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

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!

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!

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

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…..

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

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…..

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…..

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.

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…….

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………