Just a brilliant group!!

 These last few weeks have really demonstrated that which I already knew--that we have a great group of people in our ringing group. So many of them have been out early mornings, late mornings, afternoon and evenings catching phenomenal numbers of great birds.

The most numerous has been the Redwing which have arrived in big numbers. Pete has been catching regularly in the twenties and thirties, Jennie in smaller but regular numbers while  Kevin and Gareth have had several catches in the 40's with one fabulous morning at Great Bridgeford where they caught 88!!

Gareth finally managed to catch a troublesome but tiny male Sparrowhawk:_

It may be small but a powerful and efficient predator nonetheless.

Liz is the latest of our trainees to get her ringing licence, and she enjoyed her first solo garden ringing session this morning. She ringed a few House Sparrows, all of which were males like this smart individual

Kevin has been ringing at his (almost) city centre site at the Racecourse which regularly turns up exciting and interesting birds. The latest is this rather plain but special Chiffchaff:-

'Normal' Chiffchaffs are variously greeny/grey/ brown with brown legs and yellow soles to the feet,  whereas this is very pale grey above, white below with black legs and feet. It's a Siberian Chiffchaff of which there have been quite a lot around the country over recent weeks. I wonder how it's feeling based in Wolverhampton?

Kev has also started catching Yellowhammers at Patshull ( so far) which is giving him the opportunity to start his colour ringing project to find out more about this farmland species. Here is a Yellowhammer with a normal metal ring on its right leg and a plastic colour ring on it's left leg with engraved letters and numbers on:-

The aim here is that birders -especially if they have a telescope-can read the colour ring in the field so we can collect data without having to recapture the bird.

Finches can be quite difficult to catch but Paul is persisting manfully against the weather gods and is steadily building up numbers of particularly Linnets

Jen, Col, Sam, Shaun and Tom have been out with the thermal imager on a few nights even though the moon is quite bright and they have started catching good numbers of Skylark--Jen and Sam were well pleased a couple of nights ago to also catch their first two Woodcock of this season, recently arrived from who knows where in north eastern Europe or Asia.

More news next week!

 

 

So much activity!!

 Team members are really stepping up to the plate to make the best of a settled period of weather, with sometimes up to 4 teams out and about on any given day. As a consequence we are ringing lots of birds --mainly Redwing as mentioned in the last post--but also a range of other special birds.

Here is yet another Sparrowhawk--this time showing the juvenile characteristics mentioned lately--which compare well with the adult type shown last time,

The eyes on this bird are turning orange--but the breast and belly have arrowhead type markings rather than bars--and the wing feathers are all edged buff--all juvenile features.

This is a male Blackcap which is a warbler--so why isn't it in southern Europe/North Africa given that it's November. Well over the last twenty or so years there have been increasing numbers of Blackcaps wintering in the UK. Ringing studies suggest that they are NOT 'our' birds but they come from eastern Europe to exploit the warmer temperatures here-along with good food provided by gardens in the form of berry bearing plants and things like fat balls.

This is a great portrait of a male Blackcap with a black cap. But more careful study shows it to be a juvenile bird because of the bits of brown plumage in the cap which are the remnants of the feathers it had when it left the nest.

Farmland birds are really under the microscope at the moment and one such species of concern is the Yellowhammer. Fortunately the farms we work with are doing lots to support this species and we ring quite good numbers. This was Kevin's first session at this farm and he ringed a pleasing 7 individuals.

Close examination of this bird shows that all the wing feathers are of the same generation, showing it to be an adult ( ie more than one year old)--and the relatively small amount of yellow is because it's a female. Juvenile females have virtually no bright yellow on them at all.

The weather looks reasonable for the coming few days so I hope to report lots of good birds next time!

Back in Action

 Apologies for the lack of posts recently but I've been away on a couple of holidays and playing catch-up ever since. Things are getting back to normal and November has got off to a belting start.

I posted a while ago that Redwings had started to reach us from breeding sites far to the north and east--and for a few days we managed to catch good numbers. Then it almost stopped----puzzling. As a guide, during the recent past few years, Pete would catch between 30 and 50 Redwing every morning. This year it's been 10-20! Until these last few days when it has been obvious that a second major wave of these--and the first Fieldfares, has arrived; and as a result the catch rate as increased considerably. We have ringed over 200 in the first few days of November. One of the issues we have when ringing Redwings is that they attract predators-mainly in the form of Sparrowhawks. I have previously shown pictures of very young Sparrowhawks with pale yellow eyes and arrowhead shaped brown splodges ( technical term!!??) on their breast and belly. But here are a couple of pictures of an almost adult male with orange eyes, orange breast and bars rather than splodges:-

We've also started our thermal imaging activities during the day for Jack Snipe, and at night mainly for Skylarks, Grey Partridge and Woodcock ( the latter of which have just arrived).

One very interesting aspect came out during our session a couple of days ago. For starters we ringed 7 new Patridges which is a really high number--but most intriguing were 3 birds which appeared to have only just left the nest. Here is the head of one showing the dappled crown pattern with the buffy cream coloured cheeks only just starting to appear:-

Lots of other activities going on--more later.......