Belvide Ringers on tour… Norway

Some of the Belvide Ringers team are currently in Arctic Norway on a ringing expedition. You can follow their trip on the following Blog:

Nesseby Ringmerken

Lots of action.

 As I mentioned in my last report, migration is really on at a pace and we are having lots of success. As well as our main site at Belvide, we put on an extra special session at Witches Oak to support our colleague Ben. Extra group members helped set more nets, some slept over for an early start next day--the result was that we ringed 201 new bird--mostly migrants--including 2 Grasshopper Warblers ( new for the site), 5 Cettis warblers, 54 Sedge Warblers, 23 Blackcap,19 Reed Warblers and plenty of other birds.

Overall the group has ringed well over 1000 birds during August and there's still more than a week to go.

I've just had a lovely picture sent from Jenni .....

It's our second Redstart of the year--I know I posted a picture of our first a couple of weeks ago---but I never tire of looking at these little stunners. In the field I love watching them land after a short flight because their tail wobbles as it it was connected by elastic. Fab!

This was a very exciting bird we caught a few days ago. It's called a Whinchat, and although in this juvenile plumage it's fairly drab, the excitement was because it's only the second of this species we've ringed at Belvide. The broad white supercilium ( stripe) over the eye is one of the main distinguishing features although in this shot the lighting doesn't really show it well.

At our Saturday session last week, the Sand and House Martins started to appear early morning and we managed to catch the first ones of the season.

This could almost be a 'mystery bird' photograph. It is in fact a juvenile Sand Martin. You can tell it's a Sand Martin because of the generally brown plumage with the soft brown bib. It's a juvenile because of the white edges to the wing feathers which you can see quite clearly.

I won't be posting for a couple of weeks because a team of us are headed for a ringing site 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Norway. Lucky us!! We will hope to be sending daily blog posts from there and if we do I'll get some of the younger tech savvy members of the group to try and provide a link to this blog.

 

Migration is so exciting!!

 August is advancing and it's fascinating every time we set up at Belvide to realise the scale of the movement of migrants as they embark on their epic southward journey--what a priviledge!!

Our start times are early and to be honest the bright sunshine doesn't do us any favours as it shines on the nets making them visible to the birds. On the flipside however, it provides us with some wonderful sunrise views like this.....

Having said that the sun is no friend, we nevertheless have had some great catches and so far into August we have ringed over 700 birds from all our sites. Most of them have been migrant warblers so I thought I'd simply provide a gallery with notes of some of the birds we ring.

This is one of the small 'leaf warblers'--the commonest one of at Belvide is the Chiffchaff of which this is a nice example. They are difficult to distinguish from Willow Warblers but although there are some definitive pointers in the hand, 'Chiffies' are generally a bit smaller, duller and shorter winged that Willows.

Although this looks similar it's one of the bigger 'Sylvia' warblers--it's a Garden Warbler and is probably the least well marked of any warbler.

This is another of the Sylvia warblers and it's a Common Whitethroat. You can see the white throat but the most obvious ID feature is the chestnut areas on the wings,

This next bird is pretty nondescript but it's a real prize given we only catch a couple on average each year. This is the third one this year, and it's a Grasshopper Warbler

As you can see they are pretty sombre looking--but this next view really helps.....

The group of warblers they belong to all have rounded tails. The group are called 'Locustella' as they tend to have a song similar to grasshoppers/locusts, and are more often heard than seen.

Finally for now, there is a group of smallish brown birds called 'pipits' and one of them which is a long distance migrant is the Tree Pipit. We had heard a few calling as they do on migration and fortunately one popped into a net...

For now, I'll leave you with the picture because in a few weeks time a close relative-the Meadow Pipit will be passing through so I'll go over their ID features when I can compare them.