Changes in Garden Birds

With the garden ringing season ending I thought it would be interesting to look at the changes in populations of birds ringed in Andrew Cadman's garden at Over Kellet over the past 12 years.

Andrew has only a small garden just 10 m by 8 m. right on the edge of the village. He keeps it well stocked mainly with sunflower hearts and a little nijer and his ringing effort has been reasonably consistent over the period.

Perhaps the most interesting finding has been the build up of Bullfinch and Lesser Redpoll in recent years. The first Bullfinch were caught in 2005 with just seven ringed. For the next three years no more than four occurred then in 2010 19 were ringed and in 2011 an amazing 36 were caught. The increase in Lesser Repolls has been even more dramatic with the first (1) in 2008. By 2010 26 were ringed and in 2011 an incredible 62 were caught.

An increase in sightings of these two species at garden feeders has been commented on by several other people in our area but Andrew's effort have given us a good numerical idea of the increase use of garden feeders by these two species.

Goldfinch have been garden feeder birds for much longer with 32 ringed as long ago as 2000. But they too have increased dramatically in recent years to reach a peak 360 in 2010. Greenfinch have always been regular garden feeders but Andrew's ringing totals show a reasonably steady population of between 30-50 from 2000 to 2008. There then followed a catastrophic decline in 2009 when only four were ringed. This coincided with the nationwide outbreak of trichomonsis disease. However they bounced back in 2010 when 185 were ringed and reached a peak of 216 next year.

The most irregular visitor has been the Siskin which usually visit in late winter into early spring. From 95 in both 2000 and 2004 to none at all in 2005 to an amazing 334 next year then only four in 2007. Small numbers only until 91 in 2011 and 76 this last late winter -spring. The 740 Siskin ringed have produced a picture of their movements. Birds caught on spring passage have been found wintering in Shropshire , Hertford, Hampshire and Northern France. During the breeding season they have been found in Highland (6) Aberdeen (2) Argyll and Bute (2) and Sweden .

Of other regular species there has been less spectacular fluctuations in population but just to give some idea of the other regular species visiting the feeders the peak numbers ringed in a year have been Blue Tit 261, Great Tit 72, Chaffinch 109 and Coal Tit (63).
John

The Twite Have Left, But One Is Sighted

The last recorded sighting of Twite in the Heysham Harbour area this year was on 28th March. This date is 10 days earlier than the last seen at the end of winter in 2011.

In general, the birds’ behaviour this winter has been a little different to previous years, possibly a result of more abundant natural food here. We did not have a regular large flock using the feeding station, but small groups coming and going. These groups often seemed to consist of different birds and were often present for a relatively small part of the day. It seems certain that the groups were part of the larger local population as they always were virtually all wearing rings fitted during the Winter, but the mix of colour combinations present varied. In previous winters, there has been a larger, more stable flock visiting more regularly and staying around for longer.

An interesting report of a Twite ringed at Heysham Harbour sighted at Whitworth Quarry, Rossendale on 1st April 2012 has just been received. The colour combination tells us that this individual was ringed very recently (on 3rd, 15th or 25th Feb 2012).

It would appear that this bird has moved from its wintering area at Heysham directly to its likely breeding grounds, but not in western Scotland as we are accustomed to. We are aware of only two previous sightings of Heysham birds in the Pennines and one of a Pennine bird at Heysham:

Ringed Oct/Nov 2009, Heysham - controlled Close Moss, Marsden 14/06/2010.
Ringed Oct/Nov 2010, Heysham - controlled Swales Moor, Halifax Feb/Mar 2011.
Ringed 24/09/2004, Light Hazzles - controlled Heysham 01/11/2005.

Our initial thoughts from ringing and recoveries/sightings in the early years at Heysham were that our birds mainly went up the western coast of Scotland to breed, and that the Pennine population was separate. It may now be that some do indeed move to the (much closer) Pennine breeding grounds.

ajd

Lesser Redpolls on the Move

The spring passage of Redpolls is now underway . We know from past ringing that some of these passage birds winter in the south of England with recoveries in Hampshire. Greater London, Nottingham, Suffolk and Surrey. We have probably extended the wintering range further for we have controlled a French ringed bird this spring, so we await full details with interest. A recent batch of recoveries produced a further control in Surrey ringed in our area in early August and caught wintering in Surrey in early January.

Other recoveries received recently included our first long distance movement of a Grey Wagtail. One ringed on passage as a juvenile in late August was found wintering in early December in Wiltshire 295 km South. A winter road casualty produced our fourth Black-headed Gull from Norway.

Another road casualty on the face of it produced our longest movement of a Treecreeper. A bird ringed at Heysham in October and well out of normal Treecreeper habitat was found 28 kms.ENE in North Yorkshire. How ever we learnt that it had been found in the radiator grill of a delivery van which had covered a wide area locally so there is a marked uncertainty about the exact locality of its finding.

John

Russian Visitors

Just received details of two colour ringed Bewick's Swans which were sighted by Ian Hartley at Thurnham on 4th March.Two of a party of 13 seen that day. Both had been originally ringed on Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Expeditions to Russia, presumably close to the breeding area at a time when they were flightless after breeding.

The first was ringed as a young female on the Hunovey River on the Zavorot Peninsula 68' 35 N 53 '40 E on 8th August 2004. It was reported on five occasions between 20 Feb and 13th March in Friesland in the Netherlands. No further sightings until 29th Febrary2008 in Niedersachen and then Schleswig Holstein Northern Germany until 15th March.In 2009 it was in Groningen in the Netherland on 9th November and in Schleswig Holstein the following early March. In 2010 it was in Flevoland Netherlands on February 11th then from 3rd to 16th March in Northern Germany. In 2011 it was again in Northern Germany from 12th February to 5th March. The only 2012 sighting was the one in our area on 4th March.

The other bird was ringed as an adult female on 16th August at Lake Lovetskuy in Russia 68'21 53'58E. In 2009 it was sighted on 11th January in Cambridgeshie and three days later in Norfolk then on 22February it was in Northern Germany. In January 2010 it returned to Norfolk. But in 2011 it was seen on 29th March and November 5th in Latvia before moving to our area .

According to the BTO Ringing Recoveries Web Site there has only been six previous Bewick's Swan ringed in Russia and found in Britain although there has been 37 reports of British ringed Bewick's reported in Russia.

John

Ring reading part 2

In this morning's horrible weather (well unless you're on the east coast and have a hose pipe ban) I had another look for the goldfinch. Anyway, it didn't turn up however I did read two greenfinch rings - neither my own (one from about 2km away and one from about 10km at Heysham). It just goes to show that it can be worth a quick look at rings on birds on a feeder. Now the weather has cleared up I'll try and catch them instead.

Rapid Coal Tit movement, and interesting Goldfinch

This morning before work I noticed a ringed Goldfinch on my feeder. As I have only ringed one in the garden I thought I should have a go at reading it. After about 5 minutes I had read V9xx519 when the bird flew off. After a quick check with the BTO to see if this could be tied down to a single bird it turns out it could be one of 6 birds. All of these are over 100km away. Looks like I'll have to spend some more time with the scope to nail this one. What a valuable resource having all the ringing data stored electronically - in the past this would have been a good hour long job and not worth the effort, now it is a very short job to see it not uniquely identifiable.

A Coal Tit I caught on the 4th March which was not from any of the local ringing groups turns out to be a fairly long range Coal Tit travelling around 60km in 90 days from South West Lancs RG. There have only been 17 records of Coal Tits in Lancashire moving more than 10km and no records of them moving more than 100km. As a result this is one of the largest movements of a Coal Tit recorded in the county.

Many thanks to Lee Barber for the information.

First Stop Sussex

Our latest batch of recoveries was one of our largest ever but it was dominated by controls from the Icklesham Ringing Station in East Sussex. These involved five Sand Martins a Sedge Warbler and six Reed Warblers.

One Sand Martin was caught at Icklesham just 12 days after ringing. With these five the group now has records of 113 Sand Martins found on autumn migration through Sussex almost all of them at Icklesham.

We now have 41 Reed Warbler records in Sussex all on Autumn migration. The six latest confirm the pattern of adults moving earlier than most juveniles . The three adults were controlled on July 11th, August 2nd and 15th, while the earliest juvenile was on August 29th and the other two on September 2nd and 15th. An adult Reed Warbler obviously made an earlier sea crossing for it was controlled in Belgium on August 20th 21 days after ringing. This is only our third Reed Warbler from Belgium.

Juvenile Sedge Warblers were reported from Powys and Icklesham , both in mid August. While one was controlled in Belgium in early August, our fourth record from that country.

A Greenfinch ringed in mid September was found dead 98 km south in Cheshire in early December. A Reed Bunting made a similar movement ringed in mid September and found wintering in Staffodshire in January,
John