Brrrrrrrramblings...

The weather finally turned wintery today, with snow falling at one of our Brambling sites. With the wind still blowing we opted for the woosh net instead of mist nets. This proved to be a good plan, as we managed to catch 35 (our highest daily total so far) new Brambling, taking our total catch in recent weeks to 91.

A great poker hand!!!

I doubt there have been many occasions where four Jacks have been trapped and ringed at the same time, but today was one of those days. After seeing several Jack Snipe while out lamping/dazzling on one of our ringing sites, myself and Silvia decided to have a go at mist netting them as they came in to roost yesterday morning. Despite seeing a couple of them, only one Common Snipe was caught. Time for plan C! So this afternoon we headed up there again, this time with Tony and his drag net. This proved to be a great plan C, as we caught three on the first attempt, and another on the second (narrowly missing a fifth too!!). A total of seven birds were seen, but I dare say there were more. We had also caught two more by lamping earlier in the week, so who knows how many birds are using this roost?

Of the four caught today, three were new birds and the other was a re-trap from last December. Despite catching 15-20 Jack Snipe each year, this was our first different year re-trap! And caught in the same field too. So maybe they are site faithful like the Woodcock that also winter in the UK?

The most reliable way of ageing Jack Snipe is on the under tail coverts. Large dark streaks on the adult (right) and much thinner streaks on the juvenile (left).

Distinctly Irish

I have just had four days over in Ireland with Wicklow ringers Damian Clarke and Ann Fitzpatrick. Having been introduced to Dipper ringing on his trips over to Wales, Damian is keen to start a RAS project for Dippers in Wicklow but at present only has a specific A permit for raptors and Raven. I said I'd pop over and provide a bit of training for roost catching Dippers and also for lamping Woodcock to give them a bit more to do in the long winter months! Unfortunately the timing of these activities clashed somewhat with another favourite Irish pass-time although we did manage a couple!

Ireland has four distinct subspecies and whilst I was over we managed to catch three out of the four. Dipper is one, with the Irish race showing less chestnut on the breast and resembling a half-way stage between our dipper and the Black-bellied Dipper found on the continent.

Irish sub-species of Dipper, with less chestnut on the chest and also slightly larger I thought. The largest one of the 55 we caught was 103 mm and the heaviest weighed 78 grams.

Irish Coal Tit shows much yellower cheeks than ours.

and not sure what the distinct difference is here as I've not handled enough British ones! Less famous perhaps!

The fourth (elusive) subspecies is Jay. Didn't see any of them.

Greylag Gosse. We have these in Wales too but it was a first for me so all good training. Unfortunately I doubt it was one of those that come down from Iceland for the winter though!

Back of the net!

I'm not sure what the world record for woodcock catching is, but last night I caught 25 out of 52 seen. It was an epic with 12 new birds ringed, 5 retraps of birds ringed earlier this winter, and 8 retraps of birds ringed over previous winters.

Meandering back to Wales.

After a long wait I now have a map made up from the data from one of the woodcock geo-locators that I recovered on my ringing site last winter.

EX42351

 

 

The red track shows the spring migration and the yellow the autumn migration.

What is fascinating is the fact that this bird spent the summer in two locations in Russia. It is quite possible that the location where it stayed between early May and late June was it's breeding location and then it re-located further south for a post-nuptual moult from July to early October.

We always consider that woodcock return to their wintering grounds in October or November however EX42351 took it's time to come back to Wales only arriving back in Llanilar on January 20th. This fits an emerging picture that most of the woodcock I see early in the winter are juveniles and that more adults appear in December and January. Counts conducted by the bird observatories on our east coast often show a significant arrival of woodcock if the weather gets cold on the continent. 

It would make sense for an adult woodcock not to migrate further west than it needs to. Apart from avoiding the risky business of flying such a long way, there must be significant advantages of being back on the breeding grounds in Russia in a fitter state than birds that have had to travel further to get back

Could it be that many adults use their experience to decide when to migrate further west, whereas juveniles only have their innate instinct and so head west when the autumn triggers for migration such as temperature and daylight length occur?

Scandinavian invasion!

Today at a private garden near Newtown I managed to catch 5 out of about 150 Bramblings present. I had hoped it would be more but the birds were feeding on natural food at numerous spots over a wide area. This year there is a very good Beech mast crop, something that spells good times for lots of our seed eating birds (this was evidenced by the hordes of Blue Tits and Coal Tits I also caught!). I've now started baiting a good netting site so hopefully the next trip will be slightly more successful in terms of the number of Bramblings ringed - I hope so,  sunflower hearts aren't cheap!.  Tomorrow morning I'm off to try and catch a few at a site further west were there is currently a flock of well over 1,200!! 

It has been a good while since I managed to ring any number of these stunning finches but I've got a feeling this winter is going to be exceptional. Here is an adult male, note the lack of any contrast in the greater coverts, the black primary coverts and the rounded tail feathers.

Record year for Jack Snipe

If we look at the UK and Ireland ringing totals for Jack Snipe over the past 12 years since 2001 we can see that it is an infrequently caught bird where the numbers ringed fluctuates greatly in relation to the weather conditions. Since the start of our extensive Woodcock and Golden Plover ringing projects in 2009 we have started to catch good numbers and currently ring a significant proportion of all Jack Snipe ringed each year (over 20% in 2011).

This year early indications were of a good influx of birds into Britain as detailed on the BTO's Birdtrack

http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/birdtrack/news-archive/2013-11/jack-list

Our own ringing has supported this and last night I scored another "hat-trick" and at the same time ringed the 23rd Jack Snipe of the year. So far we have ringed 94 Jack Snipe since 1981 but have yet to have our first bird recovered. Up to the end of 2012 just  4,554 Jack Snipe had ever been ringed in UK and Ireland and although recovery rates are low these have provided a good insight into where our winter birds originate from and travel on to.

Hopefully one or two of these recent birds may one day also grace the updated page on the BTO website.

One Show Woodcock

With plenty of woodcock around I have been out a lot over recent nights. On Thursday 28th Nov I made a retrap of a woodcock I ringed on my site near Llanilar on 9th Nov 2010. This bird was fitted with a geo-locator by Dr Andrew Hoodless ( GWCT) and Miranda Krestovnikoff whilst being filmed for a wildlife piece that went out on the BBC One Show later that year.

This bird was in great condition weighing 345gms, and once removed there was little sign that it had been carrying a geo-locator for the past three years.

The geo-locator will now be sent to Andrew Hoodless so that he can recover the data and establish its migration tracks. The batteries only last for 18 months so we won't get this birds full history since being tagged. However as this bird was tagged in novemeber, unlike all the other tagged birds that were fitted with geo-locators in the spring, we will be able to see where this bird went for the rest of its first winter carrying its tag. As the weather in winter 2010 turned very cold soon after tagging we might get some information on the cold weather relocation of this bird.

This tag was one of four that were fitted in 2010 as a part of my training for my unconventional marks endorsement, so far we have recovered two of these. In the winter of 2011/12 ten more geo-locators were fitted and in 2012/13 a further twenty. These were partly purchased by funds raised by the Woodcock Network.

I am very optimistic that we will make further recoveries of geo-locators on this site over the coming few winters. I will post details of this bird journeys and those of the other recovered geo-locators from this site shortly.

You can see more information on all things woodcock on our The Woodcock Network facebook page.

1 in 10,000

Last night Sarah, Brendan, Hannah and I had a go at catching Starlings at a roost I recently found near Bwlch-y-Sarnau. Starlings are known for their spectacular nocturnal gatherings and last night's was no exception. 

A VERY small percentage of the total number of birds coming in to roost

The roost itself is in a relatively small plantation of ca. 40ft conifers. Because of the numbers involved I didn't want to set nets anywhere where we might catch too many to handle so went for just two nets on the outside of the plantation on the 'approaches'. As it turns out I should maybe have been a bit more adventurous as we only caught 12 birds, about 1 for every 10,000 coming into the roost!!  

As you can imagine such gatherings attract the attention of all kinds of predators and at least two Peregrines, 1 Goshawk, 2 Sparrowhawks and a couple of Buzzards were milling around choosing lunch. Unfortunately, one of them (probably a Goshawk by the description) briefly spent time sitting in one of the mist-nets but managed to get out before I could run around from the other side of the plantation!

A lamping session afterwards produced 9 new Woodcock out of about 40 odd seen - a much more satisfying catch rate to end the night on.

Incoming Redshank

Yesterday morning Brenda Cook and I had a go at mist-netting waders on the coast south of Aberystwyth. At high tide, just on dawn, we managed to catch nine birds including 3 Curlew, 4 Turnstone and 2 Redshank. Amazingly both Redshank and one of the Turnstones were controls and judging by the wear on the rings of the Redshank they have both been kicking around for a few years. One of the Redshank was also colour-ringed so Cardiff Bay seems a likely origin. I will post details when they are available.