Of camcorders and Med Gulls

Now is the time to look out for Mediterranean Gulls and various other species such as Cormorant with darvic or even metal rings. There are a few ring-reading specialists in the county, notably at Brockholes Quarry where Bill Aspin and Tony Disley have a really good track record for "sorting out" ringed birds, bordering on the 100%!

This is due to a mixture of highly-skilled digiscoping and 'blasting away with a camcorder'. Anyone interested in ring-reading should consider a camcorder

Bill uses an old Sony PC - 110 with mini DV tape

These used to be £1,400 at the start of the millenium, but you can now pick them up for under £300

You will need an adaptor (37 mill) which screws on to the camera and placed over the cap of the telescope - best set the zoom at x 20.

A videograb at this setting gives 680,000 pixels which is quite adequate for most ring-reading. Some modern camcorders now deal in megapixels e.g. some of the crystal-clear postings on Surfbirds.

Back to the Meds. In the area at the moment are:
1) Polish-red-ringed adult around Lancaster Quay and nearby playing fields
2) Formerly Belgian-darvic-ringed adult which lost the this ring in summer 2008, but the metal ring can still be read as Mark Prestwood managed to do yesterday. This lives in the Morecambe Broadway area during the non-breeding season
3) Czech metal-ringed bird which lives around Heysham Harbour. Not absolutely definitely seen yet this autumn, but a bird with a ring in the right place (see above photo) has.
4) Surprisingly reappearing , and of unknown future status:

Arnhem 3651898 & darvic
Ringed: De Kreupel, Netherlands: Pullus: 5/7/07
Seen: Heysham power station outfalls: 1-2/9/07 (prob since 28/7/07)
Seen: Morecambe Broadway area: 16/8/09

There may be some interim sightings of this bird which we dont yet know about. They will be inserted here if this is the case.

Nest Box News - Pied Flycatcher

One of the Groups major studies is of pied flycatchers. Within the Lune valley woodlands we recorded 57 occupied nest boxes this year. Most were very successful and 264 nestlings were ringed. We also caught 50 adults at the nest boxes of these 30 were already ringed. Breeding birds appear to show a remarkable site fidelity with 12 ringed as adults caught back in the same wood the following year many of them to the same nest box, only 1 moved and that was just 2 km. Many nestling also return to the wood where they were borne of 18 birds ringed as nestlings 8 returned to the same wood and 10 moved only to the next wood. Three were a little bit more adventurous moving between 20 km and 8 km.

However we caught 3 birds which were not ours being marked by other ringers outside our area. A look through our files shows that many nestlings do not return to their natal area. Over the years we have had 24 records of nestlings that moved away to breed in their first year. Of these 10 moved under 50 km 7 between 50 and 100 km, 5 between 100-200 km and 2 over 200 km. Three adults have also moved, 2 between 50 and 100 kms and one female moved 261 kms to Powys.

John Wilson

Do Male Bearded Tits Live Longer than Females?

To date, this year we have caught 24 adult Bearded Tits at Leighton Moss . Of the 24, 14 are males and 10 Females. Of the 14 males 5 are 3 years old or older but the oldest female is only in its third year. This is obviously a small sample so I looked at our records since 2000

In total up to the end of 2008 we had caught 1395 juveniles of which 723 were males and 672 females. Of these 298 males (41%) had been caught or sighted as adults. By contrast of the 672 females only 171 ( 26%) were caught or sighted as adults. So it appears as though males survive better in the first year.

I then looked at the numbers of each sex as to how long they live and the table below shows the results.
7 + years 1 Male
6+ years 2 Males
5+ years 5 males 2 female
4+ years 6 males 4 females
3+ years 18 males 9 females

Of course these results need testing statistically, but it does appears that males survive better than females.
John wilson

Long Lived Bearded Tit

A Bearded Tit originally ringed at Leighton Moss as a juvenile male on 08/08/02 was re-trapped this week 6 years and 331 days after ringing. We have a special programme running at Leighton Moss on Bearded Tits and all birds caught are colour ringed. This allows us to identify the bird without catching them and has been very useful in seeing which birds use the grit trays along the Causeway during autumn and early winter. This bird was seen there once each in 04 and o6 but on 4 occasions in 07 but not in either 06 or 08.

They need grit in their gizzards at this time of year as they change from the summer diet of soft insects to the much harder autumn and winter diet of reed seed.

Our record for the oldest Bearded Tit was one re-trapped 7 years and 6 days after ringing in 1991. This is the oldest Bearded Tit recorded by the British Ringing Scheme. So the present bird is only 40 days off the record.

John Wilson

Long Lived Reed Warblers

This week we have caught a Reed Warbler at Leighton Moss which was first ringed there on 23/07/01. that makes it 7 years 342 days since ringing, almost 8 years. However it was an adult when caught so it is at least 9 years old. The oldest Reed Warbler the group has recorded to date was 10 years old. The oldest Reed Warbler recorded by the National Ringing Scheme was 13 years- so our bird has a bit to go. The interesting thing is that it had never been retrapped during the 8 years until this year.
We have also had two other long livers this spring at 6 years and 302 days and 5 years and 309 days. These two birds have also not been regularly re-trapped. They have obviously breeding away from our ringing rides. This year though much of the reedbed was seriously trashed by the roosting Starlings so there may well have been a re-distribution of breeding birds.

John Wilson

Sand Martins and recent colour mark sightings

The sand martin season has begun with 2 visits made to 2 colonies and 1 to a third. In 2008 we failed to ring any sand martins due to the river being very high throughout the season. As a result our retrap rate of birds has been exceptionally low.

The catches have been made up as follows:
12th June Burrow:
New: 61 Juveniles, 65 Adults (42 female, 23 male)
Retraps: 3 Adult males - ringed 2006 and 2x2007 all at Burrow

14th June Arkholme:
New: 43 Juveniles, 51 Adults (22 female, 27 male)
Retraps: 1 ringed elsewhere - Sussex in autumn 2006

25th June Burrow:
New: 26 Juveniles, 39 adults (21 female, 18 male)
Retrap: 33 adults (23 female, 9 males) All but 4 from previous visit and one from elsewhere. These were ringed in 2003, 2x2006, 2007

27th June Arkholme:
New: 26 Juveniles, 25 adults (12 female, 13 male)
Retrap: 1 Juvenile, 17 adults (7 female, 10 male). All from previous visit including sussex ringed bird

30th Crossdale Beck, Tatham Fells:
New: 10 Juveniles, 25 adults (16 females, 5 males, 4 unsexed)
Retrap: 1 adult female carrying a Spanish ring. This is NLRGs 7th Spanish ringed sand martin.

The bird ringed in 2003 is now just 2 years short of the longevitity record for Sand Martin the UK and Ireland.

As the Arkholme colony is closer to the river level than the Burrow colony it is likely birds using it last year have moved elsewhere due to the poor breeding success they had or were killed during flooding. As a result the low retrap rate is not too surprising.

In other news there have been recent sightings of colour ringed birds including:
Scottish ringed Greenshank at Leighton Moss which was present for 2 months last year. It arrived 4 days late this year!
Colour ringed Little Egret, origin as yet unknown, at Leighton Moss
Redshank with an orange flag from France seen at Leighton Moss
Black Headed Gull at Teal Bay (Morecambe) ringed in Denmark, present 2 years ago.

2 Knot caught at Heysham at Easter 2008 have been recaught (and resighted) in northern Norway (Porsangerfjord) on their spring migration to the breeding grounds in Canada and Greenland.

Nest Box News (3)

Great and Blue Tits using our nest boxes this year appear to have had the best season for several years. With just 3 nests still to fledge the results for 3 schemes within the Arnside/Silverdale area and 1 in Roeburndale make encouraging reading as follows-

Great Tit Of 51 occupied nest boxes no fewer than 46 have fledged young. Only 4 dead young were found at the last visit.

Blue Tit Of 33 occupied boxes 28 produced young, only 4 dead young were found at the last visit. The largest brood was 11 all fledging succesfully.

3 broods of Nuthatch fledged and 3 of Marsh Tit.

It will be interesting to see if this good breeding success transalates into high catches during our summer and autumn ringing.

John Wilson