We have now moved well and truly into our Autumn/Winter programme with a range of sessions at various times so I have decided to complete a weekly round up of what's been going on--here's the first of the new approach.
The weather this week has been pretty bad with strong winds and frequent rain so it's a testament to the dedication of the team that we have achieved so much.
Throughout the week Pete and Paul have hosted a daily Redwing catching session in the walled garden which affords a bit of protection against the wind. Trainees have been to every sessions and over 100 Redwings have been ringed--with Kev chipping in with a few more when the weather has allowed at his racecourse site. Sterling efforts!!
On the one decent day Gareth was able to have a ringing session and added a range of typical winter birds from his farm site. Glynn had been clearing out his garage and found some bamboo ringing poles that he offered to all in the team. Gareth was quickest off the mark and is now the proud owner of some virtually new poles--as you can see:-
One of the better aspects of dull weather is that it can give the opportunity of decent lamping with our thermal imagers. It's been building up to a full moon this week so we need some cloud cover to not be too obvious to the birds when we are trying to see and catch them at night.
Gareth and dad Kevin went out early in the week and had a decent catch--with the star bird being the first Woodcock we have ringed this season. In fact its the only one we have seen so far.
They are fabulous birds--of which more details as the season progresses I hope. A last minute decision on Thursday afternoon prompted a lamping session on one of our local farms as part of us surveying their land. It turned out to be a pretty successful evening with 14 Skylarks and a Song Thrush ringed--but star status was a Common Snipe as you can see :-
These are usually very skittish and fly off readily but this one stuck around. You can see the long bill which it uses to probe into he soil to find invertebrates. Finding these birds feeding on arable fields at night is one of the discoveries our lamping efforts have uncovered. It was very exciting that just as we were about to leave the last field I picked up a thermal signal from what I initially thought was my first Woodcock of the season--exciting enough. But as we got closer it became obvious it was a Short Eared Owl !! This is a pretty rare bird around these parts but unfortunately for us it turned its head away from the lamplight and flew off with what looked like a Skylark in its talons.
With the poor weather at home and rare birds turning up nationally, Kev decided to put in a touch of twitching. Unfortunately his day trip to Scilly to see the American Indigo Bunting proved fruitless--but ever the optinmist he then went just a few miles south where a Red Flanked Bluetail --an Asian relative of our Robin had been seen and ringed in a small wood. After a long and nail biting wait the bird eventually appeared and Kev managed to get a record shot:-
This is a photo taken through his scope--you can see it's a bit like a Robin but you can also see the blue tail even in this juvenile bird. This is one of the species which until about 10 years ago was a mythical bird hardly ever seen in this country. But for some reason it has expanded its range and now they are breeding in Finland in big numbers and also in Norway. As a result we are getting almost annual records of sightings in this country.
Last night I offered 4 trainees a session trying to catch Reed Buntings at our Belvide reserve. These birds roost in reed beds sometimes in big numbers. They are also a bit of a challenge to age and sex so an ideal opportunity for training. We ringed 20 birds and caught another which had been ringed elsewhere which is always exciting-more news of that when we find out the details. The Starlings are starting to build up their roost also but I didn't really want to catch any of those as they are difficult to extract and I didn't have any other experienced ringers in the team so I put a sound lure for them away from the nets. As luck would have it a few of them decided to ignore the sound and 13 bundled into the nets--fortunately a reasonable number for us to handle. In fact Starlings also are great birds for trainees because they are a challenge for them to extract-and they show some interesting ageing and sexing features. One fairly simple way of sexing them is shown in the two pictures below:-
This is a male Starling as can be seen by the fact that it's iris is uniformly black. The lighter crescent on the right of the eye is actually part of the eyelid. Compare this to this female Starling's iris colour:-
In a few moths time sexing will be even easier as the base of the beak will change colour--aptly a blue base for males and pink for females.
A netting session for trainees at one of our feeders wasn't very productive but it did produce a Nuthatch which already had a ring on. It wasn't one which had been ringed elsewhere--but it had been ringed at the same site 6 years ago!! The average lifespan for this species is around 2-3 years so this girl has done very well. The record for Nuthatch is 12 years so she has some way to go! Longevity is another aspect of ringing birds which not everyone realises.
Finally, at last night's roost session, Jen took this really beautiful picture of the sunset at Belvide:-
I will post next week's roundup probably at the weekend--assuming lockdown arrangements allow up to do anything..........
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