Back to the Woods….

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.

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!

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!

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.

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

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

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

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

 

And the three Tawny Owl eggs have hatched…

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

Now back to inputting data in IPMR :-)

2A05 Goes to Lithuania!

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

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

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

Thanks to Darius Norkunas for reporting this sighting.

Really Quiet.

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

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

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

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

Who dun it?!

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

Quick Update.

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!

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….