Comings and Goings

 In the last few posts, I've talked about the fantastic controls we've had of Siskins from eastern Europe. The 'comings'. In the last week or so, we've had reports of Siskins we have ringed which have been found elsewhere--the 'goings'.

This first bird was found in Suffolk....

We have been a tad intrigued by this but I wonder if it is one of the eastern invaders on it's way back to mainland Europe via a relatively short crossing--who knows?

As well as birds from eastern Europe, I think the next image illustrates that birds from Scotland also featured heavily in the birds we caught.

We have already had 5 birds recaptured by ringers on their way back to Scotland.

Not part of the Siskin invasion but equally interesting is this record of a Chiffchaff ringed at Belvide which I reported on recently. 

This bird was re-trapped in Switzerland--only the second British ringed Chiffchaff to be caught in Switzerland--who would have guessed?

Gareth has been putting in the hard yards at his quarry site with little return in many ways for his hard work. However, a couple of weeks ago he scored big time with a superb male Whinchat

These are stunning birds which breed sparsely in upland/ moorland regions. This bird had obviously stopped off to feed and obliged by popping into a mist net. As Gareth says--it's days like this that make the bad days worthwhile.

Meanwhile I and a couple of other old timers had a few days at the bird observatory on Alderney Island one of the Channel Isles. Like many islands--especially in the spring they can be brilliant with lots of birds passing through--or very quiet--it all depends on the wind. As we arrived on the late afternoon flight on the first day, the wind had been ok and we were met by the warden, John, with a photograph of that mornings start bird......

A magnificent adult male Golden Oriole--oh how I wish we had caught an earlier flight!! The wind changed overnight to a brisk north easterly and migration pretty much stopped. 3 days of looking at empty nets--followed as the wind eased by a trickle of migrants. As sure as eggs is eggs, the day after we left, the wind went southerly and they caught 250 birds in  a fraction of the nets we had been using. Ringers always have tales of woe-- a bit like twitchers who arrive at the spot only to be told '' it was last seen 40 minutes ago but hasn't shown since.....''

Redpolls and records

 We have had lots of Siskin on our feeders as have many people around the country. Although nowhere near as many, we have also had quite a few Redpoll also. These two species often wander together--but Redpoll ae much less obvious--often simply looking like " little brown jobs" from a distance without binoculars.

However, they are very attractive birds. They all have the characteristic, red patch on the head ( or poll a it was called in olden times) just like this female....

Males, especially at this time of year are quite unmistakeable, with a bright pinky/red breast. This is a particularly bright example...

Thanks to Paul for these pics from BPF this morning.

This morning the BTO journal Ringing and Migration dropped through the letterbox. It's research papers are a bit 'heavy', and it will be some time before I fight my way through them all. But at the rear of the journal once per year is the collection of data from ringers around the country. Having one of your birds in there is always a bit of a thrill--and this time we had a recovery of a bird which I had forgotten about. 

You can just about make out that it was a Chiffchaff ringed at Belvide at the end of August 2019. It was found ( unfortunately killed by a cat!!) in Switzerland mid March 2021--only the second ever British ringed Chiffchaff to be found in Switzerland!!

That in itself is cause for celebration--but I wonder what the back-story is here. I'm pretty sure it was probably bred near Belvide and caught before it set off on it's way south typically late September. So why did it turn up in Switzerland in March a couple of years later? Several possibilities..... was it slightly off course and on it's way back to the UK?; had it paired up with a Swiss mate and was settling down to breed there?; had it wintered in Switzerland for some reason.? The reality is we don't know--but it's fun thinking about the possibilities!!

Superb Siskin results!!!

 In my last post I mentioned that we had had controls of Siskins from abroad--now we have had feedback on those controls.

The German bird was originally ringed on 7th March 2023--there have only been 56 records of German Siskins found in the UK.

The Czech Republic bird caught on the same day had been ringed on 9th April 2023, there have only been 7 Siskins found in UK from there.

The Lithuanian bird was ringed 5th April 2021,there have only been 12 birds caught from Lithuania.

Close by ( around 2 miles) at one of our other sites we had a bird originally ringed in Poland, from where only 8 birds have ever been recovered.

SO--4 eastern European ringed birds within 1 week was an incredibly significant catch compared to the number of bird recovered here from those countries in over 100 years of the ringing scheme!!

It remains to be seen how many of the around 2000 Siskins we have ringed over the last month or so will be controlled in those same countries, where, presumably these birds will be returning to breed.

On a more domestic note--activity at our feeders is predictably dropping off as birds move out to breed--and summer visitors arrive back from wintering in southern countries.

This morning I had a male Blackcap, which showed an interesting feather feature......

It's often very difficult to age birds at this time of year--but this Blackcap showed a distinctive group of feathers on the wing.

You can see from the blue bar that the feathers under the bar are slightly browner than the grey feathers to the left of the bar. It actually was even more obvious on the real bird --the grey feathers are adult and the browner ones are remnant juvenile feathers so we can be confident this bird was reared in 2023.

More of a curiosity was this Goldfinch which Paul caught this morning...

Although rather more common in Redpoll, this Goldfinch is showing some gold feathers in the rwed head. It's probably a simple mutation. but I really have no further details than that. 

And now from a little further......

 We haven't heard yet any details from the 3 foreign controlled Siskin I reported on in my last mailing; but we caught another ringed bird 2 days ago which sheds a bit more light on the derivation of all these birds.

On the middle line of this ring you can clearly see the letters LITH; this bird was originally ringed in Lithuania, which is even further east than our previous birds.!!

A couple of us have visited the Kaliningrad region of Russia, which borders the eastern Baltic and is directly south of Lithuania. From our experiences, many thousands ( probably millions) of birds migrate along the Lithuanian and then the Kaliningrad coast before entering Poland and spreading out over Europe. Our suspicion is that at least some of the Siskin roaming around the UK at present are birds from Russia, this one of which was ringed en route in Lithuania. Time will tell, but we are quite hopeful that of the 2000+ Siskin we have ringed in the last 2 months, some of them may be controlled in eastern European countries where we think they have come from. Fingers crossed!!

Returns from far and wide!!

 This last few weeks have been crazy!! Every now and then we have a ''Siskin Year'', when for whatever reason, many more Siskins visit our gardens and feeding stations than is normal. The last time this happened was about 15 years ago.

We're not really certain what causes it but it must be something to do with the availability of their natural food ( Alder cone seeds), and the size of the population/success of breeding. It appears that the result is a mass emigration of these birds in all directions, with lots coming to the UK.

The result has been that we have ringed around 2000 in the last few weeks!! But it remained a mystery where they had all come from. Our only hint was a bird which had been ringed near Inverness, which we caught near the start of the invasion.

However, in the last 2 days we have ringed almost 150 new Siskin, but we have also controlled 4 birds already ringed by others. One is a British ringed bird, but the other 3 are very exciting........

You can just make out ND in the top line and SK in the middle line. The top line tells us the bird was ringed in POLAND, and the ringing centre is in GDANSK !! Looking forward to hearing more deatils in due course. The next one.........

Not quite as clear, but the middle line is HIDENSEE and the bottom line is GERMANIA--so this bird was ringed in Germany!! and finally 

The middle line here says PRAHA--so this bird was ringed in the Czech Republic!! 

It looks like this invasion is from birds in the central European area, and it's going to be really interesting to see exactly where they have come from--and how many more have been caught throughout the UK.

On a much more local note--but nonetheless valuable data, we re-trapped a Blue Tit a couple of days ago, and thought the number looked familiar. On checking we found that we originally ringed it on 14th December 2019, at Brewood Park Farm. Then again at the same site on 25th April 2023, and now on 23rd March 2024. A survivor!!

More news soon--especially when I find out where the Siskins came from.

It's a Siskin year!!

 In recent years I've posted quite a few comments about how our member Pat, who lives west of Welshpool, catches big numbers of Siskin in his garden. As an aside, here is a picture he sent a few days ago of a patch of lawn under his feeder....

A mouth-watering selection of Siskin, Chaffinch and Brambling! He sends these to the group now and then just to make the rest of us envious......

But over recent weeks, many of us have found numbers of Siskin visiting out feeders. Every now and then there is an expansion of the population and/or a crash in their natural food availability and they seek food in gardens. So over the last 2 weeks team members have caught several hundred of these delightful birds. A small clue as to their origins came from a bird we caught at our Kingswood Trust site, which was carrying a ring which had been put on 3 years ago just outside Inverness.!

Alongside Siskins, there are often numbers of another small finch, Redpolls. At a ringing demonstration last weekend at Jubilee Wood, we caught 40 Siskin and a dozen Redpoll---but one of the Redpoll was quite special. It was greyer, and bigger than 'our' Redpoll and it had a noticeably pale rump--which you can see on this picture...

Redpolls have a complex genetic system where birds from different areas of their wide breeding range, look slightly different. This bird was one of the Scandinavian race, called either a 'Common', or sometimes 'Mealy' Redpoll--from who knows where?

Paul is tearing his hair out at the spinner feeding stations at BPF, because he's getting good numbers of farmland finches and buntings coming ti feed, but the weather has been either too wet, windy or bright to catch many of them. However, he has caught a few such as this female Linnet

And this male Reed Bunting which illustrates an issue which I have posted previously....

We are almost into the breeding season and this male is almost showing its full breeding plumage -especially the black head. However, you can see that the black feathers actually have brown tips, which during the winter hide the black and prevent any bickering between males as they feed in flocks to find food. The brown tips wear off so that as w get to spring the birds then start to compete for females--clever eh?

 

Belvide Ringers 2023 Full Report

Another pioneering step !

 From 2016 when our group got the first thermal imager (loaned to us by the West Midland Bird Club) which has started a growing trend of using these machines in ringing, birding and general wildlife study, we have been looking for another major project to carry on similar pioneering work.

So it was that a few weeks ago we became the first group to attach GPS''ultra'' tags onto Jack Snipe at our study sites. Unfortunately tags which are small enough for deployment on Jack Snipe, don't yet have the technology to send a continuous signal to a satellite to enable us to follow the birds as they move around and migrate. However they do collect GPS data from satellites and so they are very accurate; the main issue being that we need to re-catch the birds in order to take off the tags and and download the data.

We are still working on this, and sorting out some red tape around data storage--but as soon as I can I will publish this really innovative work; and give a flavour of what we have found. Below is a picture of one tag which gives an idea of how small ( 1.2 gm) they are--how on earth do they get all that technology into a tag that size?? It's even got a solar panel to charge it's battery!!

In another unexpected turn, Gareth finally got details of a Sedge Warbler he caught in the summer at his new ex quarry site. Here is a photo of the recovery form we get via the BTO....

It's probably difficult for you to read but in essence the bird was ringed on 8th August 2024 at a site on the estuary of the river Seine in France. Astonishingly the bird then flew NORTH for 386 km to be recaptured by Gareth on 20th August 2024! Quite why it flew the 'wrong' way is anyone's guess but it's just one of the mysteries of migration which so fascinates us. We hope it managed to re-orientate and find it's way to Africa--but we'll probably never know; unless it's caught again......

Group members have been working hard again and we have managed some good catches this month--especially of finches as their natural food runs out and feeding stations become more important to them. I hope to provide more information next time on this, but for now I want to show a couple of pictures of Siskins, which are starting to visit feeders around here ( as well as at Pat's Siskin City in mid-Wales!!). These pics show the difference between males ( top) and females....

We are noticing a big imbalance between lots of adult birds compared to very few juveniles This often means they have had a poor breeding season--we will need to see the wider data from around the country before we can be definitive about this. More news as I get it.

 

 

2024 up and running!!

 Another year with plenty of plans and enthusiasm is up and running, with over 600 new birds ringed during January. This number is yet again testament to the efforts of group members. We have not been blessed with good weather, evening thermal sessions have been hard work, and there seems to have been a general lack of birds available, so it's even more significant that we've done so well.

The main players have again been Paul at BPFarm with regular sessions for trainees, Pat out at Siskin City in mid Wales, Ben with a big catch at his parents' cottage; with Kevin, Gareth, Liz, Roy, Colin and Emma chipping in from their sites.
Liz has put in sterling work to get our 2023 annual report ready; which it is now and we will be making this available very soon.

Now for a few pictures......

I may have given the impression that Pat's mid Wales garden is only about Siskins--but although this is his main species, he is having a broader spectrum of birds calling at his feeders...

For instance this lovely male Brambling....

And this smart male Redpoll..

and just to show it's not only finches he attracts, this delightful Treecreeper has been a regular visitor, over the last 3 years

Paul has started to get a few Siskin at his feeders, as well as the more regular Yellowhammers that are a significant catch of this red data, declining species.....

Last but not least for now. It's always exciting when you manage to ring a bird of prey--but this is even more so when you're relatively newly qualified and it's on your own new site. Roy was ecstatic to catch this Sparrowhawk last week....

I've deliberately focussed on the bird's head because it shows 2 features. First you can see the brown feathers on the breast, which is a sign of an adult male bird, And the adult nature is further confirmed by the orange colour of the iris. Young Sparrowhawks have a yellow iris which mellows to this orange colour as the bird gets a bit older. Fabulous bird!.

We hope you enjoy reading the annual report which I hope will be available here very soon.

Annual Report almost ready

 It's always a big job compiling the annual report --especially with the limited IT skills I've got. I hope we can post it within the next couple of weeks--but in the meantime here's a flavour.....

BELVIDE RINGING

 GROUP

ANNUAL REPORT 2023

An Overview

To coin an oft used football phrase, 2023 was definitely a year of two halves for the group.

Although there were extra safety procedures in place because of Bird Flu, group members set off with determination and some really excellent results came through. Pat had an excellent spring at his mid-Wales garden with lots of Siskin—and a wider range of species as the year went on. At Brewood Park Farm, Paul had a few stunning days during March when a strong passage of Linnets in particular provided one of the few species with more individuals ringed than in 2022—by a long way!

On the flip side, the strong passage of Brambling in ’22 didn’t materialise, there were no suitable days when it was possible to catch and ring Swifts and the availability of ringers and good weather curtailed our  Gailey heronry visits to only one, with only a third of the chicks ringed compared to 2022. In terms of other breeding birds, the newly acquired Pied Flycatcher scheme resulted in around the same number of chicks ringed by Gareth and Kevin, and we were pleased that Paul managed access to a new Sand Martin colony. This is still a young colony in a new quarry, and we hope to see it grow over the coming years. Some of the buildings at Rodbaston college are clearly attractive for nesting House Sparrows and we managed to ring good numbers of nestlings. Now that we know more about this aspect at the college we’re hoping to do more in 2024.

So as we approached mid- year, it was looking as though our totals would be lower—but we were embarking on the most productive period when there are lots of young birds around, and many species are very active in their preparations for migration.

The post breeding period got off to a decent start at our sites, but unfortunately ringing at our main Belvide site was halted in early August. The result of this was a reduction in about 1500 birds from our annual total. By way of compensation though, a new site acquired by Gareth has all the hallmarks of being a major group site in the near future. Gareth is involved in the development of the site and he expects that next year, all being well he should ring even more than the 564 birds in 2023. The icing on his cake was a Sedge Warbler carrying a French ring (he hasn’t yet been sent the details), and at the end of the year he found and ringed a Jack Snipe on the site, and is already planning to improve the habitat for this elusive species.

The whole of the second half of 2023, can be characterised by lots of work with generally little reward. This is illustrated in the site and overall totals. I suggest that it is testament to the determination of group members, that our results are as good as they are. So many times trip reports came back with disappointment as the main theme.

So why was this? There are many known factors—and probably as many unknown factors. Group members were away for considerable periods of time—but overall not much more than most years. Reports from Shetland, Arctic Norway and Portugal make interesting reads. Several of us, including yours truly, lacked a degree of enthusiasm and others for a variety of reasons were unavailable. The weather proved a decisive factor especially towards the end of the year with wind and rain negatively affecting catch rates significantly. Catch rates during thermal imaging sessions were much lower than previous years, but we have no real idea why because exactly the same kit and methods were used. Finally, there were quite clearly, fewer birds around. To illustrate this, in the overall totals table below, you will see that this year we ringed 572 Redwing compared to last year’s 1467!! If anything we put in more effort this year, but they just were not around. Pete put in exactly the same effort into catching Redwing at his Chillington garden site but ringed only174, compared to 775 last year. So Redwing alone account for another 1000 shortfall in the group overall total.

There were some positives though. A new site at Broom Hall farm, delivered 29 Goldcrests and 103 Redwings in just a few visits so we hope to build on this next year. Paul managed to ring 101 Meadow Pipits during a short passage period, and regular sessions for trainees at the feeding stations resulted in over a thousand birds at Brewood Park Farm over the year. Newly qualified ringer Roy has taken on Church Farm and regular sessions there are beginning to have a very positive effect; as are sessions at Kingswood Trust, which scored with the group’s only free flying Kestrel of the year. Kevin worked hard to generate 461 birds at Wolverhampton Racecourse, as well as manfully travelling to Patshull at ridiculously early times in the mornings to maintain a foothold at that site. Bird flu restrictions at the site should mean we generate more records in 2024. We have established a presence at Chasewater, especially regarding the Jack Snipe roost there; as well as recruiting ranger Heather as a trainee. Kevin and Gareth have produced their Shetland report later, but they manner in which they handled the appearance of a very rare White’s Thrush on their site has drawn plaudits from all quarters and further cemented our relationship with the Shetland Ringing Group. In similar vein, Liz represented our team superbly again with her performance in Norway; and the Portuguese Ringing Scheme continues to be grateful for our efforts to improve their knowledge of the Algarve as a migration stop over site.

In addition to new birds we have had some interesting recoveries and controls set out after the ringing totals table.

So, in conclusion, Pete and I would like to thank all our landowners for their access and support. Our families and friends who put up with the ridiculous time we devote to our hobby. And especially the members of the group who have worked hard all year-with great spirit-to ensure that Belvide Ringers remains a vibrant, forward looking group. In that context we are all looking forward to 2024, and I hope to be reporting more positively in next year’s annual report.

 

Blackbird	83
Blackcap	499
Blue Tit	789
Brambling	16
Bullfinch	9
Cetti's Warbler	19
Chaffinch	120
Chiffchaff	457
Coal Tit	56
Collared Dove	2
Common/Lesser Redpoll	3
Dunnock	135
Fieldfare	32
Garden Warbler	48
Goldcrest	125
Goldfinch	591
Grasshopper Warbler	1
Great Spotted Woodpecker	16
Great Tit	515
Green Woodpecker	1
Greenfinch	162
Grey Heron	11
Grey Partridge	4
Grey Wagtail	4
House Martin	16
House Sparrow	85
Jack Snipe	35
Jackdaw	1
Kestrel	1
Kingfisher	4
Lapwing	7
Lesser Redpoll	26
Lesser Whitethroat	11
Linnet	323
Long-tailed Tit	156
Magpie	2
Marsh Tit	1
Meadow Pipit	180
Nuthatch	18
Pied Flycatcher	41
Pied Wagtail (yarrellii)	11
Pied/White Wagtail	7
Redstart	3
Redwing	572
Reed Bunting	91
Reed Warbler	177
Robin	162
Sand Martin	50
Sedge Warbler	115
Siskin	620
Skylark	63
Song Thrush	39
Sparrowhawk	2
Starling	42
Stock Dove	7
Stonechat	4
Swallow	86
Tawny Owl	1
Tree Pipit	2
Treecreeper	12
Wheatear	5
Whitethroat	66
Willow Warbler	81
Woodcock	12
Woodpigeon	4
Wren	92
Yellowhammer	35

Total                                                              6,966