements of the head of a snake.They really are a superb bird and a great reward for the effort that Kev puts in.

Elsewhere, Ben and Simon were putting in the hard yards in their Witch's Oak site with another splendid catch of 63 new birds, mainly mixed warblers. Great effort again guys. We are going over on Friday evening to help prepare more of the site for nets, and to try again at the hirundine roost. 

Saturday is very busy for the group, with Pete at Chillington, Paul running a demo at Brewood Park Farm and the rest of the team at Belvide. I'll report on all these and Witch's Oak roost sometime over the weekend.

 

Well established patterns

 Finding birds to which others have attached rings or having our ringed birds found elsewhere is often the icing on the cake for a ringer. But of course the real value is the emerging picture each bird tells us about how long they live, how they behave and their migration patterns.

Three such birds have been reported to us in the last few days:-

S456361 is a Sedge Warbler which Ben ringed at his Witches Oak site on 23rd July this year. 7 days later it was killed by a cat in Rothwell Northampton.........

This is not a particularly long distance away (61 km) but the pattern this bird fits is one of juvenile dispersal. Young birds often wander in a general way -we think to become familiar with the surroundings and possibly to look for potential breeding sites for the future. Unfortunately a cat put an end to its wanderings...

AFT3382 is also a Sedge Warbler ringed at Belvide on 9th August this year. By the 17th August it had moved 279 km and was recaptured by ringers at a well known site at Icklesham near the Sussex coast. This bird was clearly on its migration to Africa-but like many other birds caught at Icklesham probably saw the coast and decided to land and build up further reserves before flying on. Thousands of birds are ringed at Icklesham every year--probably most of which are initially spooked by the sea crossing and decide to take a break before moving on.

ANT6173 is  Reed Warbler ringed on 24th July by our friends in the Shropshire ringing group, at Aqualate Mere only 13 km away. We re-trapped the bird at Belvide on 14th August. Just like the first Sedgie above this bird was almost certainly scouting the general area ( we have had other similar birds shared with Aqualate) before setting off in a determined way to Africa.

I'll provide details of any further controls as and when they come through.

A Cracking few days-despite the rain interruption

 Where to start?! Let's look day by day....

Thursday last week, Ben was at his site early on after finishing his night shift. It was quickly apparent that he was on to a good day, with all of his bags full on the first net round. He finished--very tired but very happy with over 70 new birds including mostly warblers of which this stunning Lesser Whitethroat was but one...

Sam, Kev and I then rocked up at 16.00 to find Ben doing a fetching take off of Sleeping Beauty in his tent........nets were opened and sound put on to attract a hirundine roost. We caught steadily until a roost -mainly of Sand Martins gathered of which we caught 15--ending with a superb days total of 114 new birds--Ben's site is really coming good now--more news after this week's visit.

I dropped Sam off at Belvide for his sleep-over! He had a session on Friday with a very reduced set of nets open but still had a great time with 30+ birds including star bird of the day--our first Redstart of the year.....

This is a juvenile bird so it doesn't display the stunning colours of the adult birds because many of the feathers have buff tips at this stage--however, you can see the beautiful orange showing though on the belly.

We had to postpone Saturday because of the rain--but a team assembled on Sunday with our good friend Paul visiting to celebrate his birthday. It was a decent catch of 58 new birds--but the poor weather overnight and the NW wind, I reckon slowed down migration. However, here are a couple of pictures which I hope illustrate a point...

This is an adult Willow Warbler which, like several others this year has already completed it's post breeding feather moult. As a result it sports a rather neat yellow chin and throat merging into a white belly which is better shown in this next picture...

This contrasts sharply with the juveniles at this time of year which have so much yellow underneath they look like canaries!

Although not rare, it's always exciting to catch a Sparrowhawk--they also provide a great opportunity for trainees to learn how to handle them safely!!

This was a juvenile male. The small size is characteristic of a male ( as in most birds of prey males are smaller than females)--and the light yellow eye ( orange in adults), the arrowhead marks on the breast ( lines in adults) and the brown back and wings with buff tips ( plain blue-grey in adults) all point to a juvenile.

And here's why the ringer needs to be careful!! Try to imagine how effective these talons are at killing small birds as they puncture heart/lungs/blood vessels--it's not the beak that does the damage--it's these bad boys.

Gareth was out at his farm early this morning and although he didn't have a big catch, he had quality--particularly in catching his first ever control at this site--icing on the ringer's cake.

The bird was this adult Sedge Warbler--and if you look closely at the ring....

you should be able to make out  USE on the top row, and PAR in the middle. This is MUSEUM and PARIS--so this bird has been ringed in France--probably as it passed through en route to Africa ( we'll know when as soon as the data comes back)--and the bird probably breeds somewhere in England and is preparing again to move south. Well done Gareth!

Kev was also out this morning at the Racecourse site, with a small but quality catch of warblers. 

What a great effort by many group members!!

More soon.......

 

We need a chat......

After a series of really good catches we were a little disappointed with today's modest catch of 38 new birds at Belvide. However, the quality was still very good again--with migrant warblers making up 34 of the total. Of these there were the usual suspects-but we also caught a Goldcrest--Europe's smallest breeding bird.

Just a few centimetres long and weighing about 5 or 6 grams it's amazing how far these birds can migrate. Although this one will have been hatched here, during October we get millions flying to us from norther Europe. This bird is a recently fledged juvenile--and a closer look at the top of it's head reveals it to be ........

.......a male! You can just make out the small patch of orange crown feathers just starting to grow. More feathers will grow, and the bird uses this orange flash to advertise itself during the breeding season by folding back the yellow feathers and erecting the orange ones. Females only have yellow on the crown.

Although not a warbler, the most exciting bird of the day was nevertheless a migrant and a member of a group of very colourful birds collectively called 'chats'. This is a Whinchat

It's only the second of this species that we've ringed at Belvide--and this one is a juvenile with a rather bland, but subtely beautiful appearance.

From this angle you can see the mottled effect on the back and the almost black tail--with very pointed juvenile feathers. These birds are rather difficult to sex at this young age so we left the record as an un-sexed individual. What a beauty the males are in the Spring breeding plumage--check them out!

Last but not least we received a report of one of our recently ringed juvenile Sedge Warblers which had been controlled by other ringers.

AFT 3066 was a juvenile 'Sedgie' ringed at Belvide on 26th July this year; and was retrapped on 1st August 192 km away in Dorset.

So this is interesting on at least two fronts even though in pure distance it's not that impressive. First the bird was clearly on it's southward migration to Africa--but it clearly must have started before the end of July illustrating just how early some species and individuals set off so soon after fledging.

Perhaps even more intriguing is the SHORTNESS of its first flight. Sedge Warblers are known for their quite prodigious flights using up big fat stores in order to do so. Clearly something wasn't quite right with this bird. We will never know, but maybe it didn't store enough fat; or maybe it became unwell; or maybe it got to the south coast and for some reason decided it needed a rest or more fat before it was ready to take on the English Channel. There's always something intriguing about ringing birds......

Kevin and Gareth are out this afternoon and evening and Ben et al are out much of tomorrow in general ringing and hoping to ring at a Swallow roost-- news of them in due course.

 

 

 

Varied success

 I mentioned that other team members were out and about and that I would report on their efforts--so here goes.

Yesterday, Gareth was at his farm site where his recent catches have been good and improving. Unfortunately yesterday turned out to be just one of those days, and he only managed to ring 9 new birds for a lot of effort. However,there were still some good quality with yet another yellowhammer, and a few Sedge and Reed warblers. Here is one of the adult Sedge warblers he ringed--

As in previous pictures of adult birds at this time of year, the feathers are looking rather worn with thin white edges rather than broad buff ones in juveniles.

Sam has been very busy with a visit to Ashwoods nursery invited by conservation officer Phil. They had a very busy morning yesterday and ringed 79 new birds-of which 44 were Blue and 11 were Great Tits. However there were some other species in the mix which were slightly more interesting in different ways.

First here is a picture of a Wren--

There are other clues but the overall chocolate brown hue of this bird suggests it's a juvenile. One of the important aspects of catching Wrens is that because they are susceptible to cold winters, the numbers we catch during the summer gives an insight into the numbers that survived and their breeding success. I'll report more on this from our Belvide data later in the year.

He also caught a couple of Nuthatch. These are relatively common birds but we tend not to catch very many so getting two together was useful in that they showed very well the difference between male and female plumage:-

I'll admit this isn't a particularly flattering picture of two Nuthatch--but it does show the much more russet coloured undertail ( and flanks- which you can't see) of the male bird which is the lower one of the two.

Not content with that, Sam also did an early catch at Belvide this morning. It was quite a strong north westerly air flow so he was not able to open many nets--only those sheltered from the wind. However, he managed a creditable 26 new birds-all but 2 of which were migrant warblers. He's having a rest tomorrow morning but will be out again on Wednesday! News of that and any other activity as soon as possible.

Ben has found his mojo!!

 Ben has been full-on developing his career over recent years and his ringing has been largely confined to trips such as Portugal or petrel ringing on Islean nan Ron. The lack of a good ringing site nearby didn't help either. That has all changed-big time- and it's brilliant to see his enthusiasm come back. 

He has aquired a great site near his work which is an old gravel workings which is beautifully overgrown and managed by the local wildlife trust --who just happen to be very enthusiastic about getting a ringer involved to provide more data on the birds on site.

The site is massive so Ben has sensibly restricted himself to an area which provides both hedgerow and reed-bed habitats. I went out there yesterday evening to see if we could develop a Swallow roost site in the large areas of reeds. Ben had been there all afternoon and already had a decent catch of quality birds. We did manage to have a catch of Swallows and Sand Martins coming in to roost so it looks like we will be able to repeat this. It will help trainees in the group to gain experience of operating a roost which provides opportunities to learn a raft of new skills.

As well as yesterday, he also did an early morning session last Thursday--the combined catch was 95 new birds!! Most were migrants including:-

14 Sand Martin, 7 Swallow, 25 Reed Warbler, 7 Sedge Warbler, 5 Garden Warbler, 6 Cetti's Warbler, 9 Chiffchaff, 4 Blackcap and 2 Whitethroat--but strangely no Willow Warblers?

Sorry we have no pictures from these sessions--but hope we will have next time. 

Well done Ben!!--we have Gareth and Sam out 'on duty' today at other sites--reports coming when I have their results........

Larking about...

Thursday saw four sites being worked, and lots of interesting birds ringed.

Kev decided to try his first thermal imaging session of the year at Patshull. Here is his account of the session ( which turned into two sessions!):-

Starting at 3am(!), in just the first harvested field surveyed, a Grey Partridge was caught and ringed, with a second bird seen - our first record of this declining farmland species at the site. Not a bad start!

Over the course of the next couple of hours, a dozen or so Skylark were noted, with two of this year's youngsters also caught and ringed.

Both of these species undergo a complete post-breeding moult, progressively shedding feathers and growing new ones to replace them. As can be seen from the images of the open wings, these birds are moulting the primary and secondary feathers from the centre of the wing- both inwards and outwards along the rear edge of the wing. The Skylark especially shows its new feathers in different stages of growth, with the shortest and youngest still in their protective waxy sheaths or 'in pin'.

The pale tips to many of the feathers show this bird to be a juvenile

This Grey Partridge also shows a single buff line down the centre of each smaller and more chestnut wing feather (coverts), indicating this bird to be a male - a female would also exhibit buff bars at right angles to each buff line.

By dawn, we'd moved to a brand new ringing location on the estate and set some nets in eager anticipation of what else might be caught. By mid morning a further 34 birds had been ringed, including 9 Blackcap, 3 Chiffchaff, 3 Whitethroat and 2 Garden Warbler. 

This adult male Whitethroat is also going through a post- breeding moult. Even in the closed wing, the longest primary can be seen to be more worn and pointed, and therefore older, than the inner ones; at the bend of the wing, some of the short feathers (coverts) are in pin; and the old central tail feathers have been retained whilst the newer, outer and currently shorter tail feathers are still growing.

Young Blackcaps have brown crowns (much like adult females) when they leave the nest, presumably to avoid any perceived threat by their father. However, within a few weeks of fledgling, youngsters moult their crowns (and other feathers) and can be start to be sexed. 

Ben was out at his new site but a couple of technical hitches reduced what was looking like being a big catch. Nevertheless he had 37 new birds--mostly warblers--one of which was a smart juvenile Lesser Whitethroat. We are out on Saturday evening at the site looking to see if there is a roost of Swallows.....if there is we will report on this next week.

A small team entertained a visiting guest, Mike, at Belvide on Thursday morning. In truth, after two good catches there already this week, we were expecting a fairly modest catch, but one which would showcase the site. As it turned out we caught another 100 new birds--again mostly migrants, with 34 Sedge Warblers being the most numerous. Two dollops of icing on the cake were our second and third Lesser Whitethroat of the season and, best of all our second Grasshopper Warbler of the season.

If you check back to our last post, we show a picture of an adult 'Gropper' showing the wear and tear on the feathers. In contrast here are pictures of the wing and tail feathers of Thursday's bird which was a juvenile. The relevant feathers are all brand new and in very good condition:-

A much better pic of the characteristic round tail of a 'Gropper'

And a beautiful picture of the pristine wing feathers.

Later on last evening we had a message from Pat out at Siskin City, near Welshpool, letting us know that although he didn't catch any Siskin yesterday, he had a decent catch of other common finches--especially Chaffinch and Greenfinch.

So--all in all a very successful day for the group with just under 200 new birds ringed--most of which in one way or another are very interesting and potentially might provide some useful data on migration routes. 

Well done everyone--more to come over the weekend I hope.......

Busy Busy Busy!!

 What a week--and it's only Wednesday!!. We had a frustrating weekend with inaccurate weather forecasts, strong winds and rain--and no ringing. So the team gathered on Monday at Belvide itching to make up for missed time--and we really did. We ringed 162 new birds, most of which were migrants. As well as 32 Sedge warblers and 22 each of Reed warblers and Blackcaps, the most numerous species was Sand Martin with 44 individuals. The weather was dull, still and cool meaning that the martins were flying low to catch insects --making them a bit easier to catch. 

I've included a few pics to point out a couple of features of Sand Martins:-

This picture shows how we age this species. The bird on the left is a juvenile hatched earlier this year as can be seen by all the white edges to many of the feathers. The adult on the right has plain brown feathers.

Over the years we have noticed a variety of pale tips to juvenile Sand Martin feathers. Most are white or cream:-

However, at the other end of the scale are some birds like this one, where the tips are almost orange:-

We've never seen any reason for this--it may be genetic--or it may be staining by the sand in the nest burrows?? Any genuine answers gratefully received!

The other great birds we caught were our first 3 Lesser Whitethroats of the season. Here is a picture --but I will expand on some interesting stuff about these birds at a later date.

Tuesday saw a couple of us at Tom's workplace doing a demonstration of ringing to a small group of families. It's always great fun seeing the wonder and delight on kids ( and adults!) at these sessions--which made up for a rather poor selection of birds with Blue and Great tits the only species we ringed.

This morning we had two teams out. Gareth ( one man team!!) was operating his farm site and had a superb catch of 42 new birds of 14 species including Greenfinch, Linnet, Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Whitethroat and Reed Warblers. Another 3 Yellowhammers confirmed what a good site this is for these and other species. We are really chuffed for Gareth in that he is now starting to enjoy himself by ringing good numbers of interesting species after all the effort he has put in!!

A young male Greenfich

And a young Linnet

While Gareth was ploughing ahead on his site, the massed band of other group members rocked up for the regular Wednesday session at Belvide. Things were a tad quieter than on Monday with only 69 birds ringed--again mainly warblers of the usual species BUT star bird of the day was this season's first Grasshopper Warbler!!-so named because of the reeling song reminiscent of some grasshopper species.

It's absolutely fair to describe Grasshopper Warblers as little brown jobs--but there are some really subtle, beautiful dimensions to their plumage. First, here's the whole bird--small and streaky--and just to help observers--they scuttle around on the ground in deep vegetation most of the time.

These birds belong to the genus 'Locustella'--which tend to have very rounded tails--unfortunately not well shown in this bird which has shorter than normal central tail feathers.

Other features of this warbler are:-

spotted undertail coverts

and long pink legs

This bird happened to be an adult female. Female because it had the remains of a brood patch on the belly; adult because of the very worn feathers on the tail and outer wing--contrasting with the newly moulted in replacement feathers on the inner wing:-

We also caught a juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker--these young birds can be aged easily for several weeks after leaving the nest--by having a red patch on the crown of the head as can be clearly seen here. These feathers will be replaced by back ones over the coming weeks.

The excitement continues tomorrow with Ben working his superb new site and a few of us operating at Belvide again---news about these tomorrow!!

A good session--but look at last year!!

 Any ringing session where you ring 80 new birds of which 64 are migrants is good in anyone's terms. This morning we ringed 64 migrants including 20 Chiffchaffs, 17 Reed Warblers, 11 Blackcaps, 8 Willow Warblers and 7 Sedge Warblers--as well as other species such as Kingfisher. But a close inspection of our results so far shows up some remarkable figures which seem to confirm our fears about the potentially poor breeding season this year.

We suspected it might be the case because of the cold late Spring weather as well as the local issue of slow growth of the nesting and feeding vegetation round the reservoir--in particular the Phragmites reeds, the Glyceria grass and the brambles.

This small table shows a comparison of the 2020 and 2021 seasons up to 4th August--looking at the four signature species breeding at Belvide:-

                            2020                 2021

Reed Warbler      171                    109     -36%

Sedge Warbler    139                      62      -55%

Chiffchaff           151                     101     -33%

Blackcap             123                      78      -36%

These are pretty stark figures and do seem to provide evidence to support our theory. Further comparisons as time moves on are less valuable because any late breeding will be masked by any influx of birds during migration.

It will be interesting to see what the picture is like across the country as results come through--but it's likely to be some time before such results are analysed. Let's hope this is just a 2021 glitch rather than being the start of a longer term decline in breeding success.

Dairy Farm Diary

It's always really satisfying to see our younger members developing new ringing sites and extending their experience. I mentioned in my last post that I was intending to join Gareth ( and his dad Kev) at Gareth's relatively new site at Dairy Farm. As well as giving them both a hand ( not that they need it!) it gave me a chance to get to know the site which I hope will make it easier for me to make future posts from there more meaningful

It was a lovely morning with no wind and light cloud, and we had a steady catch resulting in 36 new birds of 14 species--a couple of which are pictured below:-

It's always a privilege to catch a gorgeous Kingfisher--but this one was particularly informative. If you check my recent blog, you will know that it's a male due to lack of red on the lower mandible. But second, by comparing this juvenile bird with the adult in the recent post you will be able to make sense of one of the ageing criteria used in our guide books-

Juveniles are said to be ''greeny-blue''  while adults are said to be '' bluey-green''   EASY!!?

Again in a recent post I pointed out that juvenile Willow Warblers were bright yellow on the underparts from chin to tail; while adults are:-

Yellow on the chin and breast but much whiter on the belly and under tail, just like this one.

All in all it was a lovely session at a site which gives Gareth great scope for the future--but like all new, big sites it will take him some time to work out which net sites are best at which times of the year--I'm confident he'll get there.!!

Babies everywhere......

 Belvide is one of our main ringing sites --but we have quite a few others where team members put in the hard yards--so I thought it would be a good idea to spend some time showcasing other sites operated by the group.

This morning Gareth was out bright and early at one of his farm sites to the south east of Birmingham. He has put in a lot of effort over recent years and his returns have been variable. However, we are sure that as time goes on this site will become a very rich source of birds for him and the group.

This morning's session gave a decent catch--and the pictures that Gareth sent to me illustrated that the site has been very productive during the breeding season so there should be a good number of birds around over coming months.

I have banged on a bit about how juvenile birds ( especially finches) often have very muted colours during their early weeks of life in order not to provoke aggression from especially the adult males.

Here are three classic examples:-

This juvenile Goldfinch has a plain fawn coloured head --the red white and black pattern will come in over the coming months

This juvenile Chaffinch is similarly drab--difficult to be certain if it is male or female yet.

It would be really difficult to tell which species this was as it is so drab!! It is in fact a juvenile Yellowhammer--not much chance of this annoying the adult males!!

Well done Gareth--I'm popping down later in the week to give him a hand--I'll report back on that later in the week.