Lapwing update

I wrote a few days ago about how we had marked some Lapwing nests so the farmer could avoid them with his tractor--so here's an update.

Over the last couple of days, the eggs have started to hatch and we have been able to find and ring the chicks. This is where thermal imaging has transformed our success. But surely, chicks on a flat bare field should be easy to find I can hear you ask. So here's the problem. The field is pretty big, the chicks are very small, and when the parents make an alarm call the chicks instinctively lay flat on the ground and hide the white patch at the back of the neck which the adults use to locate them. The result is.......

This one is relatively easy to see as you can see its left foot and you can just about make out the edge of the white behind the head. But this one is altogether more difficult to see....

The cryptic camouflage is brilliant--and really necessary to help them avoid aerial predators in particular. So how has thermal imaging helped. Well prior to us using the, we needed a team of people with binoculars and telescopes trying to triangulate where the chicks had been seen before they lay flat, and using hand signals/mobile messages to guide us to the chicks. It took ages and caused a lot of disturbance. Now we can walk quickly to where we think the chicks are, looking constantly through the imager and hey presto! here is what we see --three chicks laying flat.....

They may not look like baby waders, but the heat profile is such that we can spot them quickly, and locate them with the naked eye after spotting with the imager. In and out of the field in a few minutes.

There is a long way to go before the chicks are safely fledged--but now that there are several pairs nearby it's encouraging to see several adults together attacking the crows. When there is only one adult it's easier for them to be distracted by one crow while another attacks the chicks. Let's keep everything crossed for their success.

 

 

Don't forget the Robin

 Paul has continued putting in the hours at BPF feeding station--and a strange thing is happening--very few birds are there in the morning ( when we usually expect there to be lots)--but when we visit in the afternoon there are good numbers of Gold, Green and Chaffinches on the feeders?????

The weather has been too windy for much success but this coming week looks like it could be better so lets hope for better results. He did catch this Robin a few days ago....

Familiar but smart nonetheless. When he extracted the bird from the net Paul could see it was carrying a ring--not that surprising given the number he rings there. But on closer examination he found that he first ringed the bird as an adult back on 6th November 2019.--so it's at least 5 years old. Not quite a record breaker, but it's doing very well.

Team members are catching a small number of birds in gardens, and Jenni had this absolutely stonking male Starling in a friend's garden........

From previous pictures you can clearly see it's a male because of the blue base to it's beak. I've put the word out for someone to catch and photograph a female so you can see the difference--fingers crossed.

Liz is out at Powell Towers aka Siskin City today so I hope they will have lots of good birds to report; and on Wednesday we have a follow-up visit to ring any Grey Heron chicks that were too smal at our last visit. I will report on baoth soon.

Gailey Island Herons

 The heronry on the lower (sailing) pool at Gailey is well know in the West Midlands, and is one of the longest studied colonies in the UK. Up until a few years ago the late, great Bert Coleman organised the ringing of the Grey Heron chicks, and for the last couple of years, we have taken on the role. Lock-down obviously caused a problem, but last year we did manage to start a new programme of colour ringing the chicks in order to try to find out more about their dispersal, and potential return to the site.

One of the difficulties about ringing a colony of Grey Herons is that the nest asynchronously. Many colonial nesting species, prefer to have their chicks all develop at the same time and have evolved behavioural strategies to achieve this. For some reason, this species is happy for chick development to vary immensely. The difficulty from our point of view is knowing when is the best time to have the maximum number of chicks ready to ring at any given time. In truth, it's a mixture of regular careful observation of the colony ( from the nearest dry land), calculations--and luck!! Just to illustrate this, several of the nests were still incubating eggs, some had very well developed chicks which were ready to fledge, such as this one....

....and from observations as early as February, some chicks had already fledged and left the nest.

Our good friend Tim, from the sailing club kindly offered to take our group out to the island colony on Sunday morning and we stayed for the traditional time of just over 1 hour in order to minimise the disturbance. The more experienced members slid into action immediately and sent chicks to the ringing

base where Kev and Scott took charge--first putting on a classic metal ring on one leg, and a uniquely numbered/lettered 'Darvic' plastic ring on the other, as you can see here...

Sessions like this afford a great opportunity for trainees and anyone not familiar with this species to gain invaluable experience. Here is trainee Shaun getting expert guidance from Scott, to ring his first heron....

And here's Liz after one of her first heron interactions--note the snazzy safety glasses which are really helpful with such big, sharp beaks around the place....

After a pretty slick operation all the chicks were safely returned to their own nests, as Paul is doing here....

In the end we ringed 18 Grey Heron chicks, and estimated that there were 25 active nests. However, because of the variation in development we estimate that a good number of chicks will be ready for ringing in about 10 days time, so with luck we will be crossing again to finish the job.

Great team effort!!

 It's often difficult at this time of year to find many birds to ring; the breeding season is under way for some, feeding stations are losing their appeal as temperatures increase, and winter visitors are on their way back north.

However, our resourceful and intrepid group members still put in the effort and Bank Holiday Monday demonstrated what can be done.

Liz and partner Luke visited their new college site ( closed for Easter), and manged a good selection of finches and some early migrants.......

She managed 6 Greenfinches including this super adult male--these birds are definitely making a comeback after several years of suffering from a fatal lung disease.

The first signs of summer were in the form of these two early migrants. A female Blackcap and a Chiffchaff.

Kev and sons Gareth and Nathan, had an early morning trip down to their newly ( last year) aquired woodland site in Hrefrordshire. Their main aim was to put up some more nest boxes hoping to attract

 Pied Flycatchers and Redstarts. After they had put up the boxes they decided to have a general netting session, and among other species they ringed......

This delightful Treecreeper, and...

One of the newly arrived male Pied Flycatchers which we hope will attract a mate and raise more chicks in a few weeks.

Paul has been continuing to put in the mileage at BPFarm feeders even though the numbers of birds are down on last year. However, he still managed to ring another new Yellowhammer and 4 Linnets--among other species.....

A male Linnet, and a male Yellowhammer..

Pat's garden is still attracting good numbers of Siskin, but a new kid on the block is providing some variation for him. Yesterday he managed to ring some finches related to Siskin--Lesser Redpoll. He ringed 11 new birds including this stonking male......

Well done everyone--almost 70 new birds, of an interesting and useful range of species,  ringed at this time of year is a splendid effort.

Thermal imaging in conservation

 Lapwings have had a tough time over many years, but many farmers and landowners are trying to help them--particularly by leaving areas in a suitable state for nesting. One way of doing this is by planting in late spring rather than late autumn so that the relatively bare fields are suitable for Lapwings to nest.

Such is the case on one of our farms and we have seen several pairs courting and ( we hope) nesting. However, farmers do need to make a living and land must be used for growing crops. Such was the case that this particular field needed to be drilled with seed this week. So Jenni and I paid an early morning visit to the field yesterday ( while the temperature was still low), with two of our thermal imagers, to look for Lapwing nests.

Using conventional methods--binoculars and telescopes, it can take a long time to find the well- comouflaged nests. But with the imagers we found the bright white image of nests with incubated eggs very quickly-so minimising the disturbance to the parent birds.

You can clearly see the hot eggs from quite a distance. On closer examination this is a beautiful clutch of 4 Lapwing eggs....

You can also get an idea from this picture, of how difficult these are to find with the naked eye. The next job was to mark the nests at a suitable distance which doesn't attract predators, but still enables the farmer in his tractor to avoid the nest when drilling the seed......

So after about half an hour we had found and marked 4 nests, and the final job was to report to the farmer and clarify to him where the markers were in relation to the nests. Farmer happy---Lapwings happy.

Fingers crossed that these eggs will hatch in the next few days.......then the real job for the parents will start as they try to protect the chicks from the many predators out there.

 

A bit more ageing and sexing!!

 We have been catching quite a lot of Brambling and Siskin recently, and here are a few pictures to illustrate a couple of clues that we look for.

First, I have talked about a feature of fiches whereby the colours are muted during the winter because the coloured feathers are 'hidden' by them having pale tips, which break or wear off just before the breeding season to reveal the breeding colours. Team member Jenni took this stunning and unusual picture of the mantle ( upper back) feathers of a male Brambling recently.....

Here you can clearly see the pale tips to the black feathers on the mantle. In the next couple of weeks these will wear off and the black feathers will show at just the right time for breeding.

This next picture is of the wing of another Brambling showing how we can tell that it's a juvenile, born last year....

The arrow points to the outermost greater covert, and you can see that it is both shorter than the other greater coverts as you move towards the body of the bird--and this one is white tipped rather than orange. This is a feather left from when this bird fledged which ( unlike the others in that row) it hasn't yet moulted and replaced with an adult type feather.

These next two pictures are of Siskins ( although you wouldn't know it.......!! Now Siskins are easy to sex in the field because males and females have very different plumage. But some birds eg Dunnocks have no sexual plumage difference. However, in the breeding season we can often separate males from females by closely examining their belly--and gently blowing apart the feathers. Females develop a brood patch whereby the belly feathers drop out to leave bare skin with which to keep the eggs warm

You can clearly see that here. The skin also gets well supplied with blood vessels, and wrinkles to increase its surface area. In contrast males usually develop a 'bump' on their vent, called a cloacal protuberance, ( white arrow) with a tuft of feathers, ( yellow arrow), as shown in this picture......

Lastly, I've mentioned a few times our member Pat, who moved to a village west of Welshpool a couple of years ago. In that time his garden has developed a reputation within the group as a great place to ring Siskins, and we take our trainees out there to benefit from the exposure to a large number of birds in order to learn as much about them as possible. Last year we took (then trainee but now qualified) member Liz an she had a wonderful time handling around 60 Siskins in the day! Pat's place became known as 'Siskin City'--and yesterday we tool advanced trainee Tom out. Even we were surprised and impressed by the number of Siskin in his garden--we caught 147, in just one medium net during our 3.5 hour visit!!! Remarkable. Here's a picture of us extracting birds from the net. No sooner had we emptied it than it filled up again-and again-and again. Thanks Pat, and well done Tom.

 

A bit of ageing and sexing.......

 One of the key skills for trainees is learning the various ways in which we can determine the age and the sex of the birds they ring. It's sometimes very easy--but often very difficult if not almost impossible. And because collectively we are learning all the time, we need to be adaptable and open to new ideas.

Here's a couple of items from our ringing this weekend with new trainee Guy. First --Great Spotted Woodpecker. Sexing at this time of year is particularly easy--look at the back of the neck--if it's red you have a male, there is no red.....

you have a female!!

Yellowhammers can be a tad more tricky--but here we have a couple of bird which are relatively easy to sex--and age....

The large areas of yellow on this bird suggest strongly that it is a male--and the fact that the whole head is NOT yellow so near the breeding season suggests it is a juvenile male fledged last year.

In stark contrast this female has very little yellow on the head--so little in fact that we're pretty sure it is a juvenile female....

This next bird is taking us into the shady area.....

This bird ha more yellow on the head than the juvenile female above--but not as much as the juvenile male. It's also got a yellow throat but very streaky brown breast and flanks. Other details suggested that this was an adult female--easy isn't it.......!!??

Last, not an ageing or sexing feature but one of pure glamour. Stock Doves appear to be doing well around us and this is reflected in the number we are now ringing. From a distance they can look a little drab--but in the hand on a sunny day the patch of feathers on the sides of the neck are truly glamorous! They are iridescent changing colour from green to purple depending on the angle the light hits them.

 

Here you can see the green and purple areas showing as the light hits parts of the neck at different angles.

A couple of snippets

 Team members have really been putting in the effort again recently and apart from Pat who is catching big numbers of Siskin intermittently, the rest of us are finding the going tough. However, Liz is enjoying using her new licence to ring in her garden and has a couple of interesting birds to show.....

First is the head of a Starling in breeding plumage...

This is a cracking picture and shows how you can sex Starlings in the breeding season quite easily. You can clearly see that the base of the bill is BLUE ( for a boy); and if it had been PINK ( it would have been a girl)--easy!!

The next couple of pictures are of Collared Dove. Quite a common garden bird but actually this was the first Collared Dove for the group since we reformed a couple of years ago. They are very difficult to catch in mist nets because they have big wings and short legs and claws--so they flap around and escape easily. Liz was using a small cage trap on the ground and the bird duly obliged.

Quite a smart bird actually, but what I think is class about them is the bright blood-red eye colour:-

The team are out and about regularly and if we have anything interesting to show you, I'll do so asap, fingers crossed!!

A detective story that Agatha Christie would have been proud of!!

 One of the feeding stations at Belvide has been attracting large numbers of Brambling over recent days, and we may be able to ring some in the next few days. This tends to happen at this time most years, as these birds are gradually feeding up and moving north before crossing the North Sea to breed in northern Scandinavia and points east.

Top birder Steve, saw this individual and took a great photo:-

The bright colours show it to be a male, but you can clearly see the ring on the bird's right leg. Knowing that we haven't ringed any Brambling at Belvide, Steve tried to get the details from the ring!! This took a lot of patience and some excellent digiscoping. Here is one of the pictures he took

From left to right you can see

ES99

TAV

Other pictures of the ring as it moved around on the leg and the bird posed in different positions, enabled us to put the whole sequence together, but even from this we knew the bird had been ringed in Norway, where all rings of this size begin with the letter 'E', and the TAV is the middle section of the ringing scheme centre at STAVANGER.

So that night I sent an email and the following day the Stavanger centre replied that the bird was ( as we suggested) a juvenile bird- flegded in 2021, and had been initially ringed in October last year at an observatory on the west coast of Norway called Revtangen.

It was a great bit of joint detective work between birder and ringer, and gave another bit of info about the origin of some of our birds. Steve has now got the bug and is checking out all the birds with rings on he sees at Belvide!! A couple of days ago he tracked down the ring number on a Reed Bunting, which had been ringed in 2016 at Belvide and till now hadn't been seen agai.