500th Coot of the year!

Well we certainly didn’t think that this would be todays’ blog title, so soon after blogging about ringing our 300th bird! But with catching conditions nigh on perfect this week, along with stacks full of enthusiasm, we’ve managed to ring over 200 new Coot during the last 5 days. Of the 235, 106 of these were newly ringed today at Southport Marine Lake.

With the cold snap continuing, it was important for us to keep handling of the birds to a minimum. Therefore birds were caught, colour ringed, wing measured & released, as quickly as possible to ensure no unnecessary stress was placed upon the birds.

Most of the catching this week was carried at Southport Marine Lake (209 new birds), with a small amount of catching being done in Greater Manchester (15 new birds). Southport is especially good for catching Coot, when the weather is cold, since it holds a large wintering population but twinned with incoming birds from local lakes & ponds when they freeze over.

When not ringing the birds, our time & attention was devoted to reading colour combinations of previously ringed birds. This proved worthwhile since we’ve recorded several returning birds and/or cold weather movements, which we’ll blog about soon.

Other birds caught whilst out ringing this week were 5 Black Headed Gull & 3 controls, 2 Tufted Duck, 3 Canada geese & 1 Gadwall.

Since the start of the project in October 2009, over 750 Coot have been individually colour ringed at a number of sites, across the North West. The use of colour rings, has certainly emphasised the need to place additional marks, other than a standard metal ring on this species. The sightings of these colour marked birds have certainly increased the annual Coot recovery rate for 2010.

Subsequently we are beginning to understand more about the movements of this understudied & often overlooked species.

With thanks to – all ringers involved, especially Ciaran, John Gramauskas for loaning us his colour rings, when we were short! Len Golby & Steve Irwin at Southport Marine Lake for their kind assistance. And to Craig Brookes for driving 90 miles to collect BTO rings when we were running low!!

and finally thanks to Tesco for their value bread!

300th Coot of the year!

We reached a milestone today whilst out ringing Coots at Westport Lake in Staffordshire. We ringed our 300th Coot of the year, which means 2010 has been our best Coot year, totals wise since our group started ringing this species. Our previous highest total stood at 211 in 2008.

This now means that we’ve colour ringed over 550 individual birds since we started the project in October 2009.

Anyhow today along with Chris, Craig & Ciaran we planned on catching Coots at Redesmere Lake, however when we arrived at 8am the whole lake was frozen over! So we headed off to Westport Lake in Stoke-on-Trent, where we caught 16 Coot, 9 Canada Geese (+2 controls) and 2 Black Headed Gulls which were expertly caught by Ciaran (below)

Most people don’t like the cold weather, but us Coot catchers love it! Since the birds are more easily catchable when it’s cold. Certainly we’ll be making the most of the cold snap over the next week or so.

On returning home we quickly put a net up in the garden, before returning inside to warm ourselves up! In total we caught 9 Goldfinch, 1 Chaffinch & 2 Blue Tits.

Starling RAS project gets underway.

With permission to colour ring Starlings sorted this week, along with the colour rings arriving this morning – I’ve just stuck a net up in the garden, and within minutes the first bird kindly volunteered herself to be participant number 1.

I’m not actually carrying out the RAS fieldwork until 2011, for a number of reasons. But I’m colour marking the birds this year to get as many marked individuals into the local breeding population.

Colourful Coots.

Today will probably be the last Coot catching session for some time - since it's not as cold, the days are getting longer + most birds seem to have moved onto breeding grounds.

I thought it would be worth while taking stock on the project so far.

A total of 342 birds have been colour ringed - from November 2009 to March 2010. Of these 310 were new birds at the time of ringing and 32 were birds either recaptured or controlled and had colour rings added. These colour ringed birds have generated 459 re-sightings, either at the ringing site or within the local area. At the moment we've had one sighting of a bird that had travelled over 100km from the ringing site (see here).

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More birds will soon be dispersing to summering & breeding grounds - so any sightings of colour ringed birds would be gratefully received. Sightings can be sent to me at kanebrides(AT)googlemail.com - all sightings will be acknowledged with full ringing & re sighting information on the bird/s observed.

I'd like to thank all the ringers who have helped me fit colour rings and also to everyone who has supplied sightings of colour marked birds.

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Many thanks to Andy Harmer for allowing me to use these two photos - http://www.btinternet.com/~andyharmer/

Astley Moss.

A nice morning out with Steve today on Astley Moss. Three nets set resulting in 30 birds being caught - 24 new & 6 recap (in brackets)

Yellowhammer - 8 (2)

Reed Bunting - 8

Greenfinch - 1

Chaffinch - 1

Dunnock - 2 (1)

Tree Sparrow - 2

Blackbird - (2)

Great Tit - (1)

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Colour ringing Coots.

I'm now back from my holidays and was out this morning catching Coot. Myself and Steve Christmas have started colour ringing Coot in the North West area to look at winter site fidelity, dispersal to breeding / moulting sites and to get more understanding on Coot movements.

Each bird ringed will carry three colour rings + a BTO metal ring.

Colors used -- Light Blue, Dark Blue, White, Black, Green, Red, Orange, Yellow, Pink and Purple.

Birds are being ringed with 2 colour rings on the Left Leg and a colour ring above the metal ring on the Right leg.

Any sightings of these birds would be gratefully received - sightings can be sent to me at kanebrides''@''googlemail.com or reported that http://www.ring.ac/ - All sightings will be acknowledged with full ringing and resighting information.