Holiday time and the rain returns

No sooner had I written "we could do with some rain", than we get 16mm overnight, thanks to a belt of thunder-storms coming up from France. Around midday the lights went out as well, care of a lightning strike on an exposed cable nearby, so we had a cup of coffee using the Camping Gaz stove. We had "another dose" of thunder and lightning last night, too. At least it pushed the humid air away somewhere else.

The BTO have kindly sent me a report of a Siskin [Y319780] that I caught in the orchard on 4th February this year. It had travelled at least 167 kilometers (105 miles) since leaving Kings Norton in Birmingham on 14th March 2013 [327 days]. It was a full adult male and where it had finally ended up breeding last year is anybody's guess, but most likely north of Birmingham. 

Male Siskin (library picture)

Local ringer Karen sent me an email enquiring about another Siskin. It turns out to have been ringed by her trainer, Denise, on 25-09-2013 as a 3J, then caught by me on 28-12-2013 and now in her garden this Maytime. It only missed one other local ringer! The other bird she sent me was yet another Siskin, which I had ringed as a 6M on 04-07-12, then got re-caught by John, the fourth ringer, on 03-03-2013 and finally over to Karen's on 03-05-2014. Perhaps Denise's next stop? These little finches are highly mobile (as I found out in Norfolk) and move around seeking the right food at the right time and shifting their nest sites between broods as well. 

The weather has mainly been unsettled or full sun since last time. However, it has recently deteriorated, but it has been warm for the most part. The garden is full of young birds busy trying to feed themselves on whatever they can find that suits. At this time of year the feeders do not empty as fast as they usually do since the number one job for the birds is to hunt out insects that we consider pests and they consider delicious. 

Young Goldfinch

Degraded male Blackbird retrices

Also, the main consumers, Goldfinches, are virtually absent during late May to early August. The thing that is shifting like no tomorrow is dried meal-worms - parenting Robins, all manner of Blackbirds, but first and foremost, the Pied Wagtails. Our cat is also partial to a few! (meal-worms, that is). The Jackdaws rob out the suet pellets before anything else can get a share, too. Expensive time of year!

I chucked out some stale dog food onto the lawn one afternoon. Low and behold, seventeen, yes, 17, Herring Gulls swooped in all at once and removed it in ten seconds flat!! Three pairs are currently nesting on neighbours 'roofs' and there are some dozen or so pairs actively nesting in the village. Next door's have lost two wee youngsters from their chimney-pot nest site. Both rolled out down the roof onto the car spaces; the second one was quickly snaffled by the local Sparrowhawk in front of the owners' son and his girlfriend. Mum & dad HERGU weren't best pleased! They soon forgot about it/them.

Day-old HERGU chick

Over fifteen days to 7th June, I managed to catch, intermittently, the following:

"Think you're a big boy! Wait 'til I get hold of yer! I'll make y' squeal!"
[Juvenile Blue Tit - soon after fledging]

Woodpigeon 2
Rook 2 - 1 of each sex

Goldcrest (1) - breeding female

Blue Tit 36 (3) - 10 adults & 29 juvs

Great Tit 11 (2) - 10 juvs & 1 adult male hatched in 2011

Coal Tit 1 - 1st juv of the year
Reed Warbler 1 - NFY, "quelle surprise"
Wren (1) - adult female with BP
Blackbird 10 (4) - 9 juvs in this total

Robin 10 (4) - new birds all juvs, retraps = parents, incl. 2 females hatched 2011

Dunnock 1 (1) - promptly disappeared, must be nesting again 

House Sparrow 9 (3) - juvs but retraps were 2 males & 1 female
Pied Wagtail 6 (1) - ALL JUVS except r/t 2CY male
Chaffinch 7 (1) - 6 of 7 juvs were male(?) on size

Greenfinch 10 - juv sexes in equal numbers plus a fresh breeding pair
Goldfinch 11 (2) - 9 juvs, plus 2 new males, a "2014" female (aged 4), and a male that was one of the first birds I ever ringed here as an adult in January 2011. 
Bullfinch (1) - 2CY female in breeding condition

17 species, 117 new birds, 24 recaptures from previous dates/blogs

Juvenile Greenfinch, post-fledging

NB. All the photos (I mean snaps!) are my own, taken with a Fujifilm compact.

Start of the rainy season

Here in Somerset, our wettest months are October through January as a rule, with at least 4 inches (104-110 mm) of rainfall on average each month. However, it can be nearly 6 inches (140+ mm) in one of those months.

From a ringing perspective, the possibility of catching good numbers does increase throughout these four, traditionally wet, months. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, the natural food supply dwindles and birds are drawn more to human habitation, and, secondly, as the food supplies run down in the east of the country (the side that most migrants first land on) the birds move westwards seeking under-used resources. That is how we differ from all those ringers gathered on the North Sea coast. They catch the rarities, we ring the survivors.

Talking of which, here are a couple that I received recently from BTO HQ.

Male Chaffinch - minimum of 4.5 years old

This bird died when it hit a window. It may even have been the kindergarten on the T-junction. Strangely, I have driven passed the spot (10 km N of Gjovik) when I lived in Norway as I was going to my girlfriend's girlfriend's home just the other side of the lake at Nes.

Male Blackcap - found here post breeding, the year after
it left the country for the first time (E. Sussex)

It seems that many summer migrants prefer to move to the south-east of the country before they make the crossing to France. Sensible, really - it's shorter and therefore less hazardous and with more options of making landfall whatever the wind direction.

... and one that came via email from another ringer. [details to follow]

Adult Female Hawfinch
now sporting colour rings

This bird (featured in my header) had travelled 188km in a northerly direction to the Dolgellau area where it was handled in late March. There is one other recovery of a bird ringed in the county; from Wellington to Clumber Park (Notts), a distance of 293km. There is one, relatively local, recovery in Somerset; from Gwent (Monmouthshire as was), the other side of the Bristol Channel.

So far this month, things have been a tad "weak", with a mere 19 new birds and 13 re-traps to date (1st-12th). We have also had our fair share of rain (>60 mm) with a bit of a northerly wind blowing.

Robin 1 (1) - both dispersing immatures

Blackbird 2 - both birds of the year with dark bills

Chiffchaff 2 - young males on size and tail

Long-tailed Tit (2) - 1 ringed as a juv back in August, the other was a fully grown bird back in January 2011.

Coal Tit 1 - this year's youngster

Blue Tit 3 (3) - just the one adult (r/t, 2009 or older)

Great Tit (1)

House Sparrow 1

Greenfinch 2 - both juveniles coming to the end of their limited (first) moult

Goldfinch 7 (5) - 6 of the new birds were females, 4 of the r/t birds were male.

This autumn passage period we have been severely short of out-going Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps to ring and are still waiting for an exodus of Goldfinches.

The Redwing flocks (of 15-30) did not appear here until Saturday 11th. Possibly these were birds that have travelled down from Scotland along the west side of the country until they hit North Devon and then turn east to reach their preferred destinations, somewhere further inland from us.

Let's just see what turns up later in the month!

The deserter

Robin X105504

Recently, I received a report of one of "my" Robins going AWOL and, unfortunately, ending up dead,  miles from home. Why it should have deserted us, we will never know.

This was the 11th bird that I ringed after moving into our new house here in West Somerset. It was a 2CY bird in January 2011 and was later deemed to be a male by both measurement and examination of genitalia. I retrapped it many times, in fact 22 times, and it was definitely present in every month (except maybe April and November 2011). The last time it was re-captured was on 2nd March 2012 when it weighed in at 21.0 gms. Temperatures were low and there had been an air frost overnight.

The bird was recovered, freshly dead, on 24th April 2012, some 94 km to the north-east in the Forest of Dean, at the eastern end of the village of Ruardean. Having spent the previous two winters and a whole summer with us here, why should it suddenly decide to abscond and cross the Bristol Channel the following spring? 

Answers on a post card, please, ....

Good things come in twos.

It's been much of a muchness since my last blog. Somethings are moving, some others have gone and yet more are to arrive.

I have managed to ring in our small orchard on the even days of the week from sunrise 'til 10-ish, by which time the sun has risen quite a way and spotlighted the net(s). It has been steady and pretty reasonable for a small set-up like we have here. Things will improve as soon as we are able to return to the meadows, once the willows and alders sprout their leaves. But I'll probably catch a Chiffchaff in the garden before that happens.

2CY female Siskin

Noticeable was the pairs of Greenfinch that I caught every day. One day I was blessed with a male and female Siskin in the net inches apart, only the third and fourth of the year so far. Another day, three Goldfinches - although we had just had a cold, cloudless night. Not the local birds, since they all know the way to approach the feeders containing sunflower hearts and seldom make a mistake.

2CY male Siskin

Another duo, this time of female Blackbirds, found the short net across our small shrubbery. So far this winter I have ringed or retrapped 25 male Blackbirds, but, with these two, just 13 female birds. There's something going on here but, as yet, I have not fathomed it out. There are also twice as many 2CY birds as full adults (Euring class 6) of both sexes, which is about par for this time of year - if the previous breeding season was a good one.

So, this week's tally comes to 18 new (&9 r/t) of 11 spp.:
Woodpigeon (1) - a very fat male!
Great Tit 2
Blackcap (1) - the long-staying female from the New Year
Blackbird 2 (3)
Robin (2)
Dunnock 1 (1)
House Sparrow 1
Chaffinch 1
Greenfinch 6 (1) - r/t was originally caught in mid-Jan 2011 as a 6M
Goldfinch 3
Siskin 2

However, the week didn't end there.
My new trainee was back from Cuba and wanted to brave the colder air. So, in order to get a feel for the impending spring, I set four nets in one of the meadows the night before. We didn't bargain for the weather, though! Fog had been forecast most mornings but there had been no signs of it in the village, but we could see it capping the top of the Quantocks. Today proved otherwise; dense, wet FOG, hanging on the nets that I had put up the night before. We were right cheesed off but stuck it out. Just as well we did, because our first "hit" was a pair of 2CY Kingfishers, the male being one I ringed here last August when it still had 'brown legs'. They were busy all morning defending their territory downstream of the bridge, once released.

2CY Kingfishers - male above, female below

The rest of the session was rather rubbish, as one would expect in the circumstances but it did give us a chance to have a 'recce' prior to the season kicking off. 8 VTOL Redwing departed at first light, a Song Thrush sang non-stop for 4 hours and a Dipper 'buzzed' through. As I was packing up, a hungry Chiff was hunting spiders in the cracks of the stone walls beside the bridge.

GT = 5 new (&5 r/t)
Kingfisher 1 (1) - new female
Blue Tit 1 (1)
Great Tit 1 (2)
Wren 1
Dunnock 1 (1)
... and the nets are in the airing cupboard - along with my boots!

Here's to Spring! [summer-time starts in a fortnight!!!] I expect it will arrive with gales and rain! [I'm usually an optimist] We'll see!

I'm Finnished again

Just got a Blackbird recovery through from one of my 'C' ringers [EDG] who now operates the main site I worked for over 20 years.

It was ringed by my trainee [DTH] as a 3M (1cy male) with 1 ogc, a wing of 135mm, a weight of 112g at 08:00 [GMT] on Wednesday 9th December 2009. This was the one of two birds out of four 'continental types' that we managed to extract and ring, two "doing a Houdini". See http://ivelringinggroup.blogspot.com/2009/12/rain-has-stopped.html for a read of the session. It was found dead 653 days later on 23rd September 2011, at a place called Vistarna, Soderudden, Korsholm, Finland, some 1775km NE of Priory Country Park, Bedford.


This is my furthest recovery for a Blackbird (although I have had a Kestrel from much further north in Finland). I had another Blackbird from the same site found freshly dead at Vaxjo, Kronoberg, Sweden in 1993, 1117km ENE with a duration of 566 days; this was ringed in January as a 5F and found 18 months later at the end of July.

Of general interest is the latest DEFRA publication on The wildbird population changes in Britain from 1970-2010.
See http://t.co/NeLHPMno

Might be able to put the nets up again on Tuesday next (according to the Met. Office)

Half way to Paradise

At least the effort of waiting to ring a few finches until after the worst of the snow had receeded last winter has shown some reward.

Today, I had a recovery for a 2CY male Brambling that I ringed on 17th January this year, here in West Somerset. Three months (91 days) later it was controlled the other side of the Kiel Canal in Schleswig-Holstein at a place called Itzehoe. It was re-ringed for whatever reason with a new Helgoland ring [DEW Wilhelmshaven 82091710]. It had moved 918 km ENE towards its eventual breeding grounds, most likely somewhere in a montane birch forest of northern Fenno-Scandinavia or a riverine willow zone in western Siberia.



A good start for the significant recoveries file with a 'hit rate' for the species of 2%. I just wonder what next winter will bring.