Aborted Morning Session!

Me & Chris Bridge were up at 6am & at the Shakerley feeding for 06:30am, however by 9am - we'd only caught 4 birds! So we decided to pack up & whilst Chris headed to Hollingworth Lake to twitch the Pied Billed Grebe, I caught up on some paper work. We decided to meet back at Shakerley around 12:30 & place a single 40 foot net up at the feeders, this time doing much better & catching 64 birds - 47 new & 17 recaps.

I have noticed that I do seem to catch more birds in the afternoon at Shakerley, not that I'm complaining - it means I can have longer in bed from now on! :-)

Blue Tit - 14 / 4

Great Tit - 4 / 6

Long Tailed Tit - 1 / 2

Reed Bunting - 2

Bullfinch - 5

Chaffinch - 5

Goldfinch - 7 / 5

Greenfinch - 8

Lesser Redpoll - 1

Wader & Waxwing Weekend.

This weekend Craig & I joined our mate Chris, along with his ringing group (SCAN) for some wader ringing along the north Wales coast. A totally new experience for me & Craig as we've never really been involved in wader ringing.

Friday evening was spent mist netting at Llanfairfechan catching 104 new birds & 13 recap or controls.

Snipe - 1

Knot - 2

Curlew - 6

Oystercatcher - 20

Dunlin - 42

Redshank - 28

Lapwing - 4

&

Starling - 1

Saturday morning we set a cannon net near Bangor harbour, catching 66 Redshank, which consisted of new birds & a number of retraps or controls.

And this morning we set a cannon net near Aber Ogwen for Redshank. 250 were on the pool, however they were spooked by something and unfortunately didn't return in numbers, so we packed up & called it a weekend.

Back in Bangor (where we were staying with Chris) Zac Hinchcliffe alerted us to a flock of around 40 Waxwings. Chris made arrangements to meet Kelvin back in Bangor & soon we had a net up and caught a single bird.

** I've since heard that Kelvin & Chris have managed to catch more Waxwings in Bangor (along with a few Robin & Blackbird!) Hopefully the ringing of these birds will help in understanding the movements of this attractive winter visitor in the UK.**

'

Thanks to the following people for making us feel welcome & for allowing us to be involved - Chris Bridge, Steve Dodd, Richard de Feu, Kelvin Jones and David Coker.

Coot & Tufted Duck catching.

Today along with Craig & Ciaran we decided to have a trip to Redesmere Lake & Westport Lake for a spot of Coot catching.

19 Coot ringed, along with 2 Tufted Duck (+ 3 retraps & 1 control = FP84730) and 5 Canada geese.

Two Black Headed Gull controls at Westport Lake – 3656241 & 3686085 (from Holland) which we’ve previously read.

To round the day off, we had a quick visit to Shakerley catching – Great Spotted Woodpecker, Blue & Great Tit and Goldfinch.

Gerrin ready!

A visit to the Shakerley feeding station was pencilled in for today, and having not had much time for ringing recently, I was rather looking forward to it. I had planned to be up & out early, but an evening in Manchester last night, soon put a stop to that idea! So I rose from my pit at 11am (shocking hour for a ringer!), moped around on the couch feeling sorry for myself before getting ready and leaving for Shakerley.

Despite the late start, sun shining on the net & a slight breeze whipping around the site, I didn’t do too badly and probably had one of the best days I’ve ever had at Shakerley! 80 birds caught, 63 new & 17 recaps.

Species	New	Recap
Jay	1
Chaffinch	11	1
Goldfinch	12
Greenfinch	7
Bullfinch	4	1
Blue Tit	7	5
Great Tit	11	9
Long Tailed Tit	8	1
Coal Tit	2
	63	17

You will have probably have heard of the large numbers of Waxwings around at the moment. So I thought I would be prepared for their arrival, should they decide to descend on Atherton like they did in 2004/05 (250-300 on Boxing day!). So I’ve contacted a number of people who have Rowan trees in their gardens & asked permission to catch Waxwings, should they appear! Here’s hoping…..

Recent Controls.

Some information on two birds that we controlled recently.

Canada Goose - 5178436 ringed as an adult female on 01/07/1995 on the Beauly Firth, Scotland. Sighted by myself & Ciaran at Acre Dell Pools, Cheshire on 07/10/10. 500km

This bird has now been re-caught by David Cookson and had a green darvic ring (C14) added.

View 5178436 in a larger map

The second bird is a Teal which we observed at WWT Martin Mere, carrying a nasal saddle. Green D4A had been ringed at Reserve de Duer, in the Gulf of Morbihan, south of Brittany in France.

View FS79763 in a larger map

Thanks to David Cookson & Paul Cropper for information on the Canada Goose. And thanks to Matthieu Guillemain & David Rodrigues for information on the Teal.

Swan Sea Crossing!

Real busy this week, all my time seems to have been spent indoors talking to people about migration & Whooper Swans. I've really enjoyed it though and it will be preparing me for the winter ahead when talking to visitors at the WWT swan feeds. As I write this I've just come in from one of the hides at WWT Martin Mere, where there is a true migration spectacle happening! Just this morning at 08:30am we had 120 Whooper Swans on the Mere & now we've just taken a count of over 400. Birds have been arriving all day and twinned with our reserve record count of 36,000 Pink-footed Geese, it's very busy out on the Mere at the moment!

Anyhow you may think that today's blog title is all about the Whoopers but in fact I'm writing about a Mute Swan!

Our mate over on the Isle of Man - Sean - caught a Mute Swan in Ramsey Harbour today which was carrying ring ZZ7452. This bird was ringed by me on 04/10/2008 in Whitehaven Harbour, Cumbria! 60kms distance to Ramsey.

View ZZ7452 in a larger map

Coots on the move!

Taken by Jonathan Scragg - GR05429 (Below)

I received a batch of colour ring sightings last week from Kenneth Richardson, who regularly sends in sightings of birds on the Leeds & Liverpool canal. On inputting these into IPMR, it was obvious that these were bringing to light some interesting local movements.

GR05401 6F 11/01/2010 Southport Marine Lake

07/03/2010 Old Roan, Aintree, Merseyside - 21km SSE

30/03/2010 Old Roan, Aintree, Merseyside

31/03/2010 Old Roan, Aintree, Merseyside

15/05/2010 Deeside Nature Reserve, Flintshire - 47km S

29/05/2010 Deeside Nature Reserve, Flintshire

13/09/2010 Old Roan, Aintree, Merseyside

02/10/2010 Old Roan, Aintree, Merseyside

09/20/2010 Old Roan, Aintree, Merseyside

GR05429 6F 11/01/2010 Southport Marine Lake

20/04/2010 Great Marton, Blackpool - 17km N

23/04/2010 Great Marton, Blackpool

25/04/2010 Great Marton, Blackpool

10/10/2010 Bank Hall, Kirkdale, Merseyside - 24km S

GR05424 6 11/01/2010 Southport Marine Lake

10/10/2010 Netherley, Merseyside - 19km S

12/10/2010 Stanley Park, Blackpool - 19km N

GR05823 6F 16/01/2010 Southport Marine Lake

04/04/2010 Meresands Wood, Rufford, Lancs - 11km E

16/05/2010 Meresands Wood, Rufford

05/10/2010 Southport Marine Lake

The blog has been a little quiet recently, this is due to me being busy at work at the moment & not finding the time to blog in the evenings. I have been out ringing & last week caught/ringed 76 new birds, recapped 15 and controlled one - a Chaffinch - L333984.

End of a busy week!

I’ll keep tonight's post short seeing as though we’ve managed to blog nearly every day this week.

Today we went back to Southport Marine Lake to try and catch Mute Swan broods. We were joined by Sam Bayley from the Horsham Ringers as he’s been in the area this weekend. So we met Sam at the Lake were upon arrival he already had the first bird of the day sat in the back of his car! A juvy Mute Swan that he found wandering on the road! Anyhow throughout the morning we managed to catch 12 birds on the Lake.

Sam had to leave around midday to head back south and Me & Ciaran were later joined by Craig who decided to have a lie in due to an evening of madness in Blackpool. We then toured a few ponds around Southport catching five more new birds & controlling one – ZZ4848.

You may have read in an earlier blog that Me & Ciaran attempted to do some sort of ringing, everyday this week. With the weather on our side we managed to accomplish this & we end the week on 192 new birds, 50 recaps & 16 controls.

Species	New	Recap	Control
Blue Tit	29	11
Great Tit	37	15
Coal Tit	5	1
Chaffinch	22	1
Goldfinch	9
Greenfinch	2
Reed Bunting	1	1
Robin	1
Wren	1
Nuthatch	2	2
G S Woodpecker	0	1
Coot	22		1
Canada Goose	40	18	1
Mute Swan	17		3
Goosander	1
Tufted Duck	1
Black Headed Gull	2		10
Mallard	0		1
Total	192	50	16

We thought we would end tonight’s blog with a recap on the Black Headed Gull controls from this week.

UK	4
Finland	1
Latvia	1
Lithuania	2
Holland	2

And we can bring an update on some of the above birds on where they were ringed.

• ES29912 – 4 – Moss Side Farm, Risley – Warrington 09/11/96
• 05/10/10 – Southport Marine Lake – 41km
• S7830 – 1 – Je Kabpils, Latvia – 14/06/2009
• 05/10/10 – Southport Marine Lake - 1850km
• EW55128 – 1 – WWT Slimbridge, Glos – 24/06/2010
• 07/10/10 – Westport Lake, Stoke-on-Trent – 149km
• 3656241 – 4 – Haringen, Friesland – Netherlands – 28/06/08
• 07/10/10 – Westport Lake, Stoke-on-Trent - 511km
• 3686085 - 1 - Skarterlan, Friesland - Netherlands - 09/06/10
• 07/10/10 - Westport Lake, Stoke-on-Trent - 538km
• EG45011 - 4 - Bowness on Windermere - Cumbria - 23/11/07
• 06/10/10 - Pine Lake, Carnforth, Lancashire - 26km

Now the last job of the week is to input this weeks data from the notebook into IPMR!

Thanks to all the ringers who have helped me this week. A BIG thank-you to Ciaran for all his help too!

Mute Swan broods.

 

Quick post tonight.

Me & Ciaran netted the Shakerley feeding station for an hour or two this morning – catching 35 birds.

Species	New	Recap
Goldfinch	9	0
Chaffinch	6	1
Greenfinch	2	0
Reed Bunting	1	0
Great S Woodpecker	0	1
Great Tit	6	3
Blue Tit	5	1
Total	29	6

We’ve recently had a delivery of new darvic rings made by Interrex in Poland, so this afternoon we met Steve over in Liverpool to give him a hand with a few Mute Swan broods.

10 new birds & one recap tonight.

Any sightings of these colour ringed birds (Blue darvics, three digits) can be sent to info’’@’’northwestswanstudy.org.uk

Coot & more Gulls!

A visit to Redesmere Lake in Cheshire was on the agenda this morning, coupled with a visit to a new site in Staffordshire; Westport Lake.

So 8am found us at Redesmere catching & ringing more Coot. An hour, 7 Coot & 1 Tufted Duck later we decided to call it a morning & move onto Westport Lake.

At Westport the catching was very good – probably as the birds had never been caught before! Today we managed to catch 14 new birds and 1 control. The control was of a Coot ringed at Redesmere Lake in November 2009 – 20km distance.

To add to a successful weeks ring reading of Black Headed Gull rings, we attempted to read four rings on gulls at Westport. However we only managed to read three of them. Two from the Netherlands (3656241 & 3686085) and one darvic ringed bird (White 2N28).