Recent Ringing.

Things are starting to get busy now as more & more nests are holding chicks that are big enough to take rings. Over the last two weeks, I’ve been out most days looking for nests and have now got around 80 nest records on the go.

From these nests I’ve ringed several broods of Blackbird, Robin, Chaffinch (below) and Wood Pigeon, with many nest still holding eggs & others waiting to be ‘laid up’.

Last week I headed over to Botany Bay Woods with Steve to help him census the heronry & to ring a few chicks. The heronry has declined in number over the last few years from 110 nests in 2005 to 65 active nests this year. However other Greater Manchester heronries have increased in number & are doing well…

Nest box checking in Atherton Woods show that Great Tits are well underway with incubation, with Blue Tits still laying and awaiting to complete their clutches.

 

And the three Tawny Owl eggs have hatched…

Another job I’ve been doing is travelling to as many ponds, lakes & gardens to look for breeding Coot & especially their colour rings! Which has resulted in great success for both finding ringed birds & filling out more Coot nest record cards this year…

Now back to inputting data in IPMR :-)

2A05 Goes to Lithuania!

Less than three weeks have passed since we reported on our first overseas recovery of one of our colour marked Black-headed Gulls. Today our second sighting came in, this time of 2A05 sighted on a rubbish dump in Utena in Lithuania!

2A05 was ringed on 09/03/2011 at Preston Docks, Lancs when we managed to catch 5 adults during an afternoons ringing. It was first sighted in Utena on 05/04/2011, 28 days after ringing & then again on 08/04/2011 – 1837km in total.

We’ve only marked six adult birds, two of these have been recovered overseas and another – 2A03 - has also been recovered, however we’re waiting for details on this one. Goes to show how valuable these darvic rings are!!

Thanks to Darius Norkunas for reporting this sighting.

Really Quiet.

….. at the moment with not a lot of ringing be carried out. Most of my spare time is being put to finding nests and monitoring these for the Nest Record Scheme & hopefully ringing the pulli of in the next few weeks.

The only birds I’ve handled over the last week have been an adult Tawny Owl that we managed to lift off the nest in one of the Atherton Wood nest boxes.

  And a few Goldfinches and a Wood Pigeon in the garden with the help from young Luke next door….

Only a matter of a few more weeks and we’ll be busy with ringing young chicks. Really looking forward to the Reed Warbler and Starling ringing and the annual visit to Killington Reservoir to ring Black-headed Gull chicks!!….

Who dun it?!

Last night I was checking on a Wood pigeon nest to record it’s status for the Nest Record Scheme. This is the nest were we ringed two pullus from on 27th March (see below). As I was about to climb the tree, I noticed a female Sparrowhawk sat on the nest! So I carried on climbing up and noticed the chicks were missing, but also that the Sparrowhawk was using the nest as a plucking post! A little searching around in the material found me a recovery, as I noticed a birds leg, carrying a BTO ring! One of the Wood pigeon chicks you may think?! But on returning home & checking the database, it turns out the Sparrowhawk had nabbed one of my Starlings that I’d ringed in the garden in May 2010.