Swifting! Fantastic birds and fantastic fun

Swifts are amazing birds on many levels. From a ringers perspective they constitute almost the ultimate challenge. How do you go about catching birds which only ever land into their roof nesting site, and spend the rest of their time catching aerial insects at several hundred/thousand feet high?
Well, during cool and or wet summer days they need to fly low in order to catch their food which are near the surface-especially over lakes.
Even then its not easy because as you can imagine they have excellent eyesight and see normal mist nets very easily. So we adopt a technique called flick netting--see the picture below.

The idea is that you have a net fixed to a vertical pole at one end, then hold the other end on a short pole and let the net rest on the ground. As said Swift flies over he net the operator pulls the net up quickly into the vertical, and bags the bird safely-as seen in the pic.

 

They really are astonishing birds in the hand--really long wings, big eyes, mini bill with wide gape, and short feathered legs. What's not to love about them?? Well, at the end of their short legs are needle sharp claws and muscular toes which sink the claws into your flesh making sure the birds make you pay for the priviledge  of handling them. Oh--and they are covered in lots of quite large parasites we call flat flies-lovely!!
We managed 23 new birds this morning plus a retrap from 2017--goodness knows how many miles that bird has flown in the intervening period!!

the ring on the well travelled retrap

big eye-small bill--big gape

 

More well grown tit broods

This morning we checked the nest boxes at one of our regular farms--and we have been trying some based on hollowed out birch logs as shown:-

There is a suggestion that these may attract tit species other than Blue and Great. This may be the case, but in our case this season, all the occupied boxes contained Blue and Great tits. Most were too well developed to ring--if you're not very careful they can burst out of the box before they are absolutely ready so we tend to leave these well alone.

The best age for ringing is usually just as the flight feathers are bursting out of their sheaths:-

This brood of Great tits was just about perfect for ringing--there were 7 ( about average) of which these 4 were not camera shy.

Tits a couple of weeks early.

I had arranged for a nest box survey with a group of local scouts who had helped put boxes up a couple of years ago--for 8th June. However, having just got back from a weeks holiday, I had a quick look in a couple of boxes to find Blue and Great tit chicks almost ready to fledge. Rapid change of plan meant I had to check the boxes myself yesterday morning--here are the results:-

2019 BELVIDE NEST BOX SURVEY RESULTS

The overall picture is that breeding this year is earlier than average, by a week or more, and that generally brood sizes are average or, but fledging success is very high.

The survey was carried out on the morning of Saturday 18^th May.

92 boxes (all hole) were checked—a further 12 were not checked for a variety of reasons. The two commonest were that they were too far from the path ( too much disturbance of potential nesting habitat), or the box lids could not be removed.

No boxes were checked beyond the west end hide due to lack of time.

Of the 92 boxes checked, 34 were or had been occupied this year by birds.

                                                4 by bees (sp ?)

                                                2 by mice

Of the 34 bird occupied nests, 32 had living broods or warm eggs

                                                        1 had a brood of young dead chicks

                                                        1 had a clutch of cold eggs ( for some days)

Of the 32 containing viable offspring

                                                22 were Blue Tits totalling 197 chicks

                                                10 wee Great Tits totalling 59 chicks and 11 eggs

Blue tit broods varied between 3 and 12 with an average of 8.6 per brood

Great tit broods varied from 5 to 8 with an average of 6.8 per brood.