Kane's Bird Ringing

When a Lithuanian ringed gull, becomes a British ringed gull!

2012-02-13T13:50:00.001Z

The week just gone has been a rather busy one with over 200 birds captured, consisting of 160 new & the rest being recaptures and controls. With the cold weather still hanging around, and most ponds & lakes still frozen over - the bulk of the weekends ringing mainly focussed on catching Coot & Black-headed Gulls. Most of our time was spent at Southport Marine Lake catching both species & by the end of the weekend we had successfully bagged 48 new Coot & 17 Black-headed Gulls.

There were some rather interesting captures of the latter species, in that Ciaran managed to catch a Norwegian ringed bird (below) that was already sporting a darvic ring (more on this later!) but also a Lithuanian metal ringed bird was also caught! This being the first foreign ringed bird now sporting one of our colourful darvic rings!

However on closer inspection of the metal ring of this bird, it become obvious that we needed to replace this as we could just about read LITHUANIA and the code was almost unreadable! Which left us wondering whether this could be a rather old bird – watch this space!

As always when out catching at our Coot sites, we always make time to look for colour ringed birds – this proving most useful for ‘logging’ birds back at their wintering/ringing locations. Although I have yet to enter this information onto the computer, just looking at a few histories clearly shows birds summering away from Southport, moving all over the UK & then travelling back to Southport to spend the winter! I’ve said this many times before, but these birds really do amaze me – in that you very rarely see them in flight or move off a pond – yet ringing them is unravelling lots of information on their secret nocturnal movements!

Anyhow back to the Norwegian darvic’d Black-headed Gull. This bird was caught and ringed by Carsten Lome & Morten Helberg in April 2008 in Frognerparken, Oslo. Carsten & Morten also controlled one of our Black-headed Gulls (famous 2A00!) in Oslo in March last year. So we’ve now ‘exchanged’ birds with each other’s projects!

Several mist netting sessions this week caught decent numbers of Greenfinch, Goldfinch & Blackcap. A Common Gull caught in Manchester was also a highlight!

Decoy, Ducks & Demos!

2012-02-05T19:12:00.001Z

Instead of doing the usual and heading back to Manchester this weekend, I spent my first full weekend down in Gloucestershire! Several events were on the agenda this weekend, but sadly - due to the weather, not all went to plan!

Saturday kicked off with WWT Slimbridge's Festival of Birds were I was due to help with a mist netting demonstration with Slimbridge’s onsite ringers Maurice & Brian. However the number of people turning up for the duck decoy demonstrations, meant that I had to give a helping hand with this, so I spent the majority of my time ringing ducks.

Here’s several photos from the past two days….

Zen our decoy dog, who probably has the most important job by acting/looking like a fox & getting the ducks to follow her into the trap!

Teal - the most common duck caught this weekend with 36 captured. 31 new birds & 5 recaptures.

Followed by Pintail with 31 new birds & 1 recapture.

A male (above) & female Shelduck, both new birds being captured.

Gadwall often look very dull on the first appearance, however having them in the hand & being able to seem them close up just shows colourful they can be! 4 birds followed Zen into the decoy, 3 of these being new birds & 1 recapture.

and of course the Decoy Demonstration proving to be highly popular, this allowed us to promote wildfowl ringing to this weekends visitors! Above being shown how we weigh the birds, and below showing our visitors some of our recoveries that we’ve had of Slimbridge ringed birds.

Our duck hut, complete with it’s roaring fire (most welcome this weekend) after a busy few days housing 100’s of people!…… Well they didn’t all fit in at once!

In total Zen & ‘her’ team managed to capture 70 duck over the weekend – consisting of 62 new birds & 8 recaps/controls.

Saturday evening I was supposed to travel to Norfolk with my colleague Richard Hearn to cannon net Greylag Geese – however the snow we’ve experience this weekend soon put stop to that!

A snow covered Rushy Pen holding it’s hungry wildfowl!

But as much as I moaned about the snow this weekend! It was a real privilege to be asked to do the 18:30 commentated swan feed in the snow! An awesome experience that I’m lucky to get to do after a busy day in work!

The end of a fantastic weekend, and the thing I’ve enjoyed the most was being able to speak to our members & visitors and sharing our wildfowl ringing with them……..

Surprise Duck Catch!

2012-02-03T12:55:00.001Z

Just as we were about to go on our tea break this morning, Maurice ran around our offices to round up a team of ringers - as a call from our Reserve Manager (Dave Paynter) alerted him that he’d pulled off a rather nice catch of duck! So grabbing our ‘grab box’ (everything in there that you need for a quick catch such as this one!) myself, Maurice & Gillian headed over to the Duck Hut and waited for the mornings catch to arrive! Dave had been working our decoy dog – Zen, and together as a team they caught 20 Pintail, 10 Teal & 2 Gadwall!

Newly qualified C ringer, Ian Lees (congratulations!) happened to be in the right place at the right time, during his visit to WWT Slimbridge and helped with a number of the duck!

Thanks to Dave for a rather nice catch & to Maurice for the ‘heads up!

Poxy GRETI's

2012-01-29T15:29:00.004Z

After a small mist netting session in Atherton Woods with Zac last weekend & catching the below Great Tit with Avian Pox, I was keen to have another session this weekend - to collect information on infected birds for ZSL. This combined with catching more Blue Tits to colour ring for Zac's dissertation fieldwork.

So after an early start on Saturday it was encouraging to only catch two other infected birds, and their wounds were nothing like the above birds! Lots of other Great Tits were captured and ringed, but didn't show any signs of Avian Pox!

A good day was had with 97 birds being captured - mainly Blue, Great & Coal Tit making the bulk of the catch, however several Goldcrest, Chaffinch, Treecreeper & Nuthatch were also captured. Zac colour ringed over 20 new Blue Tits, including colour ringing several that were already BTO ringed, therefore adding known aged birds to the project - something which will provide useful to Zac's study.

Back at home, during Saturday evening we placed a CCTV camera into my garden owl box. Over the last few weeks I've been noticing a pair of Tawny Owls hanging around the box, so was pretty keen to get the camera installed before any eggs were laid! However it seemed they had beaten us to that, as when I went up to the box a single Tawny Owl egg was in the nest cup! So we had to work fast to get the camera up before the female came back! She did and went straight back to the box & is now sitting on two eggs!

Sunday morning was spent mist netting in the garden, whilst comfortably watching our first Nest Record Card of the year from our television screen!! 20 birds captured in total - mainly Goldfinch, Blackbird, Robin and a smart Bullfinch. A recap Blackbird turned out to be more than 8 years old & ringed in the garden by me & Steve during my training days....

Lastly we finished off at Crompton Lodges catching 4 Coot & 3 Canada Geese.

To Start The 2012 Ball Rolling…..

2012-01-14T14:51:00.001Z

Several of us spent the first week of the year on holiday in Ireland. This short break was a mixture of relaxing, birding and carrying out a bit of ringing when the weather permitted!

Although the weather conditions were very different from last years trip, more wet & windy, rather than icy cold - we didn’t do too badly catching 24 gulls in total over a two day period.

19 Black-headed Gull, 4 Herring Gull and 1 Common Gull were captured and ringed. A distinct lack of Common Gull was noticed, compared to catching 35 individuals during our trip in 2010.

Nimmo’s Pier didn’t fail in providing some class bird watching and a full trip report can be read on Zac’s blog…..

2011 & Updated Ringing Totals

2012-01-13T14:54:00.000Z

I’ve spent the afternoon updating my ringing totals for 2011 and thought I would post below a copy of my up-to-date ringing totals, since getting my permit in 2008. During 2011 I ringed a total of 1854 new birds (still to add up the recaptured/controls etc)……..

Species	2008	2009	2010	2011	Total
Barn Owl	0	3	9	1	13
Blackbird	13	75	57	15	160
Blackcap	0	0	0	2	2
Black-headed Gull	23	29	201	293	546
Blue Tit	73	240	365	192	870
Brambling	0	0	13	0	13
Bullfinch	0	19	65	19	103
Canada Goose	113	87	136	80	416
Carrion Crow	0	0	0	1	1
Chaffinch	1	30	133	27	191
Chiffchaff	0	0	0	2	2
Coal Tit	0	1	15	9	25
Collard Dove	0	4	3	9	16
Common Gull	0	0	2	37	39
Coot	181	144	634	127	1086
Dipper	0	8	0	0	8
Dunnock	0	38	19	16	73
Gadwall	0	0	1	0	1
Goldcrest	0	1	9	0	10
Goldfinch	4	233	224	215	676
Goosander	0	4	1	2	7
Grasshopper Warbler	0	0	1	6	7
Greenfinch	0	55	85	13	153
Greylag Goose	9	4	1	1	15
Great Tit	49	132	211	122	514
Grey Wagtail	0	3	0	1	4
Great Spotted Woodpecker	0	1	4	1	6
Herring Gull	0	6	0	0	6
House Martin	0	4	0	0	4
House Sparrow	0	8	5	9	22
Jackdaw	0	4	2	0	6
Jay	0	3	2	0	5
Kestrel	0	3	0	6	9
Kingfisher	0	2	0	0	2
Lapwing	1	0	5	9	15
Lesser Black Backed Gull	0	1	1	1	3
Lesser Redpoll	0	0	5	11	16
Long Eared Owl	0	0	3	5	8
Long Tailed Tit	0	25	49	23	97
Magpie	0	4	2	0	6
Mallard	35	24	2	3	64
Mandarin	0	0	0	1	1
Meadow Pipit	1	10	1	0	12
Mistle Thursh	6	2	1	0	9
Moorhen	1	4	1	8	14
Mute Swan	111	151	88	0	350
Nuthatch	0	8	9	8	25
Pied Wagtail	4	0	0	0	4
Red Crested Pochard	0	0	1	0	1
Redwing	0	1	1	1	3
Reed Bunting	0	20	22	8	50
Reed Warbler	3	3	58	186	250
Robin	15	18	33	33	99
Rook	1	0	0	0	1
Sand Martin	0	0	3	0	3
Sedge Warbler	0	5	3	4	12
Siskin	0	9	0	3	12
Song Thrush	14	6	25	1	46
Sparrowhawk	4	1	0	1	6
Starling	18	286	60	8	372
Stock Dove	2	5	3	2	12
Swallow	8	60	23	45	136
Tawny Owl	3	2	4	2	11
Treecreeper	0	1	1	8	10
Tree Sparrow	0	77	99	239	415
Tufted Duck	5	17	67	4	93
Waxwing	0	0	36	0	36
Whitethroat	6	0	5	8	19
Whooper Swan	0	1	0	0	1
Willow Tit	0	3	0	3	6
Willow Warbler	0	1	12	5	18
Wood Pigeon	6	14	6	14	40
Wren	0	8	3	4	15
Yellowhammer	0	1	0	0	1
74	710	1909	2830	1854	*7303*

Highlights of 2011…..

2011-12-31T10:58:00.001Z

So much has happened during 2011 that it’s quite a hard to summarise it all in one complete blog post! Therefore we’ve created a video and included in it everything we think deserves a mention! We plan on creating one of these each year, so that in the future we can look back on what we managed to achieve! Something to show the Grandkids!!

To view the video, please click here it’s best viewed on a large screen, which can be selected at the bottom of the right hand screen.

We’ll post our annual ringing totals in the New Year.

All the best…

Kane & Co!

Festive Ringing….In Brief…..

2011-12-26T19:57:00.001Z

Having a few days off work on the run up to Christmas, has allowed us to get out & about to do quite a bit of ringing. Time that was set aside to finish off Christmas shopping went out of the window, as we travelled around catching.

So in brief this is what we’ve been up to -

Tufted Duck have started to become more bolder, resulting in us catching & ringing 7 birds.

Whilst catching Black-headed Gulls at Southport McDonalds (!) we placed a potter trap out and managed to catch several Starling!

As well as hand catching a Common Gull.

We’ve been busy netting the feeding stations in Atherton Woods, trying to catch Blue Tits for Zac’s dissertation project.

We were eager to get out to start catching Black-headed gulls for the darvic’ing project. With 23 new birds caught this week + 1 Swedish control.

2A00 fresh in from Oslo! Seen at Bowness on Windermere on Christmas Eve!

Species	Total.
Black-headed Gull	23
Common Gull	1
Coot	24
Canada Goose	9
Starling	4
Blackbird	1
Blue Tit	14
Great Tit	10
Coal Tit	1
Chaffinch	1
Bullfinch	1
Reed Bunting	1
Tufted Duck	7

Thanks to Gillian & Ciaran for the above photos….

Arrivals & Departures.

2011-12-12T18:40:00.001Z

We’ve had a number of sightings sent to us over the last week, which involve our colour ringed Black-headed gulls. As previously reported 2A00 has come back to winter at Bowness on Windermere after summering in Norway. 2A05 summered in Lithuania and has be reported back at it’s ringing site at Preston Docks, yesterday by Jonathan Scragg.

2A07, an adult bird which was captured at Killington Reservoir, Cumbria in June this year has been reported by Gavin Chambers at Loch Ryan in Stranraer, Dumfries & Galloway.

This now being the second recovery of one our our Black-headed Gulls at Loch Ryan. The other being 2A64 which was ringed as a chick at Killington in June this year & sighted by Chris Baines in Dumfries & Galloway.

Finally, just as we were giving up hope on hearing back from more of our colour ringed chicks. Manuel Figueiras e-mailed myself & Ciaran to tell us he’d sighted 2A44 at Quilmas, A Coruña in Spain. This also being a chick that was ringed at Killington in June this year.

2A44 ringed on 08/06/2011. Sighted on 11/12/2011 in Spain.1358km SSW in 186 days.

According to BTO Online, only 104 British ringed Black-headed gulls have been recovered in Spain. So our catching is starting to pay off! It’s great to be able to capture & mark continental birds, British breeders & British bred chicks.

Many thanks to Gavin, Chris, Ciaran & Manuel for the above photos and to everyone who has reported colour ringed birds…….

Recent Ramblings…….

2011-12-11T18:58:00.001Z

Being off work for most of the week due to my wisdom teeth ‘erupting’ I was rather looking forward to getting out this weekend to do some ringing. After work on Thursday I left Martin Mere to give a presentation to students at Manchester University on bird ringing, before travelling to the airport to fly to Edinburgh. However most people will have heard or even witnessed the ‘code red’ weather warnings and I was told that my flight to Edinburgh had been cancelled! I was travelling to Scotland to, hopefully catch & colour ring more Coot as it had recently turned cold up there.

Several phone calls & discussions with Flybe staff saw that I could actually get into Scotland, and that I had to fly to Glasgow instead! I managed to persuade Gillian to drive to Glasgow to collect me & an hour later after the most horrendous flight ever, I arrived in Glasgow to be greeted by the Dinsmorag , who was waiting in arrivals with my supper – how kind is that!?

So Friday morning we got to work and managed to bag a rather nice catch of Coot & Black Headed Gull. Now there’s even more Scottish ringed Coot out there with their shiny new bling on! The Black Headed Gulls showed a great interest in our offerings and we managed to get 8 new birds & one control from Poland!

‘At my happiest with a bird in the hand, even happier if I’ve got both of my favourite species in the hand!’

The Dinsmorag with two Black Headed Gulls.

After finishing we left for McDonalds to use their bathroom to cleanup (!) and then we headed south, were after a rather long but enjoyable drive we arrived in Bangor ready for a cannon netting session on Saturday! Saturday went something like this – up at 5am, on Bangor Harbour beach by 05:30, nets set by 7am, 10am a catch of Redshank, a few Dunlin and 10 Bar Tailed Godwits was looking possible, 10:05 a Buzzard flew over the flock…… they spooked and didn’t return! However the team over at Beaumaris pulled off a rather nice catch of around 400 Dunlin & 6 Turnstone – which was good experience at extracting waders from cannon nets.

Gillian & I left the team processing the birds as we had to be back in Manchester by early evening, but not before calling into Bangor McDonalds to use their bathroom for cleaning up! They’re handy!

Today after waiting for the rain to pass, we decided to net the Shakerley feeding station for the first time this winter. A rather enjoyable afternoon had, catching around 60 birds – mostly new. This included a new species for Shakerley in the form of a Treecreeper! Four Willow Tit & several Bullfinch also made it onto today’s data sheets.

A large group of Long Tailed Tits decided to play ‘if ones in we’re all in!’ which kept us on our toes for a short while!

We also caught this Blue Tit with a rather long lower bill! It seemed to be coping rather well though!

Cheers to Gillian for a cracking weekend & for using her photos! Also thanks to Zac for allowing us to stay with him and to the SCAN team for Saturday………

Welcome back 2A00!

2011-11-29T19:21:00.001Z

Thanks to Peter Bainbridge I finally received the news that I’d been waiting for, that ‘our boy’ 2A00 has returned back to Bowness-on-Windermere after spending the spring & summer in Oslo, Norway. Just 23 days after ringing, 2A00 was sighted by Morten Helberg in Norway and throughout the summer 2A00 has been seen and photographed at several places in Oslo.

The Migration Atlas suggests that UK wintering Black-headed Gulls appear to be very site-faithful. Studies in London (Widgery 1970, Christmas 1986, Gosling 1988) have shown that birds use the same feeding & resting sites over several years, irrespective of the age of the bird or the countries from which they originated from.

With 2A00 being the first bird we darvic’d as part of this project, we’re very fond of him! Up to now we’ve only darvic ringed 6 adults and three of these have been seen since ringing. This goes to show how useful these rings are and any darvic rings on any species can be reported to www.ring.ac

Ciaran is home very soon, so I’m rather looking forward to getting out with him and starting to catch some more adult birds as part of this project.

Whilst I’m on about a gull species. Luka Jurinovic has asked me to post a link to the up and coming International Gull Meeting taking place in Croatia in February. For more details of this, please visit here.

Thanks to Carsten Lome for the above photo.

Crazy for CANGOs!

2011-11-26T16:57:00.001Z

Gillian & myself are just back from an aborted SCAN session, where we joined Zac & Matthew Bruce and the rest of the team in Bangor Harbour this morning. It was an early start for us all this morning as we set the nets in the dark and retreated away and hid in the bushes (!) out of view of any peering eyes as the high tide started to push good numbers of Redshank, Dunlin & Shelduck up towards the catching area.

Unfortunately, however – something spooked the birds, possibly a female Peregrine that was hunting Black Headed Gulls nearby & the birds didn’t come back in time for us to fire into a suitable catching area, as the high tide had reached it’s highest point, we decided to call it a morning & pack away the gear.

We then left for Manchester calling in at Abergele on the way back where we managed to read two Black Headed Gull rings – EG41185 & EX43734 and impressively Zac managed to catch an adult bird (he’s been closely watching the master Black Headed Gull catcher – Ciaran – in action!).

Back in Manchester - Gillian & I decided to have a bit of a mad Canada Goose catch and just as the light was starting to fade we called it quits and finished the day on 50 new Canada Geese ringed! We also managed to catch 3 new Coot & 2 more Black Headed Gulls.

As Gillian was busy ringing the geese I was keeping the Black Headed Gulls around us entertained, by feeding them in closely. This allowed me to read several rings including a Finnish & Danish ringed bird. We also read the ring of EY02115 which sounded like a familiar ring sequence and especially with the ring being on the left leg. Upon arriving home we confirmed our suspicions that this was a Killington ringed chick that Zac ringed at the Cumbrian colony in June this year! 90km distance from Killington to the Manchester park.

Casting an eye over our 50th darvic ringed Coot!

Thanks to Zac for putting us both up for the evening! Good luck to the SCAN team for a more successful catch tomorrow! And finally it was great to meet new trainee Matthew Bruce during today's ringing events!

Thanks to Gillian for the above photos!

Coot, Conference & Coal Tits!

2011-11-14T22:07:00.001Z

As I type this I’m currently sat on a train at Edinburgh Waverly station, heading back to Manchester. Chris Bridge & I have had a long weekend up in Scotland with Gillian. We’ve been rather busy doing various things mainly attending the Scottish Ringers’ Conference but also we’ve colour ringed the first Scottish Coot!

Friday started early for Me & Chris as our train left Manchester Piccadilly at 5am. By 09:30 we were pulling into Linlithgow where we were greeted by Gillian in her wellies, old scrags and waterproofs and she quickly whisked us off to Linlithgow Loch.

It didn’t take long for Gillian to capture the first bird which was duly darvic ringed, measured & weighed before being released. 20 more birds followed making Friday’s total 20 new Coot & 1 recapture – that of a bird ringed by local ringers.

We noted several Black-headed gulls already sporting rings, several of these being foreign rings. So we attempted to catch any already ringed birds, resulting in the above Swedish ringed bird being controlled.

We left the Edinburgh area via a rather nice chippy were Gillian treated us both to the delights of a deep fried Pizza! Mmmmm! And then left for Stirling to check on whether any Coots would play ball with us at Airthey Loch at the University of Stirling. It turned out non of the Airthey birds wanted shiny darvic rings so we captured this rather smart male Goosander instead!

After a quick coffee and meeting the rest of the Dinsmore family, we headed up to the Cairngorms National Park to the lovely Carrbridge Hotel to participate in this years Scottish Ringers’ Conference.

The conference went down a real treat! Hosted by the Grampian Ringing Group a fantastic selection of talks were presented to the conference congregation. I rather enjoyed those talks given by Raymond Duncan on Waxwing ringing, by Jane Reid on the movements & ecology of Shags & talks by Ewan Weston and Clive Mckay were both very interesting. A fantastic evening quiz, along with several videos made by Euan Ferguson & Calum Campbell kept us all entertained on the groups catching methods! Most impressed we were by Calum & Euan’s gull catching methods (quite different to the method used by us) that Chris will be trying attempting the Scottish method in Wales over the coming week!

During a free period from 1-4pm on Saturday all three of us took the short trip down to Loch Garten to see Crested Tit. A visit made especially for Me & Gillian to add Cresties to our invisible lists! We watched several of the adorable little critters until we realised that around 20 tame Coal Tits we could come to feed from our hands! They stole the show I’m afraid……

We left the ringers conference earlier than most on Sunday as I was giving a talk to several students at Stirling University, about the Coot Ringing Programme.

Today we toured around several other sites around the Edinburgh area to look for Coot. Several more birds were captured along with 13 new Black-headed Gulls & a Tufted Duck at St Margaret's Loch.

Thanks to Gillian for a super weekend & for doing most of the driving. Thanks must also go to Gillian for sorting out most of the site permissions before hand, and to those ringers who allowed us to use their sites to catch & colour mark a sample of Coot. Lastly a big thank you to the Grampian Ringing Group for hosting a most enjoyable ringers’ conference…..

Tonight we’re back in Manchester and then heading south again to Slimbridge tomorrow morning. Rather looking forward to getting back to Slimbridge in the morning to see the newly arrived Bewick’s Swans, now over 100 for us to look at! Also knowing that when I’m in my office tomorrow I’ll only be several hundred meters away from 13 Spoon Billed Sandpipers!! Click here to read a blog post written by WWT’s Head of Species Conservation – Baz Hughes.

RIP – OAG!

2011-10-27T18:35:00.001+01:00

A batch of recoveries came in from the BTO yesterday, revealing that our old Canada Goose that we blogged about last year – has been found dead with an injured wing. At the grand age of 18 years & 254 days. Although this bird was ringed as an adult in 1993 so is older than 18yrs!

Several other Canada Goose recoveries were also included in this batch, all mainly involving local movements. A Reed Warbler pullus that I ringed at Pickmere this year, was captured by ringers 43days later at Rostherne Mere (10km). And confirmation came through of the UK’s first recovered Portuguese ringed Sand Martin!

A Bit of Cooting!

2011-10-23T15:54:00.001+01:00

‘Angel of the North, maybe!?’

Back in the great NW for the weekend and after taking delivery of a rather large batch of G and darvic rings, I couldn’t wait to get out and start using these.

So a trip to Redesmere Lake & Westport Lake this morning, bagged us 17 Coot in total, 16 new & one recapture – which was previously a colour ringed bird, however it had lost a colour ring, therefore the bird was issued with a swanky new darvic ring.

Apart from the Coots the net has been up in the garden & caught 20 Goldfinch along with a number of Chaffinch, Great Tit & Greenfinch.

Rounding Up Mutes……

2011-10-18T21:32:00.001+01:00

On Sunday along with Wes, Charlie and Heather McGinty we headed up to the Lakes for our annual Mute Swan ringing day. Starting off at the usual Bowness-on-Windermere and working our way round, before finishing off with an awkward brood of cygnets on Coniston Water!

In total we caught around 40 birds, most mainly non breeding adults and very few cygnets!! Although some cygnets were being ‘stubborn’ and wouldn’t come anywhere near us!! They weren't for changing their attitudes, not even for the Lake District’s finest bread – so therefore went unringed!!!

I was hoping for a sneaky Goosander or a Black Headed Gull or two, but that was not to be!

Charles looking like a Leprechaun, whilst gluing a darvic! And Heather stands in as scribe come cellotape hand’er’outer

All ready for release with it’s shiny new bling!

Any sightings of blue darvic’d Mute Swans in the NW can be sent to Wes Halton at info’@’northwestswanstudy.org.uk

Today I Bumped Into A Fellow Northerner!

2011-10-10T18:25:00.001+01:00

Walking through the Big Pen in the grounds at Slimbridge casually observing the Coots, I was rather shocked when a flash of yellow & pink caught my eye!!

This is getting spooky! It’s like they’re following me! Yup this is a Southport Marine Lake bird. Ringed there in November 2010, sighted 29 days later 6km away at Ainsdale by Stephen Menzie. It was then sighted at New House Pond in Stockport, Grt Manchester (64km ESE) on 28/03/2011 & 29/03/2011. The next sighting is at WWT Slimbridge on 07/10/2011 and today – 217km south in 311 days!

It’s not bothered about bread anymore! More like relishing on the daily grain handouts by staff & visitors!!

Now I’m waiting for the ‘‘You ringed this at Slimbridge’’ & ‘‘ you’re transporting them between sites’’ comments! :)

Hello Again D4A!

2011-10-09T13:20:00.001+01:00

I’ve been waiting to see this nasal saddled Teal again here at Slimbridge to get some photos of it! However I haven’t seen it since! So the above photo will have to do!

My colleague Steve Heaven first sighted D4A on the Rushy Pen at Slimbridge on 10/09/2011 and I eventually caught up with it a few days later! So why do I say ‘hello again’? Well I’ve seen this bird many times before on my old stomping ground at WWT Martin Mere, Lancashire!

It was ringed on 15/01/2010 at Reserve du Duer, Sarzeau in France and first sighted at Martin Mere on 19/10/2010, it returned back to it’s ringing location in France, being sighted there on 24/01/2011 (presuming escaping our cold weather at the time!?). Then the next sighting was on 08/04/2011 at Lewes Brooks in Sussex before being sighted at Slimbridge on 10/09/2011 and 12/09/2011!

It’ll be interesting to see whether D4A is sighted back at Martin Mere over the coming winter! This bird proves how attractive WWT sites are to waterbirds!!

Good day for Gold & Grey in the Garden!

2011-10-08T17:24:00.001+01:00

Upon arriving back to Manchester last night, I was told how the garden was alive with Goldfinches earlier in the day, with around 40 counted from the living room window. I awoke this morning & peering out of my bedroom window I was amazed to see around 70 Goldfinches on the feeders & covering the ground!

So up I got and started to get the net ready with the help from Chris, no sooner had we got back inside and the net started to fill with Goldfinches, with 15 in the first net round & we ended the day on 42 new birds & 2 recaptures.

We were aware of several Grey Wagtails hanging around the lane and were rather surprised when one found it’s way into the net! Unfortunately this happened just as Steve Christmas left the house! As he’d been round dropping off rings (thanks Steve!)

Don’t think a Wren has ever appeared on this blog before!! So here’s one to settle that……

We ended the morning on catching 50 birds – 47 new & 3 recaps.

Goldfinch	42 new & 2 recaps
Grey Wagtail	1 new
Coal Tit	2 new
Blue Tit	1 new
Wren	1 new
Dunnock	1 recap

Introducing Twitter to the Blog!

2011-10-03T20:15:00.001+01:00

Things have been pretty hectic over the last week or so, hence no updates on the blog! I have introduced the twitter application > at the side of this page, which allows me to automatically post updates from my phone on the things I’m getting up to.

I’m hoping to be back in the NW this weekend, where I’m planning on getting the feeding stations going, having a dabble at trying to catch a few Coot & possibly a day in the Lake District rounding up Mute Swan broods is on the cards……..

I’ve got a rather nice Teal story to bring to the blog too! Just need to get some photos of the bird first!!

Check back soon!!

1000 Up!

2011-09-21T15:00:00.001+01:00

Almost two years have passed since we started our colour ringing project on north west Coot, today we colour marked our 1000th bird! This milestone total saw the end of us using individual colour ring combinations, to see the start of using individual coded darvic rings!

On 29/10/2009 when we had hundreds and hundreds of colour ring combinations to use up, it felt as though it would take us an age to reach our target goal! However, I’m rather surprised to be writing this today – that 1000 hand captured Coot have now been colour ringed!!

I won’t go into great detail on this, as we’re just about to analyse what we’ve already gathered. However of the 1000 colour ringed birds, 540 have subsequently been sighted again and 202 of these away from their ringing locations, with many birds being sighted at more than one location.

The updated sightings map, looking rather hectic! Red = ringed at Southport, Green = Crompton Lodges, Blue = Redesmere, Purple = Westport Lake. Many more sightings are on here, however they’re hidden by already placed markers.

The milestone also represents bringing on board other ringers throughout the UK, who will be colour marking birds as part of the project. This includes ringers in Newcastle, Shropshire, Norfolk & North Wales and possibly ringers in Cornwall, London, Derbyshire and Cumbria. Together with Radipole Ringing Groups current marking programmes in Dorset & Devon – we’re hoping to colour mark birds on a broader scale across the UK.

Our new colour ringing scheme uses white darvic rings, with black alpha numeric codes, on the left leg – with a BTO ring on the right leg. Letters used are – A, B, C, D, F, H, I, J, L, N, R, S, T, V, X & Z. Numbers used – 3, 4, 6 & 7.

Please report sightings of ALL colour marked Coot to me at kanebrides(add)gmail.com – it is very important to carry on sending in sightings of the individual colour ring combinations – as these will add further to the information that we’ve already got on these birds.

If anyone is sitting on any sightings and have still yet to report them – I’d be particularly grateful if you could send these to me (at the above address) so that we can use these sightings in the analysis.

With special thanks to the following people for their help in the colour marking project over the last two years – Steve Christmas, Craig Brookes, Seumus Eaves, Pete, Peter & Tom Fearon, Kieran Foster, Ciaran Hatsell, Sean Gray, Chris Bridge, Zac Hinchcliffe and Gillian Dinsmore.

Mipits.

2011-09-17T12:08:00.001+01:00

A session at Smithills Moor this morning with Steve, yielded 10 of these delightful little birds, before bad weather put stop to that & we packed in. Hopefully the weather will be kind enough next weekend for another go………….

& Some of the Killington Gulls are still alive!

2011-09-15T09:27:00.001+01:00

I was beginning to wonder why we had not heard back from any of our 80+ darvic’d Black headed Gulls from Killington? Then Chris Baines contacted me with a sighting of the above bird – 2A64 – which was seen by him on Loch Ryan in Stranraer 82 days & 166km WNW later!

Thanks to Chris for the sighting & photo.

I’m Still Alive!

2011-09-14T21:58:00.001+01:00

A quick update…..Sorry for the lack of postings recently! I’ve been quite busy, mainly as I’ve got a new job at WWT Slimbridge, so I’ve been busy in sorting things out, twinned with the fact that the weather has been awful!

I shall be moving to Slimbridge in the next two weeks to start my new job in the Species Monitoring Unit. The post is ringing based, so I’ll be able to blog about what I’m getting up to! I’m also planning on being at home most weekends to catch up with family & of course to continue my ringing activities back in the great NW!

Anyhow over the last week or so I’ve had one or two days catching Coot and have managed to capture and colour ring 35 more birds. We’ve got a rather special occasion looming with the Coot project, so we’ll blog about this – probably next week, depending on how quick we can work, and how good the lads are at catching this week < no pressure Zac/Chris!

During a quick meet at Preston Docks at lunch time today with Zac, we managed to catch this juvenile Lesser Black Backed Gull.

Recoveries Roundup.

2011-08-22T10:18:00.001+01:00

We’ve recently received a batch of 89 recoveries from the BTO, the majority of these being Coot & Mute Swan colour ring sightings.

Thirty three Coot recoveries were included in this latest batch, many being useful local sightings & the majority involving birds ringed at Southport Marine Lake. Birds ringed at Southport were found at Killingworth Lake, Newcastle – 180km NNE in 176 days. At Erewash Meadows in Nottingham – 130km ESE in 148 days. Also recovered at Rodley Nature Reserve in Leeds – 92km E in 200 days. And one found dead at Barrow in Furness – 52km NNE in 208 days. A bird ringed at Bowness on Windermere in Cumbria was sighted at RSPB Marshside, Southport – 77km S in 227 days.

Further repeat sightings of our darvic ringed Black Headed Gulls were included. These being 2A00 ringed at Bowness on Windermere, recovered in Oslo – 1027km. And 2A06 recovered in Utena in Lithuania – 1837km.

Passerines were represented by a Chaffinch ringed at Shakerley, Atherton – being controlled by ringers at Hightown, Merseyside – 38km W in 137 days. A Goldfinch ringed at Walkden in February this year was controlled by ringers in Newton, Lancs – 47km N in 60 days. A Swallow ringed as a chick in the nest at WWT Martin Mere in June this year was controlled by ringers at Betley Mere in Staffordshire, 46 days later, 75km SSE. And a Blue Tit ringed as a chick in Atherton in May this year was found dead soon after fledging after being found in a water butt.

A Wood Pigeon ringed in my Atherton garden in May this year was shot dead in Atherton Woods 73 days & 2km later and reported by the hunter. We also received some information on various birds that we’ve controlled over the last few months (I.e birds ringed elsewhere and caught at our sites). This included Sand Martin – L451555 – ringed as a juvenile at Roundhouse Quarry Farm in Wiltshire in July 2010. This was controlled at our Shakerley, Atherton colony in June this year. 336 days, 211km NNW.

This batch of recoveries certainly shows the various ways in which we receive recoveries. Whether it be by other bird ringers, members of the public, hunters or the Police! Congratulations must go to the BTO staff who work hard in processing this information, the turn around time is great & the new online/e-mail recovery system is first class!!!

We went to the Birdfair & We got ringed!

2011-08-21T14:37:00.001+01:00

Chris, Gillian & me are just back from the British Bird Watching Fair at Rutland Water, were upon visiting the ringing demo we got ringed with the above bands! If you visited the stand and collected one of these you can find your amazing story online here.

For most of Friday & Saturday I was mainly on the WWT stand talking to people about WWT’s conservation breeding programmes. It was a great opportunity for us to meet some of our members in person and get to know what they think of WWT! Away from the stand though it was a great opportunity to catch up with so many friends & meet new people who follow this blog!

However back at home this morning, we got the ball rolling for this seasons Coot colour ringing! A successful visit to Redesmere to catch some juvenile Coot landed us eight birds in total. Six new birds & two metal ring controls!

Both of the metal ring controls where ringed at Plattsfield Park in Manchester City Centre. GC64147 as an adult in 2008. And GR24127 ringed just over a month ago as an unfledged bird by Steve Christmas! Both birds are now carrying colour rings which should aid easier identification in the field. Distance & direction from Plattsfield Park to Redesmere is 22km South.

Chasing the Angels from the North.

2011-08-17T11:35:00.001+01:00

Hello from Russia! After landing back from Iceland on Sunday morning, I spent all of 7 hours at home before heading back to the airport for a flight to Heathrow & then onto St Petersberg. I’m here for several days at a conference & awards ceremony, more on this later…..

But first we should bring an update to the blog on the success of Whooper Swan catching during our last 2 weeks of the expedition.

In total we managed to capture 138 swans of which 90 were new birds to ringing and 48 were already carrying rings. These recaptures being a mixture of Icelandic retraps, controls & one or two British ringed birds, carrying BTO rings.

Breeding success in one of our main study areas of Bardardalur was somewhat very poor and we only managed to ring seven cygnets in this area (compared to 42 in 2010!). And in total we only noted 13 cygnets in broods of 1 ,1 ,2, 2, 3 & 4. June, in Iceland was unusually very cold and it snowed most days in the valley thus having an effect on the swans breeding productivity, as well as other birds including Ptarmigan, Gyr Falcon, Golden Plover & Whimbrel.

All the cygnets captured in this area, were big enough to hold darvic rings. Which must be a first! As normally we have a small number of cygnets that receive metal rings only, as the darvic ring is too big for their growing tarsus.

So with the small numbers of cygnets around, when then started to target non breeding adults on several lakes in the area.

Landing some particularly useful catches of the non or failed breeding adults, as around 20 of the adults captured had lost their darvic ring – making identification in the field much harder – this allowed us to add the more readable darvic ring.

We caught up with several of our ex transmitter birds, which allowed close examination on them. Even though no birds are carrying transmitters now, it’s always good to catch up with them, knowing that they’ve successfully managed to ditch their transmitters (and later recovered by WWT staff!). NA3 was captured (see previous blog), along with a transmitter bird from 2007 – Blidfinnur. And sadly we found BV5 dead at Kalfborgararvatn (his tagging location). Sad news but good to know that he made it back to his old stamping ground after ditching his transmitter on Coll & Tiree in 2010.

30 Golden Plover chicks gave us the run around prior to their ringing

Along with 10 Whimbrel chicks……….

And their flat flies were duly captured after escaping onto us!

and bottled for a study on parasites, Ptarmigans & Gyr Falcons.

Several Ptarmigan chicks were caught, but sadly too small for ringing! All broods along with adults were counted and the information together with our collected flat flies were handed to the Icelandic Institute for Natural History.

So another successful expedition is brought to an end & I eagerly await their return to WWT Martin Mere in the next few weeks to see who has made it back for another year running!!

Massive thanks to Sverrir, Aevar, Thorey & Solla for having us along for another year!!

Gentle Giants.

2011-08-04T15:04:00.001+01:00

We had a free day yesterday, so decided to do something I’ve always been meaning to do whilst coming here – to go on a whale watching trip!

We spent three hours out at sea and were rewarded with a group of three Humpbacks! At times we were no more than 1 metre away from them, watching as they surfaced and played around!

Over the last few days we’ve been out catching more Whooper Swans & monitoring Red Throated & Great Northern Divers for breeding productivity – more on this in the next day or two…

Catching Up With Old Friends!

2011-08-01T15:09:00.001+01:00

We’ve now moved to Northern Iceland, where we’ll be based in the capital of the North in Akyreryi. To give you some idea of where this is, if Iceland was a clock Akyreryi would be positioned at 12! From Akyreryi we’ll be travelling out to various known Whooper Swan locations and starting in the valley of Skagafjordur - one of three WWT Whooper Swan study locations.

Skagafjordur is a beautiful valley which is situated near the middle of the North of the land, about 40km long and 30km wide. The valley holds around 90 pairs of Whooper Swans, although you’d surprised at this number as you very rarely see the birds! They are very well hidden in the boggy vegetation!

One of the main differences of catching swans in Skagafjordur from other study locations is that most of the birds are out on the marshes, so therefore we can’t use a boat & we don’t have access to a hovercraft! So the team has to be prepared to do a lot of running & to get very wet – often chest deep in freezing cold water!

and of course we need a big team to surround the birds and to help bring the catch quickly under control. We are fortunate to have the help of Dr Olafur Einarsson’s family, many of them have been doing this since they were small kids & are now very well trained in catching and holding swans!

and so the catching began & the first bird captured was very well known to us! NA3 (above) volunteered his services to us two years ago, when we placed a tracking device on him! This bird is very experienced and has brought back many cygnets to the UK over several years. He’s been seen at three WWT wetlands centres across the UK – Caerlaverock (Dumfriesshire) Martin Mere (Lancashire) and Welney (Norfolk) and so is a well travelled swan & certainly knows the good feeding & roosting spots in the UK!!

We caught NA3 along with his new partner F67 and a bumper brood of 7 cygnets! Quite unusual for a Whooper Swan family to contain so many young!

All birds go through at least one annual moult. Of most kinds, the big wing-feathers used for flight are shed and replaced by instalments, so that the bird is always able to get into the air and fly. But among the geese, swans & ducks this is not so. All the flight-feathers are shed simultaneously, with the result that for an average of about three weeks in the year the adult birds are quite unable to fly. They can, however, run fast, swim & dive! The stage of flightless moult of adults coincides exactly with the period when their own young are between one and five weeks hatched. For most of this period the young can run fast in their first few days out of the egg - much faster than their wings!

Waiting for cygnets to surface after diving to evade capture!

In one of the bigger ponds that we waded through, quite a number of ducks were also moulting. This allowed us to catch and ring Wigeon (14), Mallard (2) and Teal (2).

and sharp hearing by Chris allowed him to listen and follow the calls of two Snipe chicks!

A moulting flock of non or failed breeding Whooper Swans led us onto a rather chilly glacial river!

On closer inspection of one of the recaptured birds from this flock, it seemed that it’s darvic ring contained several small bullet holes from where it had been shot at.

A fantastic few days with around 50 Whooper Swans captured, a mixture of new, recapped & controlled birds.

These Icelandics know how to do it!! There’s no better way of ending a day of chasing ‘big white turkeys’ in cold water, than spending it in a geo thermal hot tub!!

Cheers to Oli & the team for a very enjoyable few days!! We’re now getting ready to start catching Whoopers in the Myvatn area………

Ring Reading in Reykjavik

2011-07-27T16:20:00.001+01:00

We’ve spent today mooching around downtown Reykjavik and we couldn’t resist a visit to Tjörnin Lake in the centre for a spot of gull ring reading!

Tjörnin is a gull catcher/grabber/ring readers paradise with lots of Lesser Black Backed Gulls on the look out for free food & coming within feet of the offering hands!

Cannot resist hand feeding the gulls!

Two LBBG rings read – Y512 & YK14.

Now off to the airport to catch our flight north……………

Flatey Island 2011.

2011-07-26T21:55:00.001+01:00

So we’ve survived our 10 day trip to Flatey Island and seeing as though Flatey Island ringing activities have been featured on this blog many times before! I’ve decided to leave it up to the newcomers of ‘Team Flatey GB’ to detail this years trip!

The famous Manx Ringing Duo – Sean Gray & Kev Scott – joined Chris & myself on this years ringing expedition and both have created two excellent videos of the trip, which I think sums it all up!!

Kev’s video.

Sean’s video.

Here’s some highlights -

Capturing Puffins by locating birds in nesting burrows & fleyg netting - yielded a number of new & recapped birds including this bird (above) carrying a datalogger, attached in 2008 to determine the birds wintering areas.

Capturing adult Snipe on the nest & ringing pulli before leaving the nest.

Surveying Kittiwake breeding productivity, ringing chicks & capturing adults by noosing or fleyging.

Another successful year for flick netting adult Red Necked Phalarope & ringing pulli, with 71 birds ringed.

Ringing a Grey Phalarope chick & marvelling over their smart looking parents!

Flick netting Snow Buntings with 10 adults captured.

Kev holding a Puffin

Sean with a Kittiwake.

2011’s Ringing Team

Sverri, Sean, Mattis Aevar, Kev, Aevar, Chris & Me.

All that is left for me to say is thanks to both Sean & Kev for joining us this year & to Aevar Petersen and Sverrir Thorstensen for having us all along! It’s been another successful trip with other 1100 new birds ringed of 18 species.

Me & Chris are now in central Reykjavik preparing to fly North in the next few days to capture & ring Whooper Swans for WWT’s ongoing research work…………

Nest Record Totals & A Visit From An Old Friend!

2011-07-14T08:56:00.001+01:00

Over the last two weeks I’ve been frantically rushing through reed-beds, up & down ladders to monitor boxes & ringing the last remaining pulli for what will be the end of my 2011 pulli season! It’s that time of the year again when I pack everything away & head on up north for my annual seabird, wader & Whooper swan fix in Iceland!

So I thought now would be an appropriate time to update the blog on this years Nest Record Totals.

Species	Number of NRC’s
Barn Owl	2
Blackbird	11
Blackcap	2
Blue Tit	36
Canada Goose	2
Chaffinch	5
Collared Dove	5
Coot	8
Dunnock	1
Goldfinch	1
Grasshopper Warbler	1
Greenfinch	2
Great Tit	24
Kestrel	2
Lapwing	4
Lesser Whitethroat	1
Long Eared Owl	1
Long-tailed Tit	1
Mallard	1
Moorhen	5
Mute Swan	2
Nuthatch	1
Reed Bunting	1
Reed Warbler	62
Robin	6
Song Thrush	2
Sparrowhawk	1
Spotted Flycatcher	1
Stock Dove	3
Swallow	14
Tawny Owl	2
Treecreeper	2
Tree Sparrow	68
Whitethroat	2
Wood Pigeon	4
Wren	3
36 Species	288

All that was left to do yesterday was to ring a brood of Long Eared Owl, check the status of a Collared Dove nest, update IPMR & submit this years data to the BTO.

Surprisingly all five chicks were big enough for ringing, with the smallest on the far right just being big enough to hold the G ring! Our mate Ciaran on the far left who’s home from the Farne Islands for his brothers graduation (Congratulations Cal!) managed to spare us a few hours (the whole day actually!) for a good catch up! Really nice to see him home back in the great NW!

Cheers to Zac for the use of his camera/photos!

So that’s it now for the next 6 weeks! I shall be out in Iceland for four of them, before flying back home (for two days!) and flying onto Russia for two weeks! So I shall blog about my trips on my return.

So long………

Llangorse CANGO Catch!

2011-07-03T20:03:00.001+01:00

Up and out very early this morning, driving to South Wales to join our colleague Gillian Dinsmore at the annual Llangorse Canada Goose round-up!

Canoes rounding up the flightless geese, that are undergoing their annual moult.

Over the past few years I’ve recovered a small handful of Llangorse ringed Canada Geese in the NW! The group receives some impressive recoveries from this species, a handful of them can be viewed under the Canada Goose section here, here & here.

I’ve always wanted to join in & help on Llangorse RG’s roundups. So I was over the moon when I got the chance to take part in this today!

Chris, Gillian, Zac & Me (behind the camera!) waiting to help with the roundup process….. getting a little wet, but something we’re very much use to!

Together with the canoeist and other members of the processing team, the birds are corralled.

Birds being ushered to the holding pens.

And the ringing begins!

409 Canada geese caught & processed, a fantastic day with cracking weather!! Our thanks go to Jerry Lewis of the Llangorse RG for allowing us to be involved!

Gillian being our latest member of the team, here looking after her ‘boys’ and being mother by providing lunch, drink and much needed malteaser chocolate cake!

Something a Little Different!

2011-06-30T12:49:00.000+01:00

After leaving Dave yesterday, I got some work out of the way before leaving in the early evening to Anglesey with Kieran Foster, Zac & Chris to attempt some nocturnal netting. We were after Storm Petrels & Manx Shearwater, as we waited for what seemed like an age for it to go completely dark – we were rewarded with two Storm Petrels and 7 Manx Shearwater!

It was obvious it was going to be a Manxie night, as good numbers were off shore calling loudly with their eerie call. Six new Manx Shearwater were bagged, along with a bird already carrying a ring, as the last bird of the evening or early morning (!) It certainly rounded off a first class trip! The controlled bird being ringed on Bardsey Island as a chick in 2005….

Leaving Anglesey at 3am & arriving home at 5am, tired and overwhelmed at handling two very smart birds!, controlling the Bardsey bird, smelling a Storm Petrel (lovely!) and……….. hearing a Coot flying over the sea, calling loudly in the pitch black – which is something I’ve always wanted to witness!!!

Thanks to Kieran for a tip top night!! & Zac for the above photos…

Lucky Kestrel!

2011-06-29T12:49:00.000+01:00

Out with Dave Edwards yesterday morning, checking Barn Owl & Kestrel broods in the Astley Moss area of Greater Manchester. It was obvious that we’d missed the first brood of Kestrels, as a fledged brood were flying around with their parents! However upon entering the barn, it seemed one of the pulli had taken it’s first flight from the box, and landed straight through the skylight of a VW campervan! Luckily the campervan was open and Dave managed to get the bird, which was duly ringed before being released & joining it’s siblings!

We then went onto check a few Barn Owl locations, however it seems they’re not having a particularly good year on the mosslands with just one chick ringed….

Two Stock Dove pulli, 8 Swallow pulli and a brood of 4 small Kestrels were also ringed during the morning…..

COMTE Colour Ringing

2011-06-23T22:17:00.001+01:00

I met Dave Edwards over at Doffcocker Lodge in Bolton after work today, to start our 2011 colour ringing on the Common Terns there. Dave’s study on juvenile dispersal is now into it’s 6th year and today we added a further 15 colour ringed chicks, with one chick being too small to hold colour rings, so was BTO ringed only.

2011’s chicks are given a yellow colour ring above the BTO ring on the right leg, along with a grey colour ring on the left leg. Yellow is the site colour = Doffcocker and the Grey ring is the year colour = 2011.

Any sightings of colour ringed Common Terns can be sent to www.ring.ac

‘A Look Back’ - Where are they now?

2011-06-22T23:59:00.001+01:00

(Photo taken at Southport Marine Lake, Dec 10 by Stephen Menzie)

December 2010 was exceptionally cold across the UK; the coldest December in over 100 years and it was the coldest calendar month since February 1986! This saw most of the countries’ lakes & ponds frozen over which placed huge numbers of wildfowl on the move in search for open water.

At times Southport Marine Lake was 90% frozen and thanks mainly to the Mute Swans, they kept a patch of water open for themselves and other water birds. This provided perfect Coot catching conditions and allowed a sample of birds to be assessed on how well the birds were coping with the adverse weather conditions. Over a three day period 233 Coot were hand captured & colour ringed at Southport, with an amazing 106 in one day, as the birds came to bread.

Now as we move on into Summer and put that memorable Winter behind us, I thought it would be worthwhile bringing an update to the blog on where some of these birds have since been sighted.

Just days after ringing, the first sightings started to trickle in as birds moved around. GR25043 sighted 10km at WWT Martin Mere 2 days after ringing, then reported on territory at nearby Mere Sands Woods in March 2011 and GR25270 reported 4 days later at Seaforth, Merseyside 21km – may give indication of local birds.

However a rapid movement made by GR25118, 390km SSW in 26 days to Cornwall was impressive and GR25010 sighted 299km SSE in 80 days to Salisbury, gives a good representation of how far some birds dispersed from Southport.

Of the 212 marked birds, 117 have been reported since ringing with 41 of these being away from Southport Marine Lake.

Local sightings.

National sightings

It’ll be interesting to see whether any of these birds return back this coming winter, or whether their last visit to Southport was a result of the severe weather pushing them there…..

In the meantime it would be most useful if you could check your local Coots for colour rings and report any sightings to me at kanebrides’@’gmail.com

Killington Trip 2.

2011-06-21T18:43:00.001+01:00

We always try to have two visits to the Killington BHG colony in Cumbria. On the first visit we aim to ring as many chicks as we can catch & then on the follow up visit we aim to ring an extra 100 chicks. We also take time out to check dead birds for rings (from visit 1) so that we can accurately record these in IPMR, before submitting to the BTO.

I was expecting to find quite a lot of dead chicks, however I was surprised to only retrieve 28 rings (out of 447 chicks ringed) and I’m fairly sure the whole island was checked for dead birds. Unlike last year we couldn’t walk onto the island, so had to wade through water to get onto the island – so I suspect this is also stopping the local foxes getting on there and feasting on the chicks!

80 chicks were darvicd during our first trip & we only retrieved 3 darvics on yesterday’s visit – so we’re rather looking forward to sightings of the other 77 away from the island! A bit optimistic maybe?!

Chris, Zac & Gillian did a sterling job of rounding up & ringing the chicks yesterday. 127 chicks were ringed, along with two adults making the daily total 130 – which now puts us on well over 600 new Black-headed Gulls for 2011……… now we wait for the recoveries!!

A Big Surprise from LISBOA!

2011-06-20T17:23:00.001+01:00

OK so I’ve changed the second word in this blog post title slightly from yesterdays post! Why!? Because apparently A310342 is the first Portuguese ringed Sand Martin to be recovered in the UK!

Thanks to Richard Du Feu for making me aware of this! And to Lee Barber at BTO HQ for confirming!

Well done A310342…………!

!Update!

To add a further twist to this story – what are the chances that UK ringers ringed this bird in Portugal!? And those ringers being from the NW of England!? It’s true…. Thanks to Tom & Peter Fearon for getting in touch – they ringed this Sand Martin on 21/08/2010 at Reserva Natural das Lagas de Santo André e da Sancha. It weighed 14.8 and was aged as a 3 (juvenile)

Thanks to the Fearons for letting us know!

Today we had a very successful trip to Killington Lake to round up more Black-headed Gull chicks. However we thought A310342 deserves the blog post this evening, so we’ll blog about today’s events tomorrow!

A Small Surprise from LISBOA!

2011-06-19T07:59:00.000+01:00

Another non-stop week, very similar to last weeks activities, however without a trip to Killington (we’re hoping to have a repeat visit tomorrow).

The week in photos….

Met Steve to ring another brood of 5 Kestrels on Monday evening in Worsley, with Steve ringing a further 21 pulli on Saturday.

Started ringing on Atherton Farm again, after a two year gap of not ringing anything. 33 pulli Swallow were ringed on Tuesday, as well as a brood of 5 at WWT Martin Mere.

Another visit to the WWT Martin Mere Tree Sparrow boxes to finish off ringing 2nd broods resulting in 20 pulli being ringed, taking our yearly total to 152 pulli now ringed. Many nest boxes are now containing eggs of third clutches!

Thursday we joined the Reserve Wardens to check the Barn Owl boxes at WWT Martin Mere. Our first nest box was empty & found to have a dead adult inside. The second box held two adults & the young chick above. Seems they’re having a tough year at Martin Mere.

Reed Warbler monitoring continued this week with a further 7 nests found at the reed bed, taking our active nest total up to 47 nests! A further 20 pulli were ringed, bringing our 2011 Reed Warbler pulli total to 80 ringed.

Saturday – the trip to Puffin Island with SCAN Ringing Group (see below for more photos) ringing -

Cormorant – 250 pulli + 50 darvicd
Shag – 10 pulli + 1 retrap adult
Razorbill – 27 pulli + 5 adults
Guillemot – 299 pulli + 14 adults.
Kittiwake – 5 adults – darvicd & datalogged

Sunday evening spent with Steve, Chris & Gillian Dinsmore at the Shakerley Sand Martin colony. Two nets erected for an hour, capturing 38 birds. The first bird extracted by Gillian was carrying a Cempa Sea, Lisboa ring from Portugual! Ring number A310342. One other control followed this bird, a BTO ringed bird – L451555. 36 new birds captured. A very nice hour to round off a very busy week……

152 new birds this week + 2 controls of 20 species….

Thanks to Steve, Chris, Zac & Gillian for their help this week. Thanks also to Zac for the above Reed Warbler & Kestrel photos and to Gillian for the Kittiwake photo!

Puffin Island, North Wales.

2011-06-18T22:52:00.001+01:00

When visiting my Grandparents in Benllech, Anglesey, I often sit in their living room overlooking the sea & gazing out towards Puffin Island, wishing I was over there with all those birds!! So this week when an e-mail arrived in my inbox from Steve Dodd inviting me to join a ringing trip there today, I quickly snapped up the offer and re-arrange my weekend so that I could take part in SCAN Ringing Group’s visit to the island.

We had an absolute awesome day out on the island ringing seabirds such as Cormorant, Shag, Guillemot, Razorbill and Kittiwake. For me the highlights were helping Rachel Taylor darvic 50 Cormorant, being taught by Rachel how to use special auk rings and helping PhD student Louise Soans in catching, darvicing & attaching GPS dataloggers to Kittiwake!!

I’m unsure of the full totals from today’s trip – I know we ringed a lot of birds! However I’ll post a short update on the ringing totals when Steve has added them all up!!

Here’s a few photos from today -

Cormorant chicks.

Razorbill chick

Razorbill (with the nearest bird ringed with a special auk ring)

Guillemot

Many thanks to Steve for the invite & to everyone involved for such a good day!

Shakerley’s First Overseas Recovery!

2011-06-17T20:05:00.001+01:00

A recent batch of recoveries through from the BTO included one of a Sand Martin ringed at Shakerley, Atherton on 15/06/2010 as a 4 male.

Controlled 70 days later on 24/08/2010 at Etang da la Horre, Aube, France – 749km….

Busy Week!

2011-06-12T13:23:00.001+01:00

I’ve had all of this week off work, and at the start of it, it didn’t look too promising weather wise for much ringing. A little worrying as we had lots of ringing planned! However it seemed ‘they’ got it wrong and we managed to squeeze all our ringing activities in without being pestered too much by rain or strong winds!

Monday kicked off with a Kestrel nest box inspection at Shakerley, were I managed to lift the female out of the box. She was feeding 5 chicks and I decided to leave the ringing of the chicks for later in the week, as I knew Zac was coming & this would give him some experience with getting to grips with the talons of birds of prey!

A brood of three Lapwing were found on the walk back from the Kestrel box so these were duly ringed before they up sticks and leave the nest scrape!

Tuesday the weather was looking awful during the morning, however as planned I went to collect Chris & Zac from the train station and we drove to Killington Lake in Cumbria for our annual Black-headed Gull roundup. We arrived mega early and before the rest of the team so decided that a cup of coffee was in order at Killington Services. But on arrival we were greeted by these…..

and it wasn’t long before two of them were in the car and ready to be ringed! Followed by another 3, which were all darvic ringed… (Well done to Zac for hand catching his first gulls!)

One of the advantages of having a glass roof top car, allowed us to get the birds on top of it & do a spot of ring reading through the glass!! With two BTO rings read – EX51401 and EG41030. (Anyone recognise these ring numbers?!)

After our enjoyable half hour of catching, speaking to people about ringing & glugging down our coffee – it was time to meet Steve & Aidan and to get ready for the colony ringing. Unfortunately not many pictures were taken due to being so busy on the island. In total we caught 477 chicks, with 80 of these getting an additional darvic ring.

We awoke early on Thursday to glorious sunshine, just what we needed for a day of nest box checking at WWT Martin Mere. We arrived early in order to spend more time checking boxes & ringing chicks. It’s a hard slog getting around these boxes, but well worth it in the end! 100 Tree Sparrow chicks ringed (colour ringed), 1 Stock Dove, 4 Chaffinch, 4 Swallow, 2 Moorhen and 1 Coot.

(Above & below photos by Zac Hinchcliffe)

And finally Friday morning was spent in the reed-bed checking 43 Reed Warbler nests & ringing 30 Reed Warbler pulli.

before returning to Shakerley to ring the Kestrel brood and for a spot of mist netting…

catching two Grasshopper Warblers & two Whitethroat.

Of the Groppers one was a new bird and the other was a retrap, it being from the nest I ringed the other week! Nice to know they’re still around…

Thanks to Steve, Aidan, Chris & Zac for their help this week.

Gropper Gold!

2011-05-30T22:43:00.001+01:00

Many times I’ve picked up and read Richard Castell’s article on ‘how to find Grasshopper Warbler nests’ (Nest Record News 26) and always marvelled at finding my own nest one day! I came very close to finding one in 2008, when I found a bird nest building – however for some unknown reason the birds didn’t lay any eggs. It was 2009 when I got to see my first ‘Gropper’ nest, whilst out nest finding with Richard & Jim Hodson in Wakefield, Yorkshire. We put quite a bit of effort in to look for the nest and eventually were rewarded with a nest containing a clutch of 6 lilac coloured eggs!

After this mornings downpour I decided to head up to Shakerley for a walk around, to see whether I could muster up any pulli to ring. The first two nests I came across were both Whitethroats, one containing four, 1 day old chicks + a hatching egg (below). Whilst the other held a brood of 5 chicks that were just ripe for ringing.

Next up was a Lesser Whitethroats nest (a first for me), following the pair back to the nest as they went about, busily carrying nesting material, along with another two Common Whitethroat nests (5 chicks, 5 eggs).

As I was walking through a section of damp marshland, a warbler skulking in the undergrowth caught my eye. It became apparent, as I got my bins on the bird that it was a Grasshopper Warbler and it was carrying food! Would today be the day that I put to use all of Rich’s useful notes on how to find a Gropper nest!? As instructed I spent a good hour watching the bird going back and fourth in the general area, and I got rather excited as I saw one of the adult birds carrying away a faecal sac, so I knew I was onto something! After a good hours worth of observation, I headed down to try and locate the nest & before too long I stumbled upon these little beauties!!

A fantastic day with 5 Common Whitethroat nests found, 1 Lesser Whitethroat, 1 Robin, 1 Reed Bunting and 1 Grasshopper Warbler nest!

Thanks to Richard (one of the UK’s top nest finders/recorders!) for all his advice on how to find, what must be one of the hardest nests to locate!

Reed Warbler Monitoring.

2011-05-29T17:12:00.000+01:00

Several days ago I donned my waders and headed into one of our local reed beds to check on Reed Warbler nests. I always enjoy looking for the nests of one of my favourite warblers! The first nest I came to contained 5 big chicks (FM stage) which slightly worried me that I’d left my first visit too late! However out of the thirty nests I found, only one other nest contained young (FS stage), the others all containing eggs (102 eggs counted).

A visit to Atherton Woods to check on nest boxes and sign off most of the tit nest record cards was had. This allowed me to check on the two Treecreeper nests. One nest had fledged their young, whilst the other held 6 (FS) chicks. Very delicately I managed to slip my hand into the nest and get at the chicks for ringing.

The wind has now died down, but has been replaced by rain! So I’m still yet to get out and do some mist netting. The garden trap has been doing all the catching over the last few days, much to the amusement of the kids when they’ve been visiting!

With several Wood Pigeon captured and one Bullfinch (female), the above male is still a little nervous of entering the trap!

LEO Nest!

2011-05-26T21:58:00.001+01:00

All week I’ve been watching a Long Eared Owl hunting at one of my ringing sites, and like last year I was keen to find the nest. So most nights this week I’ve been out checking old Magpie/Crow nests, even getting up at 1am (I couldn’t sleep!) to go and listen for the ‘squeaky gate’ call. However it seems I’m a little early for that unique sound as the nest I found tonight contained two eggs! Really looking forward to following the progress of this nest………

Nest Box Checking.

2011-05-24T15:22:00.001+01:00

Saturday just gone, Chris & I checked 97 nest boxes at WWT Martin Mere, with around 150 nest boxes onsite – we find it very hard to cover all these in a day! However of the 97 boxes, 74 were occupied with the majority being used by Tree Sparrows (62 nest), along with 9 Blue Tit and 3 Great Tit.

It seemed that we missed a large percentage of the first broods, as lots of nests contained 2nd clutches with a handful containing big chicks. Just wish we could find the time to check these boxes earlier in the season, but everything seems to come at once when we’re at our busiest.

88 pulli were ringed – 39 Blue Tit, 19 Great Tit and 30 Tree Sparrow. All the Tree Sparrow pulli were colour ringed as part of a project that WWT wardens are carrying out.

Visitors to Martin Mere can help by sending in sightings of colour ringed Tree Sparrows. Sightings can be handed to the front desk and asked to be sent to the Research Office, or jotted down on the sightings boards in any of the hides.

Meanwhile back at home – Whilst I was away last week my Granddad kindly built me a new trap, so we’ve been putting it to use during this windy weather and have caught the first juveniles of the year (Robin, Blackbird, & Song Thrush).

and a brood of Blackcap also ringed…

Still no mist netting due to this strong wind – will it ever give in!?

A Hop Over the Water…

2011-05-20T21:56:00.001+01:00

I’m just back from spending a class few days on the Isle of Man with Sean & Kev of the IOM ringing group. It being my first visit to the Island, my arrival day was planned by Sean to tour around & do some sight seeing. However ever the enthusiast, within 15 mins of my plane touching down, Sean had caught the first bird – followed by the 2nd, in the form of 2 Oystercatchers!!

We then travelled north, via the Calf of Man (which I really wanted to see!) where we managed to trap an adult Chough. My visit to the Isle of Man was to join Sean & Kev whilst they did the rounds ringing Chough pulli, I was not however, expecting to ring an adult Chough!! What a bird….

Above all my wows & ooooos of the birds was a serious side to the work. IOM ringers have been involved in a colour ringing programme of Chough since 1989…. More on this later.

After quickly calling into Sean’s home at Port Lewaigue for a cuppa, meeting his lovely wife Niki and seeing his ringing set up in the garden, we set off for the Point of Ayre. Here we caught – Lesser Black Backed Gull (cr-ringed), Common Gull and another Oystercatcher.

‘Common Gull with Point of Ayre Lighthouse in the background’

Later we trapped three Ringed Plover, adding to the day’s totals before calling for a chippy tea and heading back to Gray’s Bird Observatory for more ringing!!

All the left overs from tea were placed on the ground in front of the whoosh net and with in minutes we had the first birds down & Sean fired on 5 Herring Gulls, which later turned into 9 as we ended the day (all birds colour ringed).

'Luxury ringing – sitting with a cuppa on the couch whilst pulling the cord to whoosh gulls!’

So a fantastic day with no ringing planned, turned into a day of quality rather than quantity! Spending the day with a great mate, with some class species trapped & ringed!!

Thursday I finally got to meet Kev Scott, which was really nice to meet him after reading his blog & being in contact with him over e-mail. Good to put a name to a face and meet the other have of the Manx Ringing Duo!!

The day was spent checking Chough nests to ring the chicks & update the nest record cards. A cracking day had, working with Kev and Sean with such a charismatic species!

The day ended on 14 pulli being ringed, a further 15 ringed this morning before I flew back to Manchester and I’ve since heard that Kev & Sean carried on and ringed another 12 chicks!!

The Isle of Man ringing group are heavily involved in a number of colour marking projects on a number of species. Sightings of these birds are greatly welcomed and can be sent to the contact details on this link were also you’ll be able to find more information on their fantastic colour ringing work.

Colour ringed - Lesser Black Backed Gull

A huge thanks to Sean, Niki & Kev for having me along, giving up their time, showing me their beautiful island and allowing me to ring all the birds! You treated me too well…….I’ll be back!! ;-)

Cheers lads!

Back to the Woods….

2011-05-16T20:15:00.001+01:00

We decided to finish off the remaining boxes this morning in Atherton Woods, ringing any pulli that were big enough to ring. Nearly all the Great Tit are now ringed & should be fledging at the end of the week. Blue Tit are a little all over the place with birds still incubating eggs to a pair that should have their young off later this week! So we’ve got a few more visits to complete before everything is ringed….

36 Blue Tit, 17 Great Tit and an adult Stock Dove that we managed to lift off the nest. She was quickly ringed and placed back onto her nest, were she sat tight as we quietly retreated away from the nest.

Then a little observation work paid off as we found two Treecreeper nests. One containing 3 chicks and another with 6 eggs.

And finally a walk around Shakerley to check on Whitethroat nests revealed that the first eggs have been laid. Also found my first ever Linnet nest, so I’m rather hoping this nest pulls through and I can ring the pulli…….

Garden Netting.

2011-05-15T17:11:00.001+01:00

It’s been far too windy to attempt any large scale mist netting over the weekend & the weather hasn’t really been suitable. However in between rain showers we managed to get the net up in the garden, which was sheltered from the wind.

I haven’t attempted any mist netting in the garden for quite some time, so I was eager to get the net up soon.

Two female House Sparrows (above) managed to place themselves in the net, even before I left the garden after erecting the net! Followed closely by Goldfinch, Starling, Dunnock, Song Thrush & a Coal Tit.

One of the Goldfinches had a deformed bill, but seemed to be in good condition & at a good weight.

Knowing that a brood of Tawny Owl were ready for ringing in Atherton Woods, Chris, Zac and me headed down there to get them ringed, before they jump ship.

With the rain keeping off, we decided to check some of the tit boxes & ring any broods that were big enough, resulting in the ringing of 30 Great Tit, 15 Blue Tit and a brood of 6 Nuthatch

Lastly, congratulations to Chris for putting in for his restricted C permit to ring pulli, using traps & for catching adult birds with his hands!

Hopefully the weather will be kind over the next week or so to allow a netting session at Shakerley!!

Great Tit Chicks!

2011-05-04T15:25:00.001+01:00

I carried out my third nest box check of the season in Atherton Woods this morning & ringed my first brood of Great Tits of the year, which are by far the earliest I’ve done! These chicks were at the FS (feathers short) stage.

Today I checked 33 boxes, of these 19 contained Blue Tit nests, 13 Great Tit and 1 Nuthatch nest. All the Great Tit nests contained young, with all but one of the Blue Tit nests containing eggs – the remaining nest had very young chicks in (below). The Nuthatch box held six 3-4 day old chicks.

I managed to lift 15 female Blue Tits off their eggs resulting in ringing 9 new birds & recapping 6. I was expecting to have recapped more adults, due to netting the Atherton Woods feeding station last winter. I also managed to lift the Nuthatch off her young & she was already ringed TP82742 – ringed in the same box last year as a pullus and recaptured several times at the feeding station during the winter.

Many of the female Blue Tits that I lifted off nests seemed to be in poor condition…

Ahead of everything else though, the Great Tits are getting on with it!

One thing is for certain things seem to be happening much earlier this year!

First Tawny Chick of the Year!

2011-05-03T22:11:00.001+01:00

Tonight we ringed our first Tawny Owl chick of the year, in a nest box in Worsley. Apparently three chicks had been seen out of the box in recent days, however when I climbed the tree tonight – one chick had fledged, another was dead, leaving the below bird.

I’m hoping the the Atherton Wood brood have survived, and I’m looking forward to checking on their progress this week…

Meanwhile it’s been far too windy to attempt any mist netting during recent days, so I’ve been out nest finding or checking on pulli that were ready for ringing – sadly lots have been predated, so only a brood of Wood Pigeon have been ringed during the last few days!

Recent Ringing.

2011-04-24T15:10:00.001+01:00

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!

2011-04-11T20:40:00.001+01:00

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.

2011-04-07T16:25:00.001+01:00

….. 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?!

2011-04-06T11:06:00.001+01:00

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.

Quick Update.

2011-03-28T15:33:00.001+01:00

The feeding station at Shakerley is beginning to slow down & at some point over the next few weeks, I’ll end the feeding there. Last week I had two ‘lunch time’ sessions catching 15 new birds, 7 recap & 1 control. Two new Willow Tit were a nice surprise, as were a controlled Reed Bunting (L042429), making this the third controlled Reed Bunting at Shakerley during the last 3 weeks! Of the other controlled birds, one was ringed by the Fylde Ringing Group at Moss House Farm, Pilling, Lancs on 26/09/2010.

Last week I noticed a Goldfinch roost in my local cemetery of around 60-70 birds. The following evening the roost had dropped to around 40 birds and I got permission to net it on the Thursday evening. By then the roost had dropped further to around 25 birds & I managed a nice little catch of 12 new birds with surprisingly no recaptures.

On Saturday Chris, Zac & myself had an early start as we travelled south for various reasons. Chris & Zac where going cannon netting gulls in Gloucester and I was attending a conference at Slimbridge. So it was late when we finally got back to Manchester & we were well and truly tired! On Sunday morning, still tired the three of us were sat in the conservatory when Zac noticed a small flock of birds landing in the tree at the back of the garden, I dismissed these as Starling and continued to mope around on the couch – but Zac was a little more intrigued and went for a closer look. These birds turning out to be Waxwing! Although we didn’t attempt to catch this small flock, it was rewarding to see that one bird was colour ringed! So we’ll post more details on this bird soon.

Finally yesterday (27th) we got the ball rolling with 2011’s pulli season & ringed our first Wood Pigeon chicks!

2A00 Goes to Norway!

2011-03-25T11:24:00.001Z

Checking through emails this morning, I was particularly excited to have received an email from Morten Helberg with a sighting of Black-headed Gull 2A00.

2A00 was the first bird to volunteer it’s services for the start of our new project, when we managed to catch it at Bowness on Windermere on 01st March 2011. Bird ringer – Robin Sellers sighted this bird at the ringing location on 17th March 2011 and the next sighting (24th March) came in this morning by Morten from Radhuskaia, Oslo Havn, Oslo Norway!

2A00 in flight!

Many thanks to Morten & Carsten for reporting this & for the above photos. Me & Ciaran were only joking with Carsten several weeks ago that we asked one of our gulls to go to Norway to see Carsten! Perhaps we should have a quiet word with all the birds we catch!!

It’s nice to know that the darvics are working well, seeing as though we’ve only marked 6 birds so far!! Roll on next winter….

Mission Accomplished!!!

2011-03-20T16:57:00.011Z

On Thursday 3rd March a birder photographed a Turnstone carrying a Norwegian ring at Kinmel Bay, Rhyl in North Wales. Unfortunately not all of the code was photographed, so members of the SCAN ringing group quickly got together a team of ringers & helpers and this morning we set two nets on the beach, in the hope that we would catch the Norwegian ring bearing visitor!

Happenings were looking very good this morning as the high tide pushed good numbers of Sanderlings, along with small numbers of Dunlin up towards the beach. A number of Turnstone were 'twinkled' from another part of the bay, which beautifully placed them near the catching area. A bit more twinkling by Steve got the birds into the catching area, followed by his go-ahead for the catch to take place. 61 Sanderling, 17 Dunlin and 30 Turnstone were captured.... including the Norwegian ringed bird, which made all the effort worthwhile!

The 61 Sanderling was an added bonus, as apparently prior to this catch - the group had ringed 5 individuals, mainly due to Sanderling being uncommon in North Wales!

Thanks to Chris Bridge for the above photos.

A Touch of Pink!

2011-03-15T15:20:00.008Z

This morning I was asked to help our aviculture team at WWT Martin Mere to round up the Chilean Flamingos, for their annual health check. The avics wanted me to take the biometric measurements of the birds, which consists of measuring both the skull & tarsus of each bird. So not technically wild bird ringing, I thought a bit of flamingo handling was too much of a good opportunity to miss out on & generally that Flamingo round ups are always good fun!

How to weigh a Flamingo!

Southport to Salisbury.

2011-03-12T18:46:00.008Z

Thanks to Shayne Ford for getting in touch with a sighting of a colour ringed Coot. Shayne photographed the below bird on the River Avon in Salisbury City Centre, Wiltshire - this morning.

Orange BTO / White Orange was ringed at Southport Marine Lake on 11/12/2010 as an adult bird and this is the first sighting of it since ringing - 299km.. This is now the 2nd furthest mover from the cr-ringing project, the other bird - also ringed at Southport, was sighted in Cornwall in December 2010 - clocking up 390km.

Many thanks go to Shayne for reporting this & for the above photo!

More BHG...

2011-03-09T13:41:00.005Z

Hand catching Black-headed Gulls has been quite difficult recently, mainly due to the milder weather & birds not being brave enough to venture near our catching hands! Yesterday at Preston Docks with Ciaran & Craig it appeared, at first, that we would be in for another bad day. However around lunch time more gulls were on the scavenge for free titbits from passers-by and soon after a bit of patience began to pay off, when Ciaran managed to catch 5 birds.

Last Few Days & a Goodbye…

2011-03-04T15:31:00.001Z

Over the last several days Ciaran, Chris, Zac Hinchcliffe, Chris Piner and myself have been out & about ringing at a number of our sites.

Sunday (27th) saw us catching in Michael & Mary’s garden in Worsley, however at first it didn’t look too promising when looking out of the window as the rain fell hard. But several cups of tea later it cleared & passed over, allowing us to erect a single 30 foot net in front of their feeders.

In total 20 birds were captured consisting of 13 new & 7 recaptures. Six more new Redpoll added to the ever increasing total list, now standing at 76 new birds for Michael & Mary’s garden. The Common (Mealy) Redpoll was also recaptured. Four Siskin also put an appearance in at the feeders, resulting in one being caught – the first to be ringed in the garden. Great Spotted Woodpecker, House Sparrow, Starling and Goldfinch also being captured.

Two sessions (28th & 02nd) at Shakerley yielded 49 birds of which 35 were new, 13 recaptures & one control. The control was of a Reed Bunting carrying ring – L141944.

All the usual species were caught at Shakerley, however it was nice to catch Redwing, Lesser Redpoll and Reed Bunting in greater numbers than we normally do at this site.

Photo – Zac Hinchcliffe.

March 1st saw us at Bowness-on-Windermere, where we caught our first Black-headed Gull, for the start of a new project. Just four unringed Canada geese were present at Bowness, which were soon caught and now have new shiny rings. One each of Greylag goose, Mallard and Common Gull joined the days totals. Having some spare time on our hands, allowed us to capture 53 Mute Swan to check on the conditions of their rings, which later on returning back to IPMR also brought many controls to light.

Finally after our few days of ringing had come to an end & whilst most of the group were all together. It seemed only fitting that we should say good-bye to Ciaran, who in the next few days will be swapping Coot & Gulls for Puffin & Terns as he goes out to work on the Farne Islands for 8 months.

Over a meal in Manchester many words, memories & good byes were said & one thing is for sure we’re all going to miss him! (Getting emotional) lol - I’d like to say thanks to Ciaran for all his help over the last few months, for assisting the Coot project greatly, the many good laughs & for being the bestest mate ever!

‘‘Be well, do good work and keep in touch’’

North West Black Headed Gull Study.

2011-03-02T00:03:00.001Z

Over the last few years we have ringed just under 1000 Black Headed Gulls across the North West. Despite our efforts we have received only a handful of local recoveries and two overseas recoveries: one to Poland and one to Germany. Even more disparaging is the amount of recoveries we have had from chicks ringed in the last two breeding seasons at Killington Reservoir in Cumbria; with just over 800 ringed and only one recovery of 25km!

With another trip to Killington planned for this summer and having had a successful winter hand catching adults, we decided it would be worthwhile to start using an additional mark aside from the standard BTO metal ring, both to increase recoveries and begin a colour ring study on Black Headed Gulls across the North West.

The main aims of the study are to look into:

Dispersal from natal colony (Killington Reservoir)
To study winter site fidelity (At all other sites, where adults can be caught)
Interchange between study sites.
Longevity
To document general movements within the UK & abroad.

In addition to a metal ring on the right leg, we will place dark blue darvics on the left leg, each with a different code which will make each bird identifiable as an individual.

The Colour Scheme will be as follows:

One Dark Blue Darvic on the left leg with White lettering and a four digit code.

All codes start with the number 2 followed by one letter and two numbers. E.G. 2A23

There will be an additional metal ring placed on the right leg.

There is also an email address printed on the ring which is bhgulls@gmail.com

All sightings should be sent to this address, this will make it easier for either myself or Kane to respond to the sightings as they will all be in one place!

The inspiration for the project came when we were driving around the county catching Coot to colour ring. It became obvious to us that the best sites for catching coot were also the best sites for catching or reading the rings of Black-headed gulls. So the colour ringing of Coot and gulls really are symbiotic studies!

Photo by Zac Hinchcliffe.

Also, at almost every site we went to there was a ringed Black- headed gull, with last year being a fantastic year for controls, but unfortunately none of our Killington birds! John Wells in the Cotswolds suggested that with the numbers of birds we were catching we should start using darvics as his group has great success with them. Having considered it ourselves after getting very little information back from nearly 1000 birds, we quickly got the project up and running!

We envisage the project to last for at least 5 years and it will hopefully not only increase the amount of recoveries we receive but also enable us to build a migration map for black headed gulls in the North West of England and learn more about the movements of these charismatic birds. So next time you’re out feeding the birds, keep an eye out for any birds with blue left legs and please send us your sightings

Ciaran Hatsell.

Rindle Road Ringing.

2011-02-26T19:36:00.000Z

On a not so sunny Saturday morning, several of us met on Astley Moss SSSI for our last mist netting session at the site for the winter. Unfortunately there was quite a breeze whipping around & a slight drizzle, which nearly put an end to the mornings session. However it quickly dried up & the wind dropped slightly, which allowed us to carry on catching.

The mornings ringing produced totals of 10 Yellowhammer, 6 Tree Sparrow, 1 Willow Tit, 2 Great Tit, 2 Reed Bunting, 1 Chaffinch and 1 Greenfinch.

Due to the morning not being particularly busy, there was plenty of opportunity for the trainees in the group to practice extracting and processing birds.

For another account of the days activities please see Zac’s blog

Wader Weekend with SCAN.

2011-02-20T18:06:00.001Z

I was back in Bangor this weekend with Chris to take part in SCAN ringing group’s last cannon net weekend of the winter. The weekends activities kicked off on Saturday morning, where we met before dawn at Llanfairfechan, aiming to catch the priority species being Dunlin & Redshank.

Two teams quickly got to work in setting three nets, before it was time for the high tide to take it’s role in the operation, by pushing the birds closer to the nets. A bit of expert twinkling by Richard, Chris & Rachel, helped to push more birds into the catching area.

Nicely coordinated by Steve, who was in constant radio contact with the twinklers, they pulled of a nice mixed catch of Redshank (27) and Dunlin (68). A good number of helpers & ringers ensured the catch was quickly brought under control & birds taken out of the net and away ready to be processed.

Soon after more Redshank landed perfectly in front of the other cannon net and we made another catch of 47 Redshank, bringing this sessions total to 74 Redshank & 68 Dunlin.

Once all the birds had been extracted from the nets and placed in holding pens, ringing & biometric teams were organised & ringing commenced.

Richard & Dave demonstrating bird ringing to birders & members of the public…

Once all the ringing had been completed, we packed up & arranged to meet back onsite at 7pm for an evening of mist netting in the shallow lagoons. We erected 7 nets under a clear & beautiful nights sky and throughout the evening we caught 28 Redshank, 2 Dunlin & a very smart Greenshank. Packing up at 00:00 we arranged to meet at 8am to set nets in Beaumaris – catching 4 Ringed Plover & 1 Dunlin.

Many thanks as always to Steve & the team for such an enjoyable weekend….

Caerlaverock Swan Catch.

2011-02-11T21:35:00.000Z

This morning we all gathered in the hide that over looks the Whooper pond at Caerlaverock, for the 11am swan feed. It was obvious that we could potentially pull off a good catch, as the reserve warden – Emma went out to do the feed, there were around 200 Whooper Swans, amongst other wildfowl eagerly awaiting their elevenses!

One of the great things to experience at a Caerlaverock catch is seeing the actual catch take place. Whereas at other centres we are often hidden and don’t see the birds until we run into the pipe, to help bring the catch under control.

As Emma headed up the swan pipe the birds followed as they routinely do three times a day, every day and we waited until the catch organiser felt that we had enough birds to cope with and then……. 3, 2, 1 Brian released the door & made a catch.

The above photo is during the initial drive when we form a human line in the water, to try and get most of the birds to the top of the pipe. We successfully managed to pen all the birds during the first drive, so another push wasn’t needed.

Now the birds have been slowly driven to the top of the pipe, we split them up into more smaller manageable groups.

The birds then wait in the pens, an area were only a few people have access to, this minimises the stress. Once the birds have been sexed, they get placed into jackets and brought to the processing tables.

Three ringing stations manned by Larry, Steve & Ciaran made sure that the processing line flowed nicely & ringing done quickly before the birds met Julia, Sheila & me on the biometric table.

Sheila Stubbs (above) expertly scribed our measurements onto paper, often under pressure at times but provided a neat set of sheets ready for the data input team! Actually I must say it was great to be working alongside one of the people who helped kick-start my interest in Whooper Swans! Thanks Sheelz!

In total we caught 147 Whooper Swans of which 96 were new birds & 49 recaps. Also 70 Mute Swan, 6 Canada Geese & 1 Wigeon managed to get caught, making this one of Caerlaverock’s biggest swan catches!

Equipment all packed up it was time for a cuppa & bite to eat after a very successful catch. As the centre closed down & the Slimbridge team headed back south, I stayed up at Caerlaverock for the weekend. This was to help Sheila in sorting out the ringed families, something that can only be done by intensively watching the birds after the swan catch.

It was somewhat encouraging to see that the day after, perhaps with a little hesitation, the birds were back up the pipe, feeding as usual and seemingly unfazed by yesterday’s operation.

Both birds underneath the red arrow were caught in the swan catch and feeding in the pipe the day after!

Martin Mere Swan Catch.

2011-02-10T20:17:00.013Z

Up bright & early this morning for the annual round-up of Whooper Swans at WWT Martin Mere. Despite the weather not looking to great at the start of the week, we couldn't have asked for a better day - as the swan catch went ahead under blue skies & shining sun!!

The team gathered for the 8am swan feed & after a small delay due to ducks not entering the pipe, the door was released capturing 76 Whooper Swans, 4 Greylag & 77 Duck - Mallard, Pochard, Pintail, Wigeon, Shelduck and 3 Coot.

Whilst we were waiting for the duck to enter the pipe, there were around 200 Whooper Swans up there! Too many for a catch, so while we waited for some duck, this allowed some of the swans to exit the pipe, and leave us with a manageable number.

Thanks to all involved for making today's catch run very smoothly. Also thanks to our scribe for the day - Estelle Walsh - smashing job!

We're now at WWT Caerlaverock on the Solway Firth, preparing for another swan catch tomorrow.

Goosander.

2011-02-09T23:00:00.001Z

Quick post tonight…

At Lake Windermere today trying to catch Black Headed Gulls for the start of a new project, however we failed & didn’t catch a single bird. To be honest we only saw around 5 birds at Bowness – on - Windermere, which is quite strange! But for the lack of gulls, a stunning female Goosander made up for them!

Blogging from Bangor.

2011-02-05T15:46:00.006Z

Myself, Ciaran & Craig travelled to Bangor last night, for a weekend of cannon-netting with Chris, Zac and the SCAN RG. The forecast for the weekend looked dreadful, what with strong winds & heavy rain greeting us in sunny Wales. However a gap in weather allowed us to set two cannon-nets in Bangor Harbour, catching several duck and a handful of waders.

Thanks to Hamza for transporting us around, the good laugh & helping us to dry our clothes!

16 Shelduck, 1 Wigeon, 5 Turnstone & 1 Redshank caught today. Hopefully the weather will be kind to us tomorrow, to possibly allow for another catch. Thanks to both Steve & Rachel and rest of the team for having us along...

Bullfinch Bonanza!

2011-01-30T12:07:00.001Z

My niece and nephew stayed the night and when I got up this morning, Kye was sat down stairs watching television. He asked me where I was going & when I told him I was going catching birdies, his eyes lit up and he asked if he could come! So I got him ready & loaded him, the ringing gear and myself into the car for a trip to Shakerley.

It seemed pretty quiet at Shakerley with the odd Goldfinch & Siskin here and there, in fact there were around 10 Siskin near the feeding station – but none were captured. Movement over head of Pink-footed Geese was nice to watch & show Kye, whilst we waited to do the first net round.

On the first net round it appeared that we were in for a good Bullfinch day, with 10 Bullfinch sitting in the net awaiting extraction – along with a Blackbird. Although only four years old, Kye isn’t up to scribing just yet, but he made a perfect holder of the bird bags as I did the extracting!

Anyway to cut a short story short we ended up catching 24 Bullfinch, which consisted of 6 new birds & 18 recaps from previous visits, including catching a bird that I’d ringed in my garden in 2010 (1km distance). Also caught were 2 new Blackbird, 1 new Blue Tit + 1 recap and 1 recap Great Tit.

Rindle Road & Recent Recoveries.

2011-01-29T14:00:00.002Z

The alarm was set for 7am this morning, but I did the fatal thing in turning back over for 5 more minutes! Which turned into 30 minutes & I was late for meeting Steve and Jenny at the Rindle Road feeding station. I arrived to find that Steve & Jenny had the nets up & were about to undertake the first net round.

I’ll keep this short as I’ve got some recoveries to post - Throughout the morning we captured 35 birds including 33 new & 2 recaps.

Species	New	Recap
Yellowhammer	6
Tree Sparrow	6
Chaffinch	6
Reed bunting	1
Blue Tit	7
Great Tit	2
Robin	2
Blackbird	3	1
Dunnock		1
9 species.	33	2

Recent Recoveries

Rook – EP59784 – 31/06/07 – Balleyhealy, Wexford, found dead next to electric fence at Tohaggard, Wexford (3km) on 15/02/09.

Tufted Duck – FP32059 – 13/01/10 – Sefton Park, Liverpool, caught & released by anglers at Eccleston Mere, St Helens (14km) on 25/03/10

Reed Bunting – X922999 – 07/04/10 – Shakerley, Atherton Manchester, caught by ringers at Grimley, Worcester (144km) on 15/10/10.

Mute Swan – ZY1806 – 08/11/09 – Bowness on Windermere, Cumbria, ring read in field at Fairhaven Lake, Fylde (69km) on 26/09/10.

Mute Swan – ZY1364 – 10/09/09 – Sambrook Mill, Telford, controlled at Southport Marine Lake (101km) on 10/10/10.

Coot – GR25240 – 07/10/10 – Westport Lake, Stoke – on – Trent. Ring read in field at Stanley Park, Blackpool – 100km

Coot – GR25246 – 07/10/10 – Westport Lake, Stoke – on – Trent, Ring read in field at Watermead County Park, Leics – 85km

Coot – GR05475 – 12/01/10 – Southport Marine Lake, Lancs. Ring read in field at Cinderbarrow Tarn, Yealand, Lancs – 58km

Coot – GR25226 – 28/09/10 – Crompton Lodges, Bolton, Manchester. Ring read in field at Stanley Park, Blackpool – 51km

Coot – GR25181 – 24/11/10 – Pennington Flash, Leigh, Manchester. Ring read in field at Stanley Park, Blackpool - 48km

Slimbridge Bewick's Catch.

2011-01-26T22:02:00.003Z

A planned swan pipe catch at WWT Slimbridge on Tuesday ended up being cancelled due to an unusual reason! Although there were plenty of ducks, geese & swans up the pipe, our Wildlife Health Research Officer – Julia Newth, was keeping a close eye on the age & sex of each Bewick’s Swans that entered the swan pipe. The reason the catch was cancelled was due to the lack of adult male Bewick’s Swan going up the pipe. So a decision was made to try and attempt a catch today, again depending on the number of adult males entering the pipe.

So why did we want adult males? The reason being is that we had four GPS neck collars to fit and it is thought that the males would ‘‘carry’’ the collars better, with them being bigger than the females. The purpose for these GPS collars is to provide detailed information on the swans’ flight-paths when moving between Britain and the Netherlands. This information will be used to inform the location of wind turbines within the large Round 3 offshore wind farm sites scheduled for development off the coast of East Anglia.

So we met at 07:30 this morning & the swan feed went ahead as normal at 8am, with Julia in place, hidden at the pipe – ready to count the swans in! Julia got to 30 birds, which included a good selection of adult males & decided to pull the door on the pipe, safely capturing the birds. It’s at this point the rest of the team enter the pipe in order to form a line in the water, to drive the birds up into pens, where they patiently wait to be processed!

Along with the Bewick’s a good selection of other wildfowl including Pochard, Pintail, Gadwall and Mallard were also captured – along with tons of Greylag & Canada geese!

It was nice to see and catch up with our friends Wim & Otto from the Netherlands – who are currently in the UK to read Bewick & Whooper Swan rings over at our Welney centre. Both Wim & Otto were invited to the catch at Slimbridge & were especially made up when we controlled two of their Dutch ringed Bewick’s in this mornings catch!

Bewick’s Swans have been well studied using ringing, colour marks and neck collars and, on an unusual basis, by variations in their yellow and black bill patterns. Sir Peter Scott, his family and colleagues compiled a huge amount of detailed information on the Bewick’s Swans at Slimbridge. This is now the job of Julia Newth & she was able to identify all the birds caught today & recall their names back to us at the ringing table!

Bewick – Amuoet

Bewick – Pogues

We also caught Slimbridge’s oldest known swan, Winterling. She first arrived at Slimbridge as a cygnet in 1982 with parents Albert & Rachel, making her a wise 29 years of age! She’s already been ringed before, however managed to shed both her darvic & BTO ring and it’s only due to her bill pattern that we’ve managed to keep up-to-date with her regular check-ins at the feeds.

Julia & Winterling.

We thought it was only appropriate that Winterling would be ringed with this darvic ring!

So all in all a very successful catch – catching 30 Bewick’s Swans & around 300 ducks & 100 geese. We managed to fit all four collars onto the male Bewick’s and also retrieved a data-logger that we previously fitted at Slimbridge several years ago – which we’re very much looking forward to downloading the data from.

For me the highlights of today’s catch were being able to handle & ring the Bewick’s. Being a Whooper man from the north, it was great in seeing their smaller cousins up close and personal!

Neck collars do look invasive at times, however they are a crucial bit of equipment if we're to safe guard the future of the Bewick’s Swan.

Any sightings of colour ringed wildfowl can be sent to colourmarkedwildfowl’@’wwt.org.uk

Summary of 2010.

2011-01-23T21:20:00.001Z

This has been a record year for the group, with over 4,800 birds ringed and new record totals for 14 species during 2010. The combination of cold spells of weather at both ends of the year, coupled with a good breeding season, has led to high totals of a wide range of species. In both January and December, the large congregation of coot at Southport allowed 660 to be caught of which many were colour ringed, leading to some fascinating rapid movements. Most notable were birds sighted in Leicester and Cornwall within a few weeks of ringing, showing that coot will continue to move large distances during spells of cold weather. With regular reading of colour rings, some birds have begun to show established patterns of movement in successive winters. We hope to analyse these results in more detail after a further season of field observations.

Good numbers of tufted duck were also caught in January, but only a handful of short distance movements within Merseyside has so far been notified. As a spin-off, a rapid cold weather Canada goose movement of 50km across the Pennines was also recorded. Sustained ringing of Canada geese throughout the year led to record totals for this species as well. Later in the year, a new site for catching black-headed gulls by hand was identified which, combined with increased ringing effort at a productive colony, has also led to over 600 being ringed. Concerted efforts at ring reading in the field identified 15 foreign ringed black-headed gulls from 9 countries.

During late spring, the good breeding season with high nest box occupancy allowed record numbers of blue and great tits and tree sparrows to be ringed. Long-tailed tits were also caught in record numbers, showing that many had successfully survived the cold spell. More systematic searching of reed beds, coupled with increased expertise at nest finding, resulted in almost 50 pullus reed warblers being ringed. Later in the year, a new swallow roost was located and although no more than 250 birds were present at any one time, over 500 were caught in several visits. Notable were several retraps of pulli ringed nearby in previous years as well as a control that had moved 200km north-west from a roost in Northamptonshire earlier in the autumn. Increased ringing activity in the reed bed also led to record reed bunting totals.

The setting up of regular feeding stations helped to boost finch numbers and following the good breeding season record totals of goldfinch, bullfinch and chaffinch were ringed, including a rapid movement of one of the latter from Heysham. Good numbers of brambling were present from late September along with more resident species, leading to a record total of these. By December, that even more charismatic visitor from Scandinavia, the waxwing, arrived in force, leading to the capture of a record total of 36 over three days.

Many thanks are due to all landowners for permission to ring at numerous sites during 2010.

Steve Christmas.

2010 Ringing totals.

Species	Full	Pulli	Retrap / Recov	Total
Grey Heron		7		7
Mute Swan	316	1	624	941
Whooper Swan	1		2	3
Greylag Goose	1		1	2
Canada Goose	166		41	207
Gadwall	1			1
Teal			1	1
Mallard	2		4	6
R C Pochard	1			1
Tufted Duck	75		9	84
Goosander	1			1
Moorhen	1			1
Coot	657	3	791	1451
Lapwing		7		7
Black H Gull	106	501	31	638
Common Gull	2			2
L B B Gull	1			1
Herring Gull	4		1	5
Stock Dove	1	2		3
Woodpigeon	9	4		13
Collared Dove	3	2		5
Barn Owl		9	1	10
Tawny Owl	2	2		4
Long Eared Owl		3		3
Swift	6			6
Kingfisher	1			1
GS Woodpecker	5		1	6
Sand Martin	39		3	42
Swallow	568	40	10	618
Meadow Pipit	92		1	93
Waxwing	36			36
Wren	17		1	18
Dunnock	37		16	53
Robin	45	9	19	73
Blackbird	70	24	19	113
Song Thrush	5	25		30
Redwing	1			1
Mistle Thrush		1		1
Grasshopper W	2			2
Sedge Warbler	10		2	12
Reed Warbler	34	47	14	95
Whitethroat	4	5		9
Blackcap	8			8
Chiffchaff	6		1	7
Willow Warbler	10	12		22
Goldcrest	15		5	20
Long-tailed Tit	87		24	111
Willow Tit			10	10
Coal Tit	24		8	32
Blue Tit	251	222	130	603
Great Tit	174	83	112	369
Nuthatch	5	6	10	21
Treecreeper	2			2
Jay	3			3
Magpie	3			3
Jackdaw		2		2
Starling	64		3	67
House Sparrow	13		2	15
Tree Sparrow	9	96	2	107
Chaffinch	142		8	150
Brambling	13			13
Greenfinch	95		7	102
Goldfinch	268		32	300
Linnet	3			3
Lesser Redpoll	44		2	46
Bullfinch	73		47	120
Yellowhammer	19		2	21
Reed Bunting	52	5	3	60
69 species	3705	1118	2000	6823

Group members 2010

Steve Christmas, Tim Christmas, Wes Halton, Kane Brides

Charles Findlay, Jenny Cliff & Ciaran Hatsell.

Two species of Redpoll.

2011-01-22T16:47:00.001Z

We were invited back round to Michael & Mary’s garden today, for another go at catching some of their Redpoll. Arriving at dawn and a 30 foot net up soon after, the birds started to trickle their way in.

After several slices of toast & cups of coffee – kindly provided by Mary, we were ready for the first net round, which produced many Redpoll, keeping us busy throughout the morning. But perhaps the highlight of this visit was catching a Mealy Redpoll, only the 5th ever to be ringed by the group!

For comparison – Mealy on the Left & Lesser on the Right.

Goldfinch were more numerous on this visit, resulting in 10 being caught, along side a Great Spotted Woodpecker which just missed our net last time! However of the 12+ Brambling present none felt bold enough to come close to the net!

The session was rounded off on an all time high, when capturing our first control for the site. This came in the form of a Lesser Redpoll carrying ring – X922915 – which sounded rather familiar & upon checking IPMR, confirming what we thought, that I ringed this bird at my Shakerley feeding station in Feb 2010. Around 10km distance.

Control X922915.

In total 67 birds were caught including 50 new, 16 recaps & 1 control.

Species	New	Recap	Control
Lesser Redpoll	29	16	1
Mealy Redpoll	1
Goldfinch	10
Great Tit	1
Blue Tit	6
Blackbird	2
G S Woodpecker	1

Our thanks to Michael & Mary for having us again……

Siskin added to the Shakerley list!

2011-01-20T18:52:00.003Z

I've been mega busy recently, so I've been unable to do much ringing - hence the lack of blog posts. However with a bit of free time this morning, me & Ciaran headed off to Shakerley & netted the feeding station for an hour or two, before freezing fog put stop to that.

In total 37 birds were trapped of which 30 were new & 7 recaptures. This included two Siskin that came to feed on the nyjer seed, which although we see Siskin at the site - they never seem to come down to the feeders.

Blackbird - 2

Blue Tit - 2 / 2

Bullfinch - 6 / 1

Chaffinch - 1

Dunnock - 1

Goldfinch - 11

Greenfinch - 1

Great Tit - 3 / 3

Reed Bunting - 1 recap

Robin - 1

Siskin - 2

Gull Grabbing in Galway.

2011-01-08T10:33:00.005Z

After me & Chris went to Galway in January 2010 & realised the potential for both catching gulls and reading their rings in the City harbour - the four of us have just returned from spending five days on a holiday & ringing trip to Ireland.

Arriving in Galway on Monday (3rd) we had a few things to do before we could start catching. Notifying the Garda of our presence in the harbour was important, should they’ve received any reports of 4 youths enticing birds in with bread & then catching them! So once the Garda & Harbour Master had been notified – we were all set for catching.

Monday proved to be our most successful day with 20 gulls being caught within an hour. Tuesday was another good day with 19 birds caught. But come Wednesday they had started to get wise to our catching methods & only 10 birds were caught.

In total 49 birds were caught – 35 Common Gull & 14 Black Headed Gull.

Being in the City Centre and catching right next to an ice skating rink, groups of people often came over to see what we were doing. This allowed the perfect opportunity to tell people about bird ringing & the importance of ringing & reporting bird rings.

When not catching the birds, we focused on reading any already ringed birds. We made it easier for ourselves by ringing all ‘our’ birds on the left leg. This allowed us to easily pick out ‘other’ birds that were ringed on the right leg, thus giving them priority in the ring reading line.

Five (BHG) rings were read from Finland (1), Iceland (1), England (2) and Ireland (1).

ST238271 – Nestling – 27.06.04 – Seinajoki, Finland – 2,141km

575830 – Nestling – 27.07.07 – Breidabolstradir, Iceland – 1,415km

EX515** – Nestling – 17.06.10 – Bedfont Lakes, Heathrow - 618km

EW30311 – Nestling – 03.06.07 – Baston Pits, Lincolnshire – 589km

220P – Nestling – 16.06.07 – Lough Mask, County Mayo – 45km.

On returning back to Dublin for our flight home & after a walk down the River Liffey – we spotted another ringed Black Headed Gull.

EL86131 – Nestling – 09.06.09 – Cleveland Farm, Wiltshire – 346km.

Thanks to John Wells, Dave Harris & BTO Online for the above ringing information.

Perhaps it's worth pointing out that a separate licence is required for bird ringing to be carried out in Ireland. This is issued by the National Parks & Wildlife Service in County Monaghan.

End of 2010!

2010-12-31T17:37:00.002Z

Well another year has passed by & it’s that time of the year again, to update my annual ringing totals. I realised at the start of 2010 that I would be travelling around quite a bit, & not at home at key times such as the breeding season. So with this in mind I wasn’t expecting to ring anywhere near the same number as in 2009. However after grabbing every opportunity to get out ringing this year, I’m delighted to say that I’ve had my best year yet, ringing 2830 birds of 57 species.

Not only have I had my best year, but also the ringing group have(Loghan Hurst RG) with annual record breaking totals. We’ll blog about these totals in the New Year, when we’ve collated all the ringing data together.

KB totals 2010

Species	New (2010)	Total (All)
Barn Owl	9	12
Blackbird	57	145
Black H Gull	201	253
Blue Tit	365	678
Brambling	13	13
Bullfinch	65	84
Canada Goose	136	336
Chaffinch	133	164
Coal Tit	15	16
Collard Dove	3	7
Common Gull	2	2
Coot	634	959
Dunnock	19	57
Gadwall	1	1
Goldcrest	9	10
Goldfinch	224	461
Goosander	1	5
Grasshopper Warbler	1	1
Greenfinch	85	140
Greylag	1	14
Great Tit	221	392
Great S Woodpecker	4	5
House Sparrow	5	13
Jackdaw	2	6
Jay	2	5
Lapwing	5	6
Lesser BB Gull	1	2
Lesser Redpoll	5	5
Long Eared Owl	3	3
Long Tailed Tit	49	74
Magpie	2	6
Mallard	2	61
Meadow Pipit	1	12
Mistle Thrush	1	9
Moorhen	1	6
Mute Swan	88	350
Nuthatch	9	17
Red C Pochard	1	1
Redwing	1	2
Reed Bunting	22	42
Reed Warbler	58	64
Robin	33	66
Sand Martin	3	3
Sedge Warbler	3	8
Song Thrush	25	45
Starling	60	364
Stock Dove	3	10
Swallow	23	91
Tawny Owl	4	9
Treecreeper	1	2
Tree Sparrow	91	176
Tufted Duck	67	89
Waxwing	36	36
Whitethroat	5	11
Willow Warbler	12	13
Wood Pigeon	6	26
Wren	6	26
57 Species	2830	5449

With special thanks to Steve Christmas for encouragement & keeping me supplied with rings for another year! Ciaran Hatsell, Craig Brookes & Chris Bridge for their hard work in assisting me. To everyone who has allowed me to join in with their ringing work in the UK but also in Iceland, France, Germany & Romania. And finally to all the landowners who have granted me permission to ring on their land…….

So that’s 2010 – here’s to 2011, were it starts all over again tomorrow!!

Happy New Year!!