And----They're Off!!!

 Goodbye and good riddance 2020 !! In fairness we had a very good ringing year notwithstanding the various lock-downs and restrictions.We will be posting some of our ( many) ringing headlines in a couple of days, and shortly after that we will also post a copy of our 2020 Annual Report.

Until that data is ready, I dusted off my garden net and got the 2021 new ringing year of to a start this morning. Numbers have been building up at my feeding station so after giving many birds a chance to feed early doors, I opened my net just after 10 am. Within a couple of hours I stopped to let the birds carry on feeding but in that time I had ringed a very encouraging 25 new birds. 

11 of them were Goldfinch, and 8 were Greenfinch. This reflected the ratio of birds I've been getting recently. Goldfinches are really interesting. I still remember the first I ever caught in a garden at a previous house--in 1984!! In those days this was a rare catch in gardens but since then Goldfinches have become regular on garden feeders--probably due to the range of more suitable foods for them such as sunflower hearts and niger seed.

Greenfinches are a species that I have ringed many hundreds of over the years--but in the recent past their numbers plummeted due to a lung disease--so it is great to see their numbers building up again. They are still not as common as they used to be but the trend is in the right direction. When the Covid rules allow it I will be having trainees over to my house because these two species pose interesting challenges in terms of ageing and sexing.

The rest of the catch was not especially remarkable, except for this little beauty:-

This of course is a female Blackcap. As readers will know we ringed in excess of 1000 of these migrants during the summer--so what was this bird doing here now? Well I'm sure some of you will know that as our winters have generally warmed up, more and more Blackcaps are being recorded-especially in gardens. The range of foods helps here--especially high energy fat balls. Ringing has shown that these are NOT birds from the UK deciding to stay on over the winter. Rather they are Eastern European in origin ( and also, bizzarely, some birds from central France !!??). So it would be great news if someone in, say Poland, were to catch this bird next summer!! I wish......

Look out for more news as soon as I have the data.

 

Jen is up and running!!

 It's been a pretty poor week for ringing with awful weather affecting most of our planned sessions. However, we did manage to squeeze in a thermal imaging session midweek at a local farm, a new feeding site, and a Starling roost at Belvide last night.

The roost of many thousands of birds has almost broken up completely now as the reedbed has been almost flattened by the large numbers. We had almost given up when a few birds dropped in and we ringed a useful 16 Starlings and 1 Reed Bunting--a very manageable catch for a small team including a trainee.

The most interesting/exciting event this week has been that our newly qualified ringer Jenni has now got her rings and ringing kit together and has started on the exciting business of ringing on her own. This is a really interesting time for any ringer--but we think few ringers at her stage of development would have such species as :- Woodcock, Grey Partridge, Skylark and Great Spotted Woodpecker on their totals list in their first week!! We have some very good sites which new ringers can take on and further our operation. Well done Jen and here's to the future.

Here's a picture of Jen holding her first solo Woodcock:-

They are brilliant birds and seem to have arrived from Scandinavia in big numbers.

Like most ringers, Jen has also started ringing in her garden, and one of the first birds she ringed was this splendid adult male Blackbird:-

It's obviously a male due to it's black plumage and an adult because ( among plumage features) it has a completely yellow bill and complete yellow eye ring.

I hope that we will get some ringing in over the Christmas period--which I'll post on here as soon as possible.

Here's wishing all of our readers a Merry Christmas in these very strange times and a hope that 2021 will bring us all better times. From all of the team here at Belvide Ringers

Elder Statesman defines the meaning of Commitment !!

 Pete established the group years ago and has been ringing since colour tellys were still a novelty! But he is still so enthusiastic--providing a great role model for our trainees. During the summer months he was as usual a stalwart of the post breeding ringing sessions twice every week with unholy time starts--but not content with this he's made a habit over recent years of leading the way on ringing Redwings. Before we had the current sound lure for Redwings, we call the Latvian Love Song; Pete, I and others would venture forth in the midst of winter to one of the coldest places on earth ( Sandon Estate). We would put up 7-10 nets in the cold, wait for dusk when the birds came in to roost and catch maybe 10 Redwing if we were lucky; then come home frozen but well pleased with our efforts. Fast forward then to the operation nowadays. Pete has two or three nets set up ready to unfurl in his walled garden site. He rises at a leisurely 05.30 (!!!???) EVERY morning since mid October, turns on the Love Song and the Redwings keep on coming.

Around this time of year for some reason they seem to lose interest so this week Pete has called time on his exploits for this year. His commitment has been tremendous, ably supported by Paul, Sam and other trainees, and his total number of Redwings ringed over the past couple of months is.....948 !!! This is one of his highest totals ever, and but for some site issues at the start of the season and some terrible weather over recent weeks he would probably have ringed well over 1000 birds. Hats off to his efforts as a sign of his continued enthusiasm. Well done Pete!

On other fronts, Kev has been ploughing his own isolation furrow at his sites and also helping with others to offer our trainees quite a bit of experience over the last week, with sessions involving feeding stations, Jack Snipe, Starling and farm roosts. We have ringed over 200 new birds including 83 Redwing, 30, Goldfinch, 22 Skylarks, 14 Jack Snipe, 12 Starlings, 7 Reed Buntings, 7 Fieldfare, 2 Woodcock, and one each of Goldcrest, Green Woodpecker and Yellowhammer. It's great to see our trainees taking up as many of these opportunities as they can--work, family and other commitments allowing of course.

Some feedback on Controls/Recoveries

 It's always exciting when you catch a bird that is already wearing a ring which has been put on by someone else--we tend to refer to these as 'controls'.

I have mentioned two birds recently, a Starling and a Fieldfare which we caught and were already wearing rings. We have now had the details of these and as always they tell interesting stories.

First the Fieldfare we controlled last weekend had originally been ringed by members of the West Midland Ringing Group at a farm site only about 10 Km from Belvide, in December 2019. This may not at first sight seem particularly interesting but given a moments thought.....It was originally caught as a juvenile bird on it's first migration to the UK from it's breeding site somewhere north and east of here--Scandinavia and points east. In April 2020 it would have flown back to its natal area and probably spent the summer raising its first brood(s) of chicks. What is quite interesting is that it has returned to practically the same area in the UK this winter--having flown several thousand Km on the return journey. I'm not sure I've read that much about wintering site fidelity in this species--but here's a bit of evidence that it may exist more widely.

Second a couple of weeks ago I reported excitement at our control of a Starling at our Belvide roost carrying a Lithuanian ring. As I suspected it had been ringed at the large observatory at Ventes Ragas in Lithuania. It was originally ringed as a juvenile bird in July 2017- probably as part of one of the massive juvenile flocks which Starlings form post-breeding. This observatory has some of the huge cage traps which can catch sometimes thousands of birds at a time. Whether, like the Fieldfare, this bird has made repeat visits to the Belvide area to winter we don't know, but it sure enough has spent this winter here--again with several long distance return migrations to breed back in Lithuania.

Finally one the other way! This week we heard of one of our Sedge Warblers which we ringed as a juvenile on 16th July at Belvide--probably a bird which had just fledged from a nest at the reserve. It was controlled  in August by one of the French ringing groups which operate a number of sites at some of the very large estuary reed-bed sites across France.

As you can see this bird was controlled in northern France no doubt on its first southward migration to Africa. This is part of a well documented pattern for 'our' birds as we have had several similar recoveries over recent years. Records such as this have, over the years, been the backbone of the study of migration. By putting together large numbers of individual records such as this science has been able to build a pretty comprehensive picture of where many species migrate to and the routes they take to get there. However, there is still much to learn. For example for all three of these birds we know nothing about where they were in the intervening time between ringing and recapture. Over the coming years we will be able to get much richer data from the use of satellite tracking. Unfortunately this isn't yet possible ( or affordable) for such small birds and for amateur groups--but it's coming and I can't wait!!

We have been active during the last week and I shall provide a run down on our results shortly.

 

Commitment and Fortitude in Abundance!!

Apologies for this late post--it's been a very busy period one way and another. 

The weather since my last post has been variable to say the least, with sun, rain, frost and fog really testing the resolve of team members--but they have come through with flying colours!!

Pete has been battling through with help from Paul and Sam and has managed to get out pretty well every morning on his Redwing project and has managed to ring over 140 this week in not brilliant conditions. One of those birds was potentially a bit more interesting than the others:-

The bird on the left is actually a tad bigger than normal and generally much darker on the breast which you can just make out. The general consensus is that such birds originate from Iceland--it would be great if someone in Iceland could pick up our bird next breeding season!

Pete usually catches a small number of other species, including Blackbirds--including one this week with a wing length exceeding 140 mm which points to it probably being of Scandinavian origin; showing again how important the UK is for supporting birds from far and wide especially during the winter.

Kevin burned the candle from both ends on Tuesday! Up before first light he was at our Patshull site catching 20 Redwing, 2 Fieldfare and 5 Yellowhammer as well as other birds. Just to demonstrate how unpredictable ( and exciting!!) our hobby can be; Kev turned his back to set a net and when he turned back this beauty had flown into a net:-

We've shown you Woodcock at night but it's pretty unusual to catch them in the daytime. One aspect I don't think we've mentioned is the tip of the bill. You can see that the upper mandible is slightly longer that the lower and so forms a sort of cap to help push the beak through the soil in search of food. The end of the bill is very sensitive ( pretty useful as the bird obviously can't see the worms !) and it is also flexible so that it can open the end few centimetres in order to get hold of food-- how cool is that!

Kev stayed on site all day in an attempt to catch Redwing going in to roost. It didn't work but he did catch a nice range of other birds including 12 Goldcrests giving an indication of just how many of these tiny birds must be wintering in the extensive woodland on the site. Son Gareth ventured out to one of his farm sites but was unlucky not to have a bigger catch --just one of those things --and I'm sure he will continue undaunted!

Also on Tuesday I gave a Zoom presentation to the annual ( virtual) BTO conference on the work we're doing on censusing Jack Snipe. The feedback has been positive and the talk can be found on You Tube under BTO Conference Session 2--the third talk of three in that session if you are completely devoid of anything better to do! 

We had some good news last week in that two of our trainees have now qualified as 'C' ringers and can now operate on their own while still overseen by our trainers. We are still doing our best to give our other trainees opportunities and on Saturday we had sessions at two of our feeding stations. These provide lots of tits for them to practice their extraction skills, and currently lots of Goldfinch which provide interesting challenges to their ( and our!!) ageing and sexing skills.

On Sunday we again put on a session for trainees at a Starling roost. Unfortunately the best laid plans can go wrong--in this case the Starlings ( apart from 2) all landed a few metres from the nets... damn!! However, we did catch 13 Reed Buntings which always prove demanding in terms of getting their sex-but particularly their age correct.

Last night I took some of our birding team from Belvide out to show them the lamping/thermal imaging process. It was a bizarre evening with patchy dense fog but we managed a small but beautifully put together catch of only three birds. The guys really enjoyed a Skylark in the hand and I never cease to be amazed by these little beauties:-

Finding Jack Snipe feeding on stubble fields is one of the novel things thermal imaging has discovered.

The last bird was a Fieldfare:-

They are always really smart birds--the next picture shows how we sex them in the hand:-

The shape of the black centres to the crown feathers is key and the feather circled shows the black to be fatter at the base of the feather with a tapering black line up the feather shaft--making this a female. The males have a much fatter black centre to the crown feathers.

However more exciting was the fact that this bird was already carrying a ring!! It had been ringed in the UK in December 2019, but we will have to wait a while to get more details--it's the first 'control' Fieldfare I've ever had--just goes to show that even after 40+ years there's still new experiences to be had in this brilliant hobby!! 

 

 

Weather not kind this week

 It's been a frustrating week with the weather conspiring to either stop any activity or severely reduce success. Early morning rain and frost really hampered Pete's progress with Redwing and he ended the week with a creditable 113 new birds plus a couple of Goldcrest and a Blackbird-testament to his tenacity and effort.

Kevin also put in the effort and managed to squeeze in 3 sessions at the racecourse and 3 at a couple of farms. It's fair to say that at least two of these were a lot of effort for little reward--however he managed a creditable 50 Redwing, 5 Blackbird, 2 each of Starling, Great Tit, Yellowhammer and Fieldfare and 1 each of Dunnock, Wren and Reed Bunting.

We don't have much in the way of pictures from this week--but Kevin has sent a couple from one of his sessions:- first a juvenile male Blackbird

You can see it's a male because it's predominantly black, and juvenile because although it's yellow eye ring is almost complete, it's beak is not fully yellow--and key is that the outer wing feathers are brown because these are the feathers the bird first grew in the nest. It will moult these out into jet black feathers next autumn.

This is a Fieldfare:-

Suffice to say these are simply just stunningly beautiful birds.

Yesterday we trusted the weather forecast ( which hadn't worked earlier in the week!!) and fortunately it paid off as the rain and mizzle cleared enough for us to try again at the Starling roost. Numbers have built up this week and we were pleased to ring 43 new birds plus 6 Reed Buntings and a Redwing. Sadly none of the Starlings were carrying foreign rings but who knows where ours will distribute to next year. We will post details of our Lithuanian control when data comes through.

Here's hoping for some better weather--and what might be a purple patch for lamping as the moon phase and setting times are looking good from the end of next week.

 

SO MUCH ACTION----and a Cracker from Kaunas!!!

 Notwithstanding the lock-down, team members have been working within the guidelines and putting on a range of activities to keep our great trainees active and making progress. In summary we have ringed around 300 new birds of around 25 species this week--a remarkable effort! Activities have been of 4 main types:-

Pete and Kev have battled manfully against poor weather conditions ( windy) but have still managed to ring about 120 new Redwings this week-- Pete had now ringed almost 650 Redwings this autumn so far. It just shows what can be achieved with determination and dedication. As well as Redwing, Pete also caught a few Goldcrests and a Blackcap this week. Who knows how many of these birds winter in UK--ringing has shown that most of them have bred in eastern Europe and manage to find sufficient food here to get them through without migrating to north Africa. Pete also caught this stunning male Blackbird:-

You can tell it's a male because it is black--but you can also tell its a first year bird from the black bill, no yellow eye ring and brown outer wing feathers.

Kevin Gareth and Paul have operated at feeding stations this week with the usual (very important for trainees) array of common birds. However, K and G had a good bird this morning in the form of a Cetti's warbler--not a great looker; but a sign of the increasing colonisation of this essentially southern European species. Some early reward for the effort put in to constructing their snazzy new feeding station!!

The Cettis warbler caught this morning

The new feeding station.

Teams have also been out with the thermal imagers on several nights this week with considerable success. We have ringed over 80 Skylarks, which is impressive on it's own, but the big news this week is the arrival of Woodcock in good numbers. We have a breeding population of Woodcock in the UK, but numbers are raised massively in winter by the arrival--usually from mid November of birds from northern Europe and maybe even as far as the Urals. This week we have ringed 8 Woodcock of which one is shown :-

Tonight we added a fourth activity which is really important in a trainees progress--a Starling roost. This requires several important skills as well as extraction, ageing and sexing these superb birds. We also usually catch a few Reed Buntings ( 7 tonight) which can also be challenging to age and sex. We ended up with 18 new Starlings--a suitable number to handle--but without doubt the star bird already had a ring on it, and it was on the bird's left leg so I knew it wasn't one of ours.......................

Here's the bird--an adult male Starling:-

And here are three pictures of the ring:-

You can see this ring says

                                            '' ZOOL. MUS. KAUNAS (ie Zoological Museum of Kaunas)

                                              LITHUANIA

                                                KH 72923

So this bird was ringed in Lithania, and is spending this winter in the UK, at Belvide!! We will get further details when we have put the number through the system and we will report it here.

PS I mentioned the prospect of some pretty finches in my last post--we had to put that off for a while but we hope to have news in a couple of weeks.......