With the BTO lifting some of the restrictions on ringing, we
decided to make our Pied Flycatcher RAS in the upland woods of the Lune Valley
our priority. First impressions have been exciting. In two of the larger woods
with 110 nest boxes, we found 43 boxes occupied by Pied Flycatchers compared to
just 28 last year.
To date we have caught 31 females of which 21 were already
ringed. The most interesting of the these was one which was ringed as a
nestling near Swansea in South Wales. It bred in our woodlands last year and
has returned to the same wood this year. Another is almost six years old, it is
breeding in its natal wood although for its first year it bred in another of
our woods before returning to its natal wood the next year.
Our RAS covers 20 woods in the Lune valley , we also ring in
other woods a little further south. Last year we ringed 952 birds of which 864
were nestlings and we had 121 retraps. The Pied Flycatcher population in the
Lune valley has increased dramatically since we first started putting up nest
boxes in 1966 with only two pairs. Most of our woodlands, probably due to past
cutting to make charcoal have very few natural holes so the provision of nest
boxes has ben a great conservation benefit. Over the last decade the numbers of
pairs has increased from 54 in 2009 to 109 in 2019, partly because of more
boxes being installed.
We have looked at our data over the years. We have found
that 32 % of nestlings return to breed in their natal wood, 55% return to other
woods in the Lune Valley and 12% move outside our area. For males 40% return to
the natal wood 59 % move to other Lune Valley woodlands and only 1% move
further afield.
Birds which move further afield have been reported breeding
in Cumbria, Yorkshire, Northumberland, South Wales, and Northern Scotland. But
the most surprising was F431440 . It was ringed as a nestling in 1990 in our
woods, then on 4/05/91 it was caught in Noord Holland The Netherlands, then 33
days later it was caught in Jylland Denmark. It was identified as a male but no
other details are given on the recovery sheet, but one assumes it was breeding.
The same year F431397 also a male, was caught at a nest box
with 4 young on 28th June in North Germany. Both birds had been
ringed as nestlings the previous year. That same year one was found dead in
Northern Italy on May 15th. It is fascinating that these three long
distance movements occurred in the same year, were they the result of some
adverse winds on migration?
We look forward to finding out what has happened in our
other woods this year.
John
