The Usual and the Unexpected

A recent batch of recoveries continued a handful of records that follow the usual pattern but also three that break new ground.

The usual first. Two Sand Martins  both in the same locality in France brings our total to 40 recoveries that we have had  in that country, almost all on their way south in late summer. These two  were both adults ringed while nesting in the colonies in the sandy banks of the River Lune. One though was  a little unusual  as it was caught on 26th July in Charente-Maritime 933 kms to the south. It was an adult female and in a normal year one would have  expected it to be busy raising a second brood at this time of year. But the summer of 2012 was anything but usual with heavy rain flooding out some colonies, so this bird probably headed south earlier than usual. The second was also quite early, a male already in France  by August 10th.

Two Sedge Warblers were also reported from  France and again both at the same locality in Loire-Atlantique both had been ringed in 2012 and both were re-trapped in August in France bringing our total recovered there to 39, the bulk of them in August. One was  a juvenile and it was in France just 17 days after ringing.

The controlling of a Twite in both November and  December at our Heysham feeding station from Machrihanish Bird Observatory in Argyll & Bute is the 23rd bird to move between the two sites, establishing a strong link between the breeding and wintering areas.

Turning to the unusual. This year Goldfinch have also been using the feeding station at Heysham and a juvenile caught there on November 5th had been ringed on 21st August near Oban in Argyll & Bute. Had it moved down with the Twite? It is only our second Goldfinch from Scotland.

Coal Tits have been present in good numbers at our feeding stations this winter. We  postulated that they had  originated in the Lakeland conifer plantations and the catching of one in early December at our feeding station near Arnside that had been ringed just 58 days previously 63 km to the north in northern Cumbria proved us right. It is the second longest movement we have recorded for Coal Tit only one from Durham 92 km in 1987 beats it.

Finally the most unexpected was a Reed Bunting ringed as a juvenile female at Middleton on 18th August and  caught on  6th May at Cardiff Wetland Reserve. One presumes that it was a locally bred Middleton bird but had moved the 286 km  to South Wales to breed. All our other  distant movements of Reed Bunting have been to  wintering sites in the south of England or the Midlands.

John

An ancient darvic ring?

Administration at the ringing office ground to a halt when a Kittiwake with a darvic ring black on yellow H32 was photographed at Heysham about a week ago.  There was no trace of it!  It is still at Heysham and here is a much better pic taken today:

I dont know what the longevity record is for darvic rings of this size, but the wintering Broadway (now metal-ring-only) Med Gull used to possess one which lasted about 7 years and similarly, the last time Polish P96 was seen around Lancaster (2 winters ago), the ring looked like it was about to drop off - and this bird is either an intermittently seen 'unread metal-only bird' or it has disappeared altogether.  So 10 years sounds a reasonable age for a darvic ring, but this one should be 24 years old!

Assuming this is the same bird which was originally ringed with H32, the history is as follows
Ringed:  as a pullus at Waterford, Ireland in 1989
Seen: Seaforth Nature Reserve 25/5/1991, 11/6/1991, 16/8/1998
This information was obtained in the late 1990s by Steve White but he cannot remember how (Steve deals with hundreds of darvic and metal-ringed birds at Seaforth)

Subsequently:
Seen: Seaforth Nature Reserve 23/8/2008 (photo). 
Unbeknown to Steve White, this had been sent in by another observer, but 'no trace found of origin'.  It came to light after the Heysham sighting was posted on the Heysham Obs Blog:

Seen:  Heysham Harbour 5/2/2013-(at least)11/2/2013   
This bird is currently residing around the waterfall in the harbour.  Whilst it might have seen the Peel Ports logo and felt just at home here as at Seaforth, this area of the harbour is very much a rehab or zimmerframe zone....and this is the last remaining Kittiwake after the strong onshore winds.  Hopefully it will survive and perhaps reappear at Seaforth or, better still, prove to be one of the nesting birds at the "new" colony along the docks at Liverpool

The metal ring was photographed today, albeit underwater but the photograher said that there didnt appear to be any visible letters or numbers - that would certainly fit with it being a 24-year old ring!

However, the jury is still slightly out on this one until it can be proven beyond doubt that a darvic ring can stay on a seabird for 24 years.  The case does seem pretty compelling however.  In no way should this account be interpreted as a slight on the efficiency of the BTO as they were not involved in monitoring colour rings at the time of ringing and this is an old scheme which had neither registered on the BTO radar, nor the Dirk Raes site - probably the only bird left alive and almost certainly the only up and still running darvic ring from the project!

Thanks to Janet Packham for the published pics.

Pete Marsh

Garden Siskin

First indications are that it could be a good late winter and spring for Siskin visiting garden feeders. Paul caught 22 in his Lancaster garden yesterday, including a  control. Andrew has started catching small numbers in his Over Kellet garden  and Mark in Bowland has been catching them from late January.

 In total the Group have ringed 1660 Siskin over the years mainly in gardens in late winter and early spring . These have generated 47 recoveries which firstly reveal the breeding area of our wintering birds to be Northern Scotland (12), Southern Scotland (9) and one in southern Sweden, rather sadly killed by a cat.

Birds caught in our gardens in late winter or early spring have been wintering right across southern England from Suffolk and Kent through Surrey and Greater London to Hampshire and Shropshire. They have also been mainly ringed in gardens and are passing through our area one assumes on their way to the breeding areas in Scotland.

John

Wind Chill Causes Numb Fingers

A Twite catching session this morning saw John Mason and myself on the North Harbour Wall at around 07.15 to set up the whoosh net.  Although the temperature was just above freezing, the 15 mph wind made it feel extremely cold.

A single net launch resulted in a catch of 39 Twite (27 retrap, 1 control & 11 new birds) and two new plus one retrap Goldfinch. The retrapped Twite were all recently ringed except for two - all were recorded but not processed in view of the conditions.  The control bird was wearing a BTO metal ring on the right leg, but no colour rings.  Two birds with metal only rings have been here for a while now and we have been hoping to catch them.

Following this burst of activity it was decided, in view of the lack of any feeling in the fingers and toes and the light snow flakes falling, to retire to the Nature Reserve hut to recover.

It is known that Machrihanish bird obs. did ring a few birds with metal only in autumn 2012 so we were half expecting these two to be part of that catch, although the ring series was not similar to others they used in that period .

Machrihanish have been contacted by email and we await a reply.


ajd  

Blue Tit versus Coal Tit

One of the fascinations of ringing at a site over the years is that you have an insight into the changes in bird populations. I operate a small broad leaved woodland  feeding station at which ring I ring  on ca 20 occasions each winter and average around 700 birds per winter. This winter has been extraordinary for the numbers of Coal Tits I have caught compared with the number of Blue Tits. This sent me looking back through my records.

I  analyzed the catches in three year periods and worked out the percentage of Coal Tits in the catches the results are as follows-

04-06         24%

07-09         44%

10-12         49%

This means that although up to this winter the numbers of blue tits has been reasonably stable, Coal Tits have increased quite dramatically. In fact for this winter so far for the first time the numbers of Coal Tits have exceeded the number of Blue Tits with 140 Coal Tits and the lowest number of Blue Tits at 96. This gives the highest percentage yet of 60% Coal Tits in the catch.

Why should this be? Firstly, Blue Tits had a very poor breeding season in the cold and wet spring of 2012. Coal Tits obviously did better. But the long term increase in Coal Tits in this area is probably linked to the maturing of the many conifer plantations  to the north of us. I also get the general impression that Coal tits are breeding in larger numbers in mixed and broad-leaved woodlands. They were certainly irrupting last autumn as is so well shown by the ringing totals from another of our sites Heysham B.O. where 474 have been ringed in 2012 compared to just 80 in 2011. It  will be interesting to see what any recoveries we get shows.

John

A Review of Ringing in 2012

I am sure that most ringers will agree that 2012 has been one of the most difficult years, with the wet and windy weather restricting activities. The poor weather though does also seem to have had  a detrimental effect  on the productivity of many species and these two factors are  certainly reflected in our ringing totals.

Our final total of 10,251 new birds is just over 4,000 down on 2011.   The species with the largest decline was Sand Martins where we  undertake a Re-trapping Adults for Survival (RAS) project on the colonies  along the River Lune. From 2140 last year to just 462 in 2012. The poor weather was mainly to blame, not  only did it cause problems on the evenings we planned to go out but with so much rain river levels were high and we could not access some of the colonies and some were completely flooded out.  Counts of the nest holes though showed a decline from last years record population. By contrast Swallows were up from  556  to 1400 due to the formation of a workable reed bed roost at Middleton Nature Reserve.

Turning to the warblers, all species except Willow Warbler were well down. Reed Warblers, on which we run an RAS declined from 971 to 649, Sedge Warbler from 479 to 243 Whitethroat from 158 to 70, Grasshopper Warbler from 46 to just 11 and Blackcap from 163 to 102. Suggesting poor productivity in all these species. Willow Warbler at 507 declined only slightly, past recoveries suggest that most of our passage Willow Warblers orginate in Scotland where the weather was apparently better than ours.

Of the resident species all the tits were well down  with the marked exception of Coal Tit which at 459 was 108 up. Coal Tits nest earlier than the other tits so they possibly escaped the  poor weather and perhaps their coniferous habitat provided better conditions. Support for this latter view comes from another coniferous breeder the Goldcrest  which increased from 185 to 314.All the finches except Goldfinch were down.

Perhaps the best evidence for poor productivity comes from the nestling ringing in our nest boxes. A project where effort was  the same in both years. Blue tit nestlings  declined from 908 to 505 this year. Great Tits from 507 to 368 and Nuthatch from 69 to 39. The later nesting Pied Flycatchers did better going from 515 to 451.

So rather a dissapointing year, let's hope that 2013 brings better things.

John

Some Recent Recoveries

 A recent batch of recoveries included several interesting ones. Quick movements are often interesting  and there were two in this batch. A Goldcrest ringed at Heysham on October 1st was caught 12 days later in Hampshire a movement of 354 km SSE. It was one of 90 ringed at Heysham this autumn.

A Goldfinch ringed on the Isle Of Man on  October 16th was caught at Heysham 3 days later having moved 98 km. We have had one previous  Isle of Man ringed bird found wintering in our area. Other  past Goldfinch recoveries show a marked SE movement with winter recoveries in  Sussex, Berkshire, Nottingham and Northants.

Sand Martin recoveries included a first, a bird ringed as a nestling. This bird was ringed  in an artificial colony  near Lockerbie (Dumfries & Galloway) by the North Solway RG on June 22nd and caught 65 days later at  Middleton , a movement of 129km.  This is our 10th Scottish recovery.

The other four were from areas where we have had many previous recoveries with two from Western France bringing our total French recoveries to 38. A Sussex recovery  was the 124th from that county and one in Kent was the 14th.

Other recoveries included a Sedge Warbler in France and a Lesser Redpoll from  Worcestershire . Finally we heard that the Cetti's Warbler that was ringed at Leighton  on 13th March 2010 and caught  390 km  away at Farlington Marsh near Portsmouth on 2th April 2011 was still  at Farlington in  October 2011 and January and February 2012.

Thanks to Alan Gallagher for the photos.
John