Tag: birds

I was joined for the session by Rosie, George and the Childs family. We met at Blakehill Farm at 7:30 and set the following nets:

The plan was fairly straight forward: net rides 1 and 2 would be for catching the usual hedgerow species, with lures for a mix of those species. Net ride 3 was set up for Redwing, with a singular lure for that. The hedgerow there, under the Oak tree canopy, was full of rose hips, haws and sloes: just right for attracting in winter thrushes. We set the wader nets really just to test the possibility for a focused effort on catching them in the near future. (At least, that’s what I am going to claim.)

Rosie, George and Laura set ride 3 first and got the lure working, whilst Mark, Adam, Daniel and I set up ride 2. Then Rosie, Daniel and I went to set up the wader nets while the rest of the team set up ride 1. As we reached the edge of the pond where we planned to set the nets we were fortunate (very unfortunate) to see eight Snipe fly off and, as I got to the corner of the dog-leg on ride 5, a Jack Snipe took off and disappeared. Nice to know they are there: last year that area was too wet for the Snipe. Now I know that they are making use of it again there will be some pre-dawn net setting and, hopefully, the chance to ring a few. Unfortunately, they did not reappear this morning. We did catch two Robins in ride 5, but that was it.

Rosie got to extract and process the first bird of the morning, one of the wader pond Robins, before she and George had to head off to work with the Wildlife Trust. Almost as soon as we had the nets set it started to rain. It was very light, more like drops of mist than actual rain, but it stayed like that for the next two hours. Not only that, the breeze that was forecast to come from the north, came from the south west: pushing rides 1 and 2 into the hedgerow itself. The sky cleared at about 11:30 and the sun actually came out as we started to take down at midday.

To say it was a frustrating session would be an understatement. There were so many birds flying around: the hedgerow was abuzz with good numbers of birds, lots of calling, singing and movement, but they were all either on the wrong side of the net or on the top of the hedgerow. Ride 3 was just a waste of time: it caught one Wren. We had large flocks of Starling, Fieldfare, even a few Redwing, fly over, perch in the tops of the trees above the nets, only to either stay there or fly over without ever coming within catching distance of the nets. Even when the birds hit the nets, several of them managed to escape quickly. Perhaps the most frustrating was a beautiful male Stonechat who was sat in the net right up to the second I reached him, whereupon he struggled free and flew off. Fortunately, a little later Laura extracted a female Stonechat from the same net. This is our tenth of the year so far at Blakehill Farm, making it our best year for the species at this site. The previous best was seven in 2020.

The list for the session was: Blue Tit 1; Long-tailed Tit 3(2); Wren 1; Stonechat 1; Robin 3; Goldcrest 1; Reed Bunting 1. Totals: 11 birds ringed from 7 species and 2 birds retrapped from 1 species, making 13 birds processed from 7 species. The majority of the birds were caught in net ride 1.

I cannot pretend that it wasn’t a disappointing result: thank goodness for good company and chat. This part of the site, with the same nets set, can usually be relied upon to produce 30 or 40 birds in a session. We started closing the nets at 11:40, carefully extracting rides 1 and 2 from the hedgerows as we went. I have two nets to empty of several hundred Oak leaves when I have a couple of hours spare. It was 12:45 before we managed to get away from site.

Back in October 2013 and 2014 I was lucky enough to spend two sessions with the Wash Wader Ringing Group. They were great sessions and enabled me to get experience of cannon netting and extracting birds from mist nets in the dark. It also enabled me to ring a good range of waders: Black-tailed Godwit, Dunlin, Knot, Redshank, Sanderling and Turnstone. Since then I haven’t managed to get back there, for a number of reasons, until this November. I thought it would be a nice start to the week of my seventieth birthday to treat myself to some more waders. Since I last went the ringing group has become a registered charity, and are now the Wash Wader Research Group.

Headquarters is just to the west of Kings Lynn. My first major mistake was the route I decided to take: M4-> M25-> A1(M) -> A47-> A17. Thanks to roadworks and snarl ups on every single road, it took me six and a half hours to make a three and a half hour journey. I left at 11:00 and arrived at 17:30. The plan for the weekend is usually, arrive Friday and get settled in. Possibly do an evening catch. A group of experienced observers visit the possible sites to evaluate what activities can be carried out where. On the previous sessions I attended, Saturday was cannon netting in the morning, mist netting in the afternoon / evening, dependent upon the high tide times, with Sunday being spent resighting colour-ringed and leg-flagged birds, before people depart after lunch. This weekend was somewhat different: none of the sites had enough birds to warrant cannon-netting and the tide times meant that we would be out mist netting Saturday late afternoon into the night.

Saturday morning I went with Louis, another member of the group, to carry out resighting of Turnstone on the shoreline at Hunstanton:

We walked as far as we could northwards, until the path was closed, with lots of warnings about falling rocks from the cliffs. You can see the buildings above those cliffs, I wonder how long they have got? One of the difficulties of sighting birds in somewhere like Hunstanton is that local dog owners like to let their dogs off the lead for their exercise, which flushes the birds. That morning we were lucky: the tide has only just started going out, the key area was mainly very rocky with a thin dribble of sand, and there was more than enough room for the birds but, apart from the southern end of our walk, where it widened out to a proper sandy beach, not enough for the dogs to disturb them too much. There were only a couple of dogs out. On request, one woman kindly kept her dog off the beach until we had managed to survey the group of Turnstone there.

Louis and I had a pretty good session and managed to identify 14 colour ringed Turnstone in amongst a significantly higher number of unringed birds. There were a lot of Oystercatcher, making a lot of fuss all along the beach area, a few Redshank, and we had a fly by of three Little Egret, a couple of Brent Geese were on the water and even two Swallows were seen flying along the seafront.

Once we had finished there we drove down to the south end of Heacham Beach:

We started off on the outflow structure that you can see to the middle left, scoping the birds out on the mud. Another of the team, Lynne, joined us and we spent the next hour or so looking at the birds along the water line: primarily looking for leg-tagged Bar-tailed Godwits, plus anything else we might find. There were a lot of birds out there. As well as the Barwits there were a good number of gulls: Herring, Black-headed, Greater Black-backed; plus a good selection of other waders: Knot and Sanderling. Louis and Lynne took a walk along the beach and out onto the mud to try and get some tag data. Louis managed to identify three birds from their colour rings / tags.

One was a Bar-tailed Godwit that was ringed at Vinkenbaan Castricum, a bird ringing station in the Netherlands. This bird was ringed in April 2023 and has been observed in the Snettisham / Heacham area on five separate occasions, until this sixth observation. It seems to be commuting from one to the other on a regular basis, as each sighting alternates from the previous.

The second had a somewhat longer journey: having been ringed back in May 2018 near the village of Kościeszki in Poland, and seen by Louis on Saturday. It has travelled a distance of 1,630km due west to get to Heacham.

Thirdly was a Herring Gull that was ringed by the now, sadly defunct, North Thames Gull Group. I did several sessions with them on the rubbish dumps at Rainham Marshes and Pitsea between 2015 and 2018.  This bird was ringed on 25^th April 2017 at Pitsea Landfill – unfortunately not by me.

Unfortunately, my hip gave way and I was in a lot of pain and more than a bit crippled, so I retired to the café and had a very welcome mug of coffee and a bacon sandwich. Unfortunately, the hip remained painful for the rest of the weekend and beyond, limiting my activity. We returned to HQ for 11:30 and breakfast (second breakfast in my case) and a debrief on what everybody had seen and recorded. It had certainly been a productive morning.

After lunch the setting team headed off to Gedney Marsh to set up the mist nets for the evening session. They are set in daylight for catching in the evening on a rising tide, as the birds move further up away from the water.

Those of the team not involved in setting up were either grabbing a sleep back at HQ or, more usefully, cooking up dinner and putting all of the equipment needed to take out to the site for the ringing and processing of the birds.

Catching is not started until darkness has fallen and the local wildfowlers have left for the evening. Because of my hip problems, I was excused from wandering around on the marsh in the dark: which probably saved me from several wet and muddy falls (my speciality). Unfortunately, that also meant that I did not get the opportunity to practise extracting waders from mist nets in the pitch dark. It is an art: especially as we do not use head torches to do so.

I did benefit from being in position to start ringing birds as the extraction team started bringing them back from the marsh. That meant that I got to ring my second ever Curlew:

Curlew, Numenius arquata (Photo courtesy of Lynne Lambert).

Hard on the heel of this we received a delivery of 20 Redshank and 40 Dunlin, which we then started to ring. They are stored in cloth covered boxes prior to ringing, and then transferred into a clean box before being passed over for processing. Because of the numbers involved, it is a bit of a production line. A group of us were employed with ringing the birds, whilst another team carried out the processing. Processing is as follows: age; wing length; head length; head and bill length; weight. The birds are then put into another clean box before being taken out to a safe place for release.

By the end of the evening (I think) we had processed 82 birds: 1 Curlew, 21 Redshank and 6o Dunlin. Over the course of the weekend there were approximately 200 colour-ringed / flagged birds re-sighted. This also included a remarkable 17 Curlew that have been head-started from  local schemes: the earliest from 2021 but birds for each year since and including 2024.  I know that there were a number of other sightings of foreign and non-WWRG birds and I will look forward to seeing the official report of the weekend. Because of my health issues I absented myself after breakfast, so didn’t make any further contributions to the totals.

I would like to thank Ryan, Sam, David and Molly for heading up the whole thing, and to everyone else I met this weekend who were so friendly and so helpful. I would namecheck them all, but I would probably forget someone and that wouldn’t be right. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and I am looking forward to doing it again in the near future. The journey home, across country, was very much better than the journey out, taking just four hours, including a long stop for brunch.

A less productive October than last: I was wondering how much of that is down to the weather we have had this year, but on checking there was actually more rain last October than this: Storm Babet apparently.

We did have fewer species in the catch than this time last year: with 34 species compared to 37 in October 2023.   Additional to the list for this month was a brilliant catch of two Firecrest: first one at Red Lodge, the other, four days later, at the Wildlife Trust Biss Wood reserve.  Prior to these catches we had only ringed nine since the beginning of 2013: three in the Warminster area, two in the Tidworth area, and one each in Red Lodge, Ravensroost Wood, Brown’s Farm, Marlborough and Lower Moor Farm.

Also added to the list compared to last month were: Kestrel; Kingfisher, Siskin and Tree Sparrow.  Missing this year were: Fieldfare; Great Spotted Woodpecker; Grey Wagtail; Lesser Black-backed Gull; Magpie; Sparrowhawk; Starling and Woodpigeon.  

The Lesser Black-backed Gull that was ringed at Langford Lakes last October was only the fourth ever caught by the group: the three previous were caught by Rob Turner, also at Langford Lakes, in February 2012.  We don’t catch a lot of Fieldfare, only 42 since the beginning of 2013 and last year’s was the first caught in October, the bulk being in November (21) and December (13).  The lack of Starlings was twofold: last year’s were caught mainly in Rosie’s garden with one in mine and one at Blakehill Farm: and neither Rosie’s nor my garden had sessions this October.  Also, the Woodpigeon was caught and ringed in my garden.

There is a clear upsurge in Redwing arrivals this month, and it is our best ever catch in October. The previous best October was in 2021 at 81. No other October has had as many as 50 Redwing: November is always the best month for this species for our group.  Apart from Redwing and, funnily enough, Wrens have more than doubled on last year, both ringed and retrapped and was, again, the best October catch we have had of the species by over 20 birds compared to the previous best in 2019.

The dearth of Yellowhammer was interesting: last year’s total came from three sessions at Andy’s Imber Ranges site.  This year he also carried out three sessions there but with only three from the site (the fourth was at Jonny’s Sutton Benger site).  I wonder what has caused the difference?

We are heading towards our best ever year: just 500 birds fewer than the entirety of 2023.

I decided to have another trip to Blakehill Farm, as the weather was perfect for the site and I am always happy to ring a few Meadow Pipits. Actually, what got me going were the reports of Black-faced Bunting turning up around the country. The odds were ridiculous to one, but if one was going to arrive in Wiltshire (there is one in Glamorgan), Blakehill seemed a potential spot. Obviously, no such luck.

I was joined by Rosie, Miranda and Sarah for the morning. Rosie had to head off at 9:00, for work at the Trust, and Miranda had to head off at 11:30 to collect her offspring and head off to introduce them to the, soon to be, newest member of their family: a gorgeous black Cocker Spaniel puppy (I have seen the photo), not yet ready to leave its mum or litter mates. We met at 7:00 and set the following nets:

Once again a Wren, this time joined by a Robin, decided to get into the nets before they were fully open: both in ride 5. For once Rosie got a chance to process a few birds before going off to work: two Robins and a Meadow Pipit.

It was a quiet morning: a bit cold, very overcast and dull, and the little breeze there was came from the south-west, rather than the forecast north-east. Annoying because the nets were set for a north-east wind and it meant we had a few issues safely taking the nets down at the end of the session. Nets and bramble and blackthorn do not play well together, and that was today’s situation. From the first two birds at 7:30, we didn’t catch anything else until 8:30, when we caught six birds, and then nothing else for another hour, until we got another three. It was like that all morning. The best round was at 10:55, when we caught eight birds, but the others were just one, two or three at a time.

I had hoped to run some nets along the perimeter track side of the hedgerow. Unfortunately for today, the Trust and the BTCV (British Trust for Conservation Volunteers) team had been in and carrying out some more of the hedge-laying being completed this winter.

A brief moment of nostalgia: I started working in IT back in 1983. In 1984 the BTCV moved to offices in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, and I set up a number of their office computer systems and databases as part of my then job for them.

The red line on the diagram above shows how far they have got with their work. By the end of the winter it will have reached the gate to the plateau. It is great that it is happening and I am hopeful that it will have a positive impact on a few species but, in particular, the Linnets on this part of the site. The simple fact is that we have not had decent catches of Linnet at Blakehill for nigh on 10 years. In 2015 we processed 42, 2016 it was 25 and 2018 it was 16. Since 2020 inclusive, we have only caught two in any one year at Blakehill. The only downside is that my usual area for setting nets for catching Redwing is exactly where the red line is. The solitary tree in that area is where they would congregate before responding to the lure and I would catch a number in my nets. Today, whilst they have done a great job of the hedge-laying, they haven’t got around to removing the piles of brash and I didn’t fancy getting my nets snarled up in there. There were plenty of Redwing around, but they were in the trees at the edge of the Blakehill complex. We only knew how many when one of the model aeroplane club members came along and flew his aircraft along the tree line, sending them flying away from the disturbance.

The Mipit triangle did a decent job again and a few were also found in the other nets. However, the number flying around was much lower than even just a week ago. Again, there was a distinct lack of flying insects at the site.

With the numbers having fallen away, Miranda having toddled off, Sarah and I decided to close the nets and take down at 11:45. Naturally, that meant that we took another three birds out of the nets to finish the session: a Reed Bunting, Meadow Pipit and, to top and tail the session, a Wren.

The list for today was: Blue Tit 1; Wren 3(1); Dunnock 1; Meadow Pipit 12(1); Robin 2(1); Song Thrush 1; Linnet 1; Reed Bunting 2. Totals: 23 birds ringed from 8 species and 3 birds retrapped from 3 species, making 26 birds processed from 8 species.

There were a couple of interesting interludes: one was a contractor who arrived pulling a trailer full of wood chippings, from the forestry works going on at Ravensroost Wood. He has expressed an interest in joining one or more of our sessions. The second was a very large tipper truck which, I understand, was depositing significant amounts of hardcore prior to another Trust project starting up. To say that his manoeuvring came within centimetres of our ringing station and vehicles would be an understatement but he got past without mishap.

We had the nets down and everything packed away by 13:00.

I am having a busy week this week. Miranda was away and unable to make the usual Wednesday slot, so I suggested that we do a session at Webb’s Wood this morning. Rosie joined us to help set up, but had to disappear very early. The nearest she got to processing a bird was extracting our first Redwing of the morning, whilst Miranda and I were setting up our last net ride. We set the following nets:

I was hopeful that we would catch a few Redwing and set a suitable lure on ride 2. Straight away we started to get one or two in the nets, and it continued like that all morning, with a boost of nine at 11:00. 2024 seems to be a good year for Long-tailed Tits: our best year for five years with just under two and a half months to go. Today we caught two in the first round at 8:30 and then another 12 at 9:30, and then no more.

Things started to get very interesting at 11:30 just after we had decided to start taking down, as the wind was getting up and net ride 3 was just filling up with leaves: hundreds of them. We started extracting the leaves from the first of the three nets in ride 3. Once that was clear and closed, I started clearing the other two nets whilst Miranda went to check the other rides. We processed the birds she got from the round, finished clearing the second and third nets, whilst Miranda carried out another round. I then took down ride 3, and went to check ride 1 for birds whilst Miranda was busy with ride 2. I found this in ride 1:

Adult male Lesser Redpoll, Acanthis cabaret

I love the Paddington hard stare. This is our first of the autumn. Miranda hadn’t seen it as she was busy extracting two Marsh Tits from ride 2. We left ride 2 until last and, whilst taking down ride 1, I looked across and there was a second sat in the 9m net of ride 2. Since Forestry England carried out a significant thinning of Webb’s Wood over winter of 2019 / 2020 it has become our best site for the species. It has taken that mantle over from Somerford Common.

It was also gratifying catching a decent number of Redwing. Last week at Somerford Common we caught seven out of many tens of them flying around. Today we didn’t see flocks flying around but we did manage to catch a total of 18 in this session.

The list from today was: Blue Tit 4; Great Tit 3; Coal Tit 1; Marsh Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit 12(2); Wren 1; Redwing 18; Goldcrest 3(2); Lesser Redpoll 2. Totals: 46 birds ringed from 9 species and 4 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 50 birds processed from 9 species.

Removing the leaves from the nets took us an age, but it is a necessary evil. We finally got away from site at 13:45. It was a thoroughly enjoyable session for the second day in a row.

With the weekend looking wet and windy, I decided upon two early mornings in a row: yesterday at Red Lodge and today we went to Somerford Common. I was joined by Laura, David and Rosie. We met at 7:30and set the following nets:

Rosie had to leave for work at 8:00, so we quickly put up net ride 5 with a lure for Redwing, as there were a lot flying around. Unfortunately for Rosie, the only bird out of the net before she had to leave was a Wren, which she got to process.

Given that we only caught 21 birds all morning at Red Lodge yesterday (even if one was a Firecrest), I was hoping for a better catch today. Yesterday we didn’t catch our first bird until 9:00: today we had caught 19 birds before 9:00 and 28 by 9:30. I had hoped that we might catch some Redwing this morning, having narrowly missed our first of the Autumn at Ravensroost Wood back on the 24^th September. I have never caught one as early as that and the one escaping the net before we could extract it was disappointing. The earliest we have caught them in the autumn was the 9^th October 2021 at Blakehill Farm. We did catch our first of this Autumn this morning:

Redwing, Turdus iliacus

We caught seven in total: two adults and five juveniles.

The list for the morning was: Blue Tit 11; Great Tit 3(2); Coal Tit 2; Long-tailed Tit 12; Wren 1; Dunnock 1; Robin 1; Redwing 7; Chiffchaff 1; Goldcrest 8(1). Totals: 47 birds ringed from 10 species and 3 birds retrapped from 2 species, making 50 birds processed from 10 species.

It was a decent catch given that we are not supplementary feeding yet. Not unusual for this site at this time of year but, given how sparse some of our catches have been this year, something of a relief to have 50 birds.

There were a couple of interesting things. The first was this Blue Tit:

The wings are shot to pieces, the alula is also very old. The primary coverts are blue but there is no sign of wing moult. I don’t think that it can be a juvenile, the wear is just too great, but possibly a second year bird that hasn’t started its post-breeding moult. Any suggestions, I would be grateful.

The second point of interest: I found one of my bird bags, empty and open lying on the path up where we set nets 1,2 and 3. It had clearly been there since our last visit on the 10^th August: it was soaking wet and covered in crud. Having taken it back to the ringing station I noticed something odd sticking up from the top edge of the bag:

It took a while to work out what it was:

A pair of mating millipedes! I have never seen anything like it before. One more to add to my collection of different animals mating seen whilst out bird ringing, following on from the pair of slugs at Ravensroost Meadows and the Caddis Flies at Lower Moor Farm. (Apologies for the quality of the photo: not a great macro function on my phone.)

With the catch having died away we started packing away at 11:40 on 49 birds. We took down rides 1 to 4. It took very little time with four of us (David’s dad, Trevor had arrived and joined in to help take down) and at 11:55 we went to take down rides 5 and 6 – to find a final Blue Tit in ride 6, giving us a nice round 50 birds from 10 species for the morning! We were all packed away and off site by 12:45.