Birds on the Move

It appears to be an early spring with both Reed Warbler and Pied Flycatcher  for example arriving very early. Our ringing has shown some quick  movement in Lesser Redpolls. One ringed in a Cheshire garden on March 24th was caught at a feeder five days later on the edge of Bowland , 51 km north. Another ringed at the same feeder on March 30 was in southern Scotland ten days later a distance of 218 km north west.

Waders are massing along the edge of Morecambe Bay waiting for good weather to make the journey to Iceland. Careful searching of the 3000+ Black-tailed Godwits on the Eric Morecambe Pools at Leighton Moss has revealed at least seven birds originally colour ringed  in the breeding season in Iceland.

Searching of the large numbers of Knot roosting at high tide on the Lune  Estuary has produced at at least six Knot originally colour ringed in Iceland.Today's cold ESE wind means they will probably wait for a change in the weather before setting off on their epic journey.

Other interesting recoveries have included a Chiffchaff  caught on Alderney on the Channel Islands on March 21st from our September ringing and a juvenile Cetti's Warbler ringed in South Yorkshire in early July and caught in late March at Leighton Moss, 134 km north west.
John

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Black-tailed Godwit Update

Today there was at least 2300 Godwits on the Eric Morecambe Complex on the edge  of Morecambe Bay. But with high spring tides most were on the flooded salt marsh. During the first half of March we have sighted  five colour ringed birds.  One from the Montrose Basin, two from the Humber, one from Kent and one from Iceland.  

The Icelandic one is the oldest and the most interesting with 102 sightings since it was ringed  as an adult male in Iceland in July 2011 . It has wintered on the Dee estuary every year since. In April 2013 it was sighted in North Holland. From  2014 it has established  a pattern of calling in at Morecambe Bay on the Eric Morecambe Complex in late March and April. This year though it was seen on 23rd February its earliest record and is still there gradually getting its summer plumage. Surprisingly it has never been seen again in Iceland.

Over the years we have recorded ca 70 Icelandic ringed Godwits in Morecambe Bay mainly in spring but at least 17 have been recorded in autumn. Some have  wintered as far south as SW France, others in Hampshire and Se Ireland, but the bulk winter on the Dee

John

                                                                                                                          

Godwit arrival dates

Black-tailed Godwit have started arriving in reasonable numbers at Leighton Moss in recent days.  Several of these have long histories of spring sightings at Leighton and other very local sites having spent the winter further south on the Dee.  Two are of note with several years of good arrival data for Leighton Moss.  The first seen date is listed below for each year they have been seen at Leighton:

R8-WO:

31/03/2012
21/03/2015
07/04/2016
01/04/2017
30/03/2018
27/02/2019

WR-WX:

13/04/2014
29/03/2015
05/04/2017
24/03/2018

23/02/2019

It would be very easy to say 'global warming' or 'unseasonably hot weather' is driving the early arrival date however I think it's more complex.  This winter has been fairly dry and many of the sites used early in spring by these birds (Lytham Hall, fields on the field) are only good feeding in wet conditions so maybe the early arrival is more a case of lack of good feeding throughout the tidal cycle rather than an early migration north.

Thanks to all the observers at Leighton Moss for seeing and reporting these birds to the ringers (in this case in Iceland).  The arrival and departure dates are really useful so even if the bird was seen yesterday reporting it again is important to understand how the Godwit use different landscapes in a changing world.

Our Nuthatch Study

We have continued our colour ringed study of Nuthatch visiting Jerry and Barbara's woodland edge garden at Silverdale. They usually see no more than two birds visiting their feeders at once but since late summer 2018 we have seen or caught 19 birds. In January at least 11 different birds have visited the feeders. They basically fall into three categories based on our sightings.

There is obviously a resident pair which have each been seen 14 days,very often together. Three other birds have been seen less often but still regularly  probably from adjoining territories close by. But the remaining six are only infrequent visitors only being recorded once or twice a month but obviously attracted by the abundance of bird food on offer. One assumes that they have territories some distance away in the surrounding woodland.
John

End of Year Summary

 With almost all the data in for the year we have ringed  10750 new birds, although with retraps and sightings we have details of almost 14000 captures.Top of the pile as usual is Blue Tit with 2263 followed by Goldfinch at 1059 and Pied Flycatcher at 773. Of the warblers,  Willow Warbler was top with 584 followed by Reed Warbler at 577, Sedge Warbler at  247,Chiffchaff at 225 and Blackcap at 216.

Our  colour ringed studies of the  Nuthatch and Bearded Tit produced 415 and 150 sightings and furthered our knowledge of the behaviour of these two resident species. Our other colour ringed studies of Grey Wagtail produced sightings in Shropshire and Conwy in early spring and Hampshire in winter.While Common Sandpiper sightings were from Herts, Lincoln and Surrey all on their way south in late summer

Recovery highlights included a Robin  ringed  in early March in the Highland Region  and caught at Middleton on May 1st- a time you would expect Robins to be moving north. A Blackbird in Norway in late March was our sixth from Norway, but a first for Norway was a Brambling ,ringed 30 September and caught 33 days later at Newton. Although we ringed twice as many Reed as Sedge Warblers we had only one foreign recovery  in Spain, but three Sedge Warblers in France  and one in Belgium. Interesting that this brings our Sedge Warblers from France to 54 but only three in Spain. By contrast  29 Reed Warbler have been found in France but 5 in Spain. The groups all-time totals for Reed Warbler is 20.450, 6000 more than Sedge Warbler.

Colour ring sightings of birds ringed elsewhere has  generated more interesting recoveries. We sighted no fewer than five colour ringed Avocets  in the small colony at Leighton Moss. A  French ringed nestling ringed ten year ago has bred here for the past six years. A nestling ringed in The Netherlands in 2016  bred this year as did two reared  in Teesmouth and one in South Yorkshire.

Mediterranean Gulls mainly at the power station outflow at Heysham came from Germany (2), France, The Netherlands and Poland (2) all  except one Polish bird were  colour ringed as nestlings. The French bird is now in its tenth year.

John

Not the normal Knot movement - 18th record of a BTO ringed Knot in Africa

Update - Corrected flag code but similar story.

One of the many things that has come out of the Knot work at Formby is the vast amount of data being produced by a small team of dedicated observers which have made nearly 4,000 observations.  These are all really valuable and without your help many an interesting pattern of movement or important bit of connectivity between sites would be missed.

An email last week was very interesting with the report of a Knot seen twice in Mauritania which had been ringed at Formby in 2017.  I expected this to be either the bird that was seen on the Azores (although unlikely as it looked in pretty poor condition in the last photo) or the bird that was identified as canutus when we caught it in September 2017.  It turned out to be neither of these and in many ways much more surprising.

Orange HA was indeed ringed in September 2017 at Formby as a moulting adult however was seen up until 29th October before disappearing.  It's next sighting was in Mauritania this December.

This is the 18th recorded movement of a British ringed Knot to Africa with previous records in:

Congo - 1
Gabon - 1
Ghana - 1
Liberia - 1
Mauritania - 4
Morocco - 1
Mozambique - 1
Republic of South Africa - 3
Senegal - 4

16 of the 17 have been ringed as juveniles in August and September, the 17th ringed as an adult in July 1973 before being found in South Africa in December 1973. Additionally all but one of these were ringed on the East coast of the UK.  These are all typical movements of Knot of the canutus race.

What makes HA particularly interesting is that it was in the UK so late into October when the previous latest record of a Knot in the UK going to Africa was 25th September.  Clearly having a colour mark here helped get a closer to departure date than a single capture however a month later than the previous latest is surprising.  Was this in the wrong place with a group of Knot not wanting to migrate or was it something else?

With metal ringing alone we might have had some details of it in Mauritania if conditions were good however we certainly would not have had any sightings in the UK post ringing.  Similarly with the bird on the Azores - we may well have had enough photographs to identify the bird but again the intervening records would not be present as a result of the difficulty of approaching Knot in the UK in autumn and winter without causing disturbance.  Once again this highlights the value of colour ringing difficult to monitor species such as Knot.  We are not only getting excellent survival data thanks to the efforts of the local observers but we are also getting fascinating movement data from the global network of keen colour ring readers and one which I would recommend everyone tries as you never know what interesting bird movements you will record.

Goldfinch versus Greenfinch

So far to date we have ringed 962 Goldfinch our best year ever. Its interesting to look back over the years and trace the increase of Goldfinch both as a breeding bird in our area and of course as a bird at feeding stations where most of our birds are caught. Looking back to 1960 before mist nets we ringed 326 Greenfinch but only one Goldfinch! By 1984 were ringed 521 Greenfinch but just 24 Goldfinch. How things have changed to date this year we have ringed 517 Greenfinch but 962 Goldfinch. 

The Greenfinch number is hearting though, for in recent years the disease trichomonsis has depleted the population we reached  a low of 278 in 2015  but numbers have increased over the past three years.Goldfinch are apparently quite mobile at this time of year ,we had  two movements between our feeding sites, one moved 40 Km.

  

This autumn has seen several quick movers, a Chiffchaff ringed on October 6th  was in Dorset 4 days later. A Sedge Warbler ringed on 27^th July was in NW France 16 days later. While a Reed Warbler ringed on August 8^th was in southern Spain15 days later. It is only our 6^th Reed Warbler from Spain compared to 29 from France.

The build up of Little Egret in recent years has been amazing. Peak numbers of course occur in late summer/early autumn. Colour ringing has shown that many of these are young birds, bred that year with sightings of birds ringed as nestlings usually in May or June from Kent, Lincolnshire and amazing of all, eleven from Wales. This year a new location was added with a nestling from Hartlepool in the NE. Interesting that so many move north after fledging, before moving south in late autumn winter.

John