Netting turns to nesting in the Hawfinch wood

All too soon the 2013 Hawfinch netting season at our RAS feeding site in North Wales has drawn to a close. In what was probably our final attempt this spring, Dave, Jane, Adrienne Stratford and I caught just three Hawfinch, all of which were retraps (although one was from 2011). The total of new birds for the year finished at 61. The Hawfinch studies are far from over for the year though.  This morning we installed three motion sensitive cameras on three nests that Dave had found earlier in the week. The cameras have been supplied by RSPB scientists and are being used to study predation rates and to identify the main culprits of said predation. Hopefully they will fail in this latter objective on these three nests and we will get to colour-ring our first ever Hawfinch pulli! Dave is on annual leave at present, desperately searching for more nests before the leaves emerge fully and make them impossible to see. All nests are being checked closely for colour-ringed adults too.

Hawfinch nests are often high in the tops of tall trees making nests hard to locate and difficult to monitor. Installing motion sensitive cameras makes things a whole lot easier.

Nests can then be safely checked from the ground, whilst having a brew!

I've never actually seen Hawfinch nests and eggs close-up before. They are an absolutely marvellous construction. like a miniature  deep-cupped woodpigeon nest lined with lichen. Here are close-ups of the three I climbed to today. Clutch sizes were 1 x 3, 1 x 4 and 1 x 5

From Aber to ABBA?

Have just received an email from Peter Olsson, the ringer who is researching the rare race of Baltic Dunlin, one of which we caught near Llanrhystud on 16th April 2013. Apparently he was observed singing at Tygelsjö ängar back on his Swedish breeding grounds yesterday, just 5km from where he was ringed as a chick! 

The capture in Wales was very unexpected and Peter speculates that it may have been following Scottish or Icelandic birds on its first spring migration. It is amazing to have been able to contribute to their research.

Busy Day, Mixed Bag

Wednesday started very early as Jane and I tried for Whimbrels at high tide. It is still early in the season but we did managed 4 new Whimbrel along with a Curlew and a re-trap Oystercatcher. Then, after a couple of hours sleep, we headed up north to meet Dave for more Ring Ouzel and Hawfinch ringing. After just a short wait we were successful in trapping and colour-ringing another cracking male on his breeding site (PS. just heard that Ring Ouzel AA, that we ringed there last week, was hit and killed by a car on Thursday! Sickening, what a tragic waste!)

At 07.45 we arrived at our garden Hawfinch site where we caught 2 new Hawfinch. There was a nice bit of by-catch too in the way of a first-year Jay and an adult  male Sparrowhawk.

The rest of the day was spent at our main RAS feeding site where we caught another 14 Hawfinch including 7 more new birds. The total of new Hawfinch ringed this year is now just 1 short of what we managed in 2012 but still less than half that achieved in 2011. Where are they all coming from?

Added interest here came in the form of two stunning male Wood Warblers, these really are a personal favourite. 

Big Dipper Days

Friday and Saturday were spent going around a whole load of Dipper nests in our RAS area in Shropshire and Mid Wales. This time of the year we would expect to be ringing most of the broods but things got off to a very slow start this year with many pairs almost a month later than normal! In all 73 regular sites were checked, 59 of which showed some signs of occupancy (a nest or part-built nest). 31 pairs were still laying or incubating eggs and 23 full clutch sizes were obtained (1 x 6, 16 x 5 & 6 x 4). 

Only 18 nests contained chicks (and two of the broods were dead in the nest). 11 broods, totalling 43 chicks in all, were ringed. In addition, 4 adults were colour-ringed at the nest and another 14 adults were identified from existing colour-rings. 

We don't colour-ring all our pulli Dippers because, unfortunately,  the vast majority of them will never be seen or heard of again once they fledge. Young birds ringed in the nest are colour-ringed if they are caught again in the autumn during roost monitoring.

Class of 2013

After a few technical glitches the woodocockwatch.com website is now giving details of this winters tagged woodcock and their miration routes.

Departure was delayed by the cold weather and constant easterlies. On previous winters most of the woodcock on my ringing site would be well on their way in the last week of March, but this spring I ringed my last woodcock on April 13th.

It has been interesting to compare routes taken by the birds. Most head off in an easterly direction but Moc seems to have had other ideas and headed north first before making a major correction in strengthening winds over the sea off Liverpool.

A wind map on the day Moc changed course off Liverpool.

 It is slightly worrying that we have not had good data from Moc since he arrived on the coast of Norfolk. Two of the Cornish birds took a south eaterly route towards France before diverting towards Russia, and one of the Irish birds took the same route stopping off in Cornwall. 

The Class of 2013

Olwen, the other Welsh tagged bird is now very near to St Petersburg. For more information visit www.woodcockwatch.com or visit the Woodcock Network facebook page where there are regular updates.

Olwen's location on 23/4/13, 20 days after departure.

Whimbrel ringing - its a gas!

Caught the first Whimbrel of the season this morning with Jane and Brendan Sheils. There are a few going through now but catching conditions are not great with a large moon and windy weather.

Hopefully we should get a fair few more in the next fortnight or so and are hoping to get a few resightings of birds colour-ringed in previous years. Other birds caught were two Oystercatchers, a Ringed Plover, 2 Chiffchaffs and a Whitethroat!

Fellowship of the Ring - Ouzel

Yesterday started with an early morning spot of garden mist-netting in North Wales. This was no ordinary garden netting though as the target was, once again, Hawfinch. I was emailed an amazing statistic this morning from the current BTO volunteering magazine that in Britain between 1970 and 2010 there has been a 76% contraction in the breeding range of the Hawfinch. This is one of the main reasons we are concentrating our efforts on this nationally important population and collaborating with RSPB research scientists from the Lodge. 

Over the past few months the owners of this particular garden have had over 40 different colour-ringed Hawfinches on their feeders!  In a couple of hours Dave, Jane, Sarah Cookson and I caught over 50 birds, mostly Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Redpoll and Siskin but also 5 Hawfinches, remarkably, all of which were new. Many thanks to the the owners for their co-operation and hospitality (names and location withheld for obvious reasons). Afterwards we headed to our usual Hawfinch RAS feeding site where we managed to catch another 8 birds of which 5 were also new, making a total of 43 new birds so far this year.

Cracking adult male with a fine set of "crinkles" (see below)

Can't get over these amazing 3 dimensional inner primaries.

At 5pm, in an act of blatant over-optimism, we headed off to try and catch Ring Ouzels. As you can see from the photos below, amazingly, we succeeded, catching and colour-ringing a fine adult male.

Despite having been up since 4 am doing Black Grouse counts Dave just about manages the appropriate facial expression!

A very interesting Dunlin!

 I have just received the following information from Peter Olsson on the Swedish ringed Dunlin Jane and I caught on 16th April at Llanrhystud.

"Hi Tony Cross,
many many thanks for this very interesting report. Yes, the bird was ringed by our ringing group as a newly hatched chick on the 24th of May 2011 at Eskillstorps ängar in south westernmost Sweden. The bird was observed as a chick 2 days after the ringing. Since then the bird has not been reported, until you caught the bird. The breeding Baltic Dunlins are highly threatened, only some 20 pairs are left in the area and less than 400 pairs in the whole of the Baltic Sea area.
I would very much appreciate any further information you may have on the bird.
Kind regards,
Peter Olsson"

Dunlins North and South

In a recent batch of recoveries from BTO headquarters we were notified of a Dunlin ringed at Ynyslas on 16th September last year which had been controlled by Dutch ringers at Ebeik Aiznay, Mauritania on 13th December 2012 - 3,776 kms distant 88 days later. This is the first African recovery of nearly 2,000 Dunlins we have ringed in Wales over the past 25 years so quite exciting.

 Interestingly I then go and catch a colour-ringed bird at Llanrhystud that was wearing a Swedish ring and is probably from a long-running study of the rare race of Dunlin found in the Baltic. I will obviously post details when they come through.

A fare catch for mid April.

Last night myself and Tony headed out for a spot a dazzling to see if there were any Golden Plovers about. After drawing a blank at our first site we then headed to our most productive site on the Ceri Ridgeway. Despite only seeing single figures of Goldies, we still managed to catch 3 of them. Annoyingly 2 were seen with colour rings on, but I couldn't get close enough to read them!!

 

We also managed to catch 5 Fieldfares and a Skylark.