3Jays at Cors Dyfi

Thursday night/Friday morning saw what was hopefully the first of several mist-netting visits to the Dyfi Osprey Project at Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust's Cors Dyfi reserve. Netting is being conducted at the request of Emyr Evans to discover what else, other than Ospreys, are using the reserve to breed and in what numbers. Hopefully this may develop into a CES in future years adding to the BTOs network of CES's and helping to boost the low number of such sites in Wales.

Lots of the young warblers were still recently fledged so not moving about much but even so we did manage to catch almost 80 birds including 12 Willow Warblers, 10 Blackcaps, 10 Reed Warblers and 10 Sedge Warblers (including one wearing a French ring). 

Also caught were 3 Jays (not a bird we catch all that often) one of which got its own back on me during the photo-shoot!

'Gurning' whilst holding birds for photos is increasingly frowned upon 

but I guess in this instance it might be justified!

Unfortunately, despite showing early promise, none of the four Cuckoos present wanted to co-operate and I guess that by the time we return in a week or so they will have left on their long journey to Central Africa.

More can be found on the DOP's Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cors-Dyfi-Reserve-Observatory/1437926233102213?hc_location=timeline

Thanks to Emyr Evans for the Jay photos and Maria Wagland for the one of the Sedge Warbler

Bit of a catchup

May, June and July are probably the busiest months for most bird-ringers as we struggle to get around all of our nest boxes, find nests, do dawn catches and, if you work on Nightjars, stay up all night catching and tracking them too!! It all doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else, including blogging!

Here then is a quick run-down of what's been happening lately.

Apart from ringing over 300 Dipper pulli and checking over 250 Pied Flycatcher/Tit nest boxes (including this one with a brood of nine Marsh Tits) 

and ringing the odd Hawfinch brood, May was mostly filled with colour-ringing over 250 Chough chicks in partnership with Adrienne Stratford

and also catching a few of the un~ringed adults



as well as confirming the identity of all the ringed breeders!
 

In recent years June has been devoted largely to ringing and wing-tagging Red Kites. This year we concentrated on the Red Kites in Shropshire and Herefordshire and largely ignored all those nesting in Wales as happily it is now far too big a job with so many pairs nesting.

Some of the kite nests in Shropshire are in big trees mind!!

but, hey, always up for a challenge!

Three of the 30 odd kite chicks ringed this year.

The time freed from ringing and tagging all those kites has been spent tracking down and ringing more Kestrel chicks, 46 so far 

and Merlins

Nighttimes have been spent in pursuit of Nightjars 

but dusk and dawn also provided the odd opportunity to catch Cuckoos including this female.

All the coastal Chough activity has allowed for a Fulmar or two

Fulmars, although they look gentle enough sat on a cliff ledge are best dealt with with assistance (in this case Zac Hinchcliffe see http://zacswildlifeblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/a-real-motley-crew-of-awesomeness-19th.html) Apart from throwing-up over you like a scene from the Exorcist they are also armed with a formidable hooked beak that they aren't shy of using!

and even the occasional Shag!

Thanks to Gareth Jones for the use of the Shag and Fulmar ringing photos.

Now that the pressure is off normal blogging will resume shortly! 

Full o' voles

Over the past couple of weeks, as well as finishing off all the Chough colour-ringing and starting this year's Nightjar work we have been trying to get around a good few Kestrel and Barn Owl sites too. Paul indicated in his last post that the season was looking both early and productive and this has been borne out by the findings at other sites visited since. Clearly it is a very good vole year, hardly surprising given the very mild winter we experienced, and of 5 Kestrel nests ringed so far three were broods of 5 and 2 were broods of 6.

Checking a Kestrel nestbox

(well actually it was a Chough nest box that had been used by Kestrels!)

Six Kestrels is a pretty good consolation for not having any Choughs in the box!

All those mouths to feed means the adults were pretty busy hunting

Five Kestrels at a Shropshire nest site.

 Thanks to Michelle Frater for the photo and for finding the nest in the first place.

Barn Owls similarly have big broods of heavy chicks with many nests containing a stash of surplus food. Broods of Barn Owls encountered so far are 1 of 6, 2 of 5, 4 of 4 and 1 of 3.

Two of a health brood of five ringed earlier today

An adult caught earlier in the week. The brood patch on this bird confirmed it as a female although the plumage is fairly pale with very little spotting underneath

It is great to see Barn Owls bouncing back from the lows of last year  following  the  harsh winter of 2011/12. Hopefully this year's bumper early crop will further the re-occupation of many of the currently deserted inland sites.

Sunday morning preying...

On Sunday morning Tony and myself headed up to Montgomeryshire to ring some early broods of raptors. It didn't start too well, when the first Peregrine site we checked had failed. Thankfully things got a lot better. Our next stop was at a 'new' Goshawk site, where these two well grown chicks were sat waiting to be ringed. By the amount of crap on the floor we thought it was going to be a very big brood, but we were happy with the two (both males).

They were shortly followed by a very early brood of 'upland' Kestrels, five in total. Presumably the mild winter has had an effect with breeding times, as we wouldn't normally expect the upland Kestrels to be ready for another 3-4 weeks.

Another Peregrine site was checked on the way back, but unfortunately they had also failed! There was torrential rain a few weeks back which would have coincided with the time they were hatching, so possibly the reason for both pairs failing. Hopefully not all of the Mid Wales Peregrines will have all suffered the same fate!

In the afternoon, we both headed in different directions. Tony headed off to Ceredigion to check on one of his nest box schemes, while I headed off to some moorland in Radnorshire to check on some nests found earlier in the year. Between us we managed to ring 137 chicks: 47 Pied Flycatcher, 25 Redstart, 28 Blue Tit, 21 Great Tit, 5 Stonechat, 4 Wheatear and 7 Willow Warbler.

All in all, a bloody good day!

Ringing the entire population output of England in a day!

There can't be that many species where you can say that! On Wednesday night I drove down to Cornwall for my annual Cornish Chough ringing trip. Every year for the past 13 years (since Choughs recolonised England naturally from Ireland) the RSPB have monitored the population and mounted nest-watches using an army of dedicated volunteers. Even though most of the nests cannot be viewed directly the observations of adult behaviour the volunteers make give an accurate assessment of how old the chicks are at each nest and allow me to time my ringing visit to best effect. This year there were five nests still going and luckily there was only about a fortnight between the earliest and latest which meant we could ring them all on one day.

Three Chough chicks safely returned to their nest on a ledge 30ft down a Cornish Tin Mine. Great care is needed taking the chicks out of the nest and returning them as there is still a long way to go to the bottom!! See below

The nests are in a variety of sites comprising three sea caves and two mineshafts. Access is not easy and involves using ropes or ladders so by the time we finished the last nest at 8 pm I was pretty shattered and faced a six-hour drive home!

Seventeen chicks were ringed in all - one brood of two, two broods of three, one brood of four and one of five. By chance there was a serious sex imbalance in the early years of recolonisation, with far more males produced and surviving than females. Happily the estimates of the sex on the 17 chicks ringed yesterday was 9 males and 8 females.

The original Lizard nest is still active and contained three chicks but this year two new adults have replaced the original pioneering pair that has nested there for the past 12 years.

Many thanks to Claire Mucklow of RSPB South West for arranging everything including access permissions and to Nicola, Cat and Keith for their invaluable assistance. Many thanks too to the National Trust on whose land most of the nests are located. More info on the Cornish Chough Project can be seen on their website at http://www.cornishchoughs.org

Virtually all of the Choughs present in Cornwall are colour-ringed which has allowed valuable and detailed records to be gathered on the growth and spread of a natural recolonisation.

Celebrity Chough Ringing!

Yesterday I went along with Adrienne Stratford (and Kelvin Jones) to help her ring her first brood of Choughs of the year in a mineshaft in the Snowdonia National Park. Along for the ride (appropriately licensed by Natural Resources Wales of course!) was TV celebrity and survival expert Ray Mears and his film crew. The ringing will feature in Ray's new series of Wild Britain to be broadcast this autumn and will hopefully show why ringing is such an important tool in understanding much more about bird populations than just migration. No more details here, you'll have to watch the programme. I'll spoil the ending though - we all survived! 

Returning Whimbrel

When we started our Whimbrel colour-ringing project four years ago, one of the main questions we wanted to answer was to what extent birds used the same staging sites in West Wales in subsequent springs. So far we have had little evidence to support the idea that they do but last night Brendan, Hannah and I caught 11 more Whimbrel including A77 which was originally ringed at the same location on 13th May 2012 - our first ever record of a returning bird.

Also caught last night was a Dutch-ringed Bar-tailed Godwit, which, judging by the amount of wear on the metal ring, has been kicking about for a few years. As the bird was also colour-ringed it will be interesting to find out where else that has been seen.

What a Great Spot

Yesterday was the first round of checking most of my nest boxes around Tregaron and Strata Florida - in all nearly 200 boxes. I've been doing some of these boxes for nearly 30 years and yesterday I had a species in them I've never had before!

Whilst going around the one wood it was apparent that a Great Spotted Woodpecker had been wreaking havoc, attacking a lot of the boxes and opening the sides, despite most having metal plates. On getting to one 'damaged' box I opened the lid and inside was a Great Spot, instinctively I reached in and grabbed it before it had chance to make its escape.

Amazingly, and completely unexpected, underneath her were two eggs!

Whilst examining the bird it soon became apparent that she had a dead left leg (see top photo). She was otherwise in good shape so I decided to ring her anyway. I'm not sure if her dead leg was part of the reason she had opted for the easy option of using an existing hole in a nest box rather than excavating one but it may have been. Interestingly the stiff tail feathers, used as props when on a tree trunk, were all slightly skewed to the left presumably as a result of not sitting on the tree straight. 

On release she flew to a nearby tree and proceeded to hop up it near normally, infact, if I hadn't just handled her I would never have noticed the difference. Will be great to see if the eggs hatch and they produce the first brood of Great Spotted Woodpeckers I'll have ever ringed.

Other nests included at least 27 Pied Flycatcher,  5 Redstart, 3 Nuthatch and a load of tits!

Some of the Pied Flycatchers and Redsatrts had started incubation but most were still clutching-up

Oddstart

This afternoon I had one last go at ringing some first brood Dippers and catching  a few extra adults for our RAS project. Whilst sitting in the car watching a 20ft net I had over the stream (trying to catch an adult Dipper wearing a BTO ring only) a small bird flew into it. For the next 10 minutes or so, without a pair of bins to hand, I pondered the identity of the small bird with a white head, lying upside down in the net. I did get it right but you can see why I was having difficulty. 

Cuckoo, Cuckoo, Cuckoo

One of the benefits of working on the National Chough survey at the moment is that I get to spend a bit more time than usual in North Wales where there seem to be lots more Cuckoos than there are in Mid-Wales.

Dave and I have had a quick go at catching some over the last couple of mornings with my newly acquired stuffed Cuckoo from a nic-nac shop in Clun (a very fortunate find). We have caught three so far but hope to increase that number in the near future.

One of the three male Cuckoos caught so far this year. It has no name, just a number!

On the way to one of the sites, in the very early hours, we spotted a Long-eared Owl coming out of a small clump of trees on the side of the road. Closer inspection on the way back (having successfully ringed two Cuckoos) revealed an old Magpie nest full to the brim with 6 Long-eared Owlets and an infertile egg. 

Amazingly, given the size range within the brood, all 6 chicks, were ringable. Now why don't days like this happen more often?