About time too!!

In 2010 we started a colour-ringing project on Whimbrel passing through West Wales in the spring to try and find out more about where they were coming from, where they were going to, and if it was the same birds using the same staging post each spring.

To date we have colour-ringed over 150 Whimbrel and up until recently had received just three local resightings and a dead bird recovered in North Africa (albeit the first African Whimbrel recovery North of the Sahara). In the last few days we have received a significant boost to our results. Firstly on 21st April, John Kemp photographed a Whimbrel on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides which had been ringed on spring passage in 2013.

         Photo by John Kemp, 21st April 2014, Kilpheder, South Uist, Outer Hebrides

Then on 29th April, Marc Rapilliant photographed one at Pleubian, Brittany that had originally been caught on spring passage in May 2010. Whimbrel are long-lived birds so we hope that this is just the dribble before the gush!

Photo by Marc Rapilliard, 29th April 2014, Sillon de Talbert reserve,  Pleubian, Brittany

This year's spring passage has only just got underway, and signs are it may be fast and furious. I had a flock of over 100 whilst surveying Chough sites in North Wales just a couple of days ago. So far we have caught just five new birds but one of our best sites has been destroyed following repairs to the recent gale damage and another is strangely devoid of birds this year, again possible due to the effect of the storms. Hopefully things will improve over the next two weeks, our peak passage period.

Our sum total of knowledge on West Wales Whimbrel to date.

Green marker is ringing location, Blue Markers are sightings and Red marker is a dead bird recovered.

 Please feel free to add sightings!!

The wonder of Whimbrels in common have we

Over the past week or two Mid Wales Ringers and the Pembrokeshire Ringing Group have once again been targeting some of the many Whimbrel that pass through West Wales at this time every year on spring migration from their wintering areas in West Africa to more northerly breeding grounds. 

A few years ago I registered a colour-ringing scheme and we have since individually marked nearly 250 Whimbrel, including 40 this year so far. These birds are mainly birds caught by lamping at high tide. The Pembrokeshire Ringing Group have piggy-backed off this scheme, colour-ringing another 50 ish of the birds they have caught down there but this time mainly  by setting mist-netting at night. 

Sightings have been few and far between but have included birds in Brittany and Scotland, We also had the first North African recovery of a British-ringed Whimbrel found dead on a beach in Morocco. 

Last week I had and email from a birdwatcher in Portugal who had seen one of these colour-ringed birds sunning itself on a beach in the Algarve but unfortunately he never managed to get close enough to read the inscription so we can't say exactly which bird it was.

It is a bit disappointing that we have not had any sightings on the breeding grounds in Iceland and elsewhere yet but good things come to those that wait, I'm sure we will eventually. 

Hopefully the BTO will then be "making good use of the things that we find" in the next Migration Atlas. 

Thanks to Brendan for the Whimbrel flight shots.

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.

First Whimbrel Recovery - a first for North Africa

In a recent text I joked to Mark Grantham at the BTO about how Waxwings were far more rewarding to colour-ring than Whimbrel as we had now done well over 100 birds and were yet to get our first sighting/recovery away from the ringing site. Today he partly resolved the problem by informing me of a recent recovery of one of our birds in Morocco! This is only the 10th BTO recovery of this species in Africa and amazingly the first north of the Sahara! The bird was picked up alive on a beach near Agadir on 20th March but died soon after. It was passed to an avian vet who conducted a post mortem but found nothing other than slight haemorrhaging around the head and neck. Most of the Whimbrel we ring are caught on spring migration in April and May but oddly this bird was one of very few ringed on autumn passage - on 11th August 2010. The recovery location is very close to Sous-Massa National Park so odd to think it had probably been consorting with Northern Bald Ibis just before it died!

L7 found dead on a beach near Agadir, Morocco 2 and a half years after ringing

Another bird ringed on the same day 

The ringing (green) and recovery (red) locations

Above map from Robinson, R.A. & Clark, J.A.(2012) The Online Ringing Report:  Bird ringing in Britain & Ireland in 2011 BTO, Thetford (http://www.bto.org/ringing-report,  created on 7-September-2012, shows all foreign recoveries to date (ours added)

Whimbrel records building slowly

Today I received an email from José Velhote informing me of a sighting of one of our colour-ringed Whimbrels at Murtosa, Ria-de-Aveiro, Portugal (see photo above). This is the first sighting of a West Wales colour-ringed ringed Whimbrel in Portugal and follows on rapidly from a record of a colour-ringed bird from Pembrokeshire recently photographed in the Gambia (surprisingly the first record of a BTO-ringed Whimbrel in Gambia)

The bird in question was ringed at Llanon on 3rd May 2010 and was resighted on 1st May 2016.

Wandering Whimbrel

I recently received an email with the photos below attached of Whimbrel D74 feeding in pasture fields at Dokkedal in Denmark on 11th July 2016. This is a great sighting and according to the BTO's online ringing reports it is only the fourth record of a BTO ringed Whimbrel in Denmark. It was originally ringed on spring passage on 30th April 2016 at Llanon, Ceredigion

Photos © Jens V. Vendelbo

Additionally, Dolly, one of the two Curlews we satellite-tagged at Dolydd Hafren, that was confirmed nesting on the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire (map shown in the last blog post), has now crossed the Irish Sea and is hanging around the Barrow Estuary near Waterford in Southern Ireland. Sadly Fran, the other bird, has not been heard of since Mid April and I'm afraid the tag has either failed or she is no longer with us.

Whimbrel colour-ringing

Last night Jane and I had a trip to the coast south of Aberystwyth in search of Whimbrel. It is still a bit early in the season yet, with birds only recently recorded moving through, but we did manage to catch 4 out of 4 so no complaints!

We have colour-ringed over 80 Whimbrel now since spring 2010 but apart from one seen by Marc Hughes a few kilometres inland of where it was ringed there have been a very disappointing number of re-sightings so far. Any Icelandic or Gambian birders reading this, come on - pull your fingers out!!

Dun-in!

May is a good month to catch migrating waders. Most of the Whimbrel we colour-ring are caught in either the last week of April or the first two weeks of May so recently all attention has been on the coast, mostly south of Aberystwyth. On Sunday night however, Paul and Silvia went to Ynyslas on the first of a very good set of tides and managed to ring 49 Dunlin. With Paul reporting over 600 Dunlin present Jacques, Jane and I paid a visit the following night when the tide was slightly later (and therefore it was also a bit darker) and caught an amazing 110 Dunlin, 1 Whimbrel and a Short-eared Owl that was also cashing-in on the wader bonanza.

Interrupted eating an unfortunate Dunlin.

 This bird was aged and sexed as a 5F (i.e. hatched in 2015) based on tail pattern and the colour of the inner web of the outer secondaries and thick streaking on the underside.

By rights this should be a photo of a Dunlin but to be honest I've seen

 quite enough of them for a while!!

The total of 112 birds is the highest number of birds dazzled in a single evening by anyone within the group. With catching that good Jacques and I couldn't resist returning the following evening and managed to boost that record catch even higher to 156 with another 149 Dunlin (plus a couple of retraps), 2 Whimbrel, 1 Sanderling and a Turnstone. In the 30 years I have been ringing at Ynyslas I have never seen anything quite like it, there were  literally thousands of birds present and a good number were actually picked off the sand by hand! It was like walking through a blizzard.  Catching was limited solely by the time it took to bag birds up and the number of bird-bags I had with me. 

With so many birds to ring and process it was a late finish and a real struggle driving home - not good really for getting up early and driving 300 miles to ring Choughs in Cornwall the following day! 

Cornish Chough Ringing 2016

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!

First day of the 2012 Chough campaign!

Spent yesterday with Adrienne Stratford checking on Chough nests in Meirionydd and Ceredigion. 2012 looks to have got off to a bit of an early start with some broods at least a week ahead of normal. 

Getting to the nests proves quite interesting at times but as can be seen we aren't completely cavalier about H&S and do wear hats on occasions!!

Two broods were colour-ringed during the day (probably the earliest we've ever ringed them) and another three broods weren't quite ready yet.

A cuppa break in a blackthorn-lined layby in Meirionydd yielded a couple of "extras" in terms of this cracking male Lesser Whitethroat,  3 Whitethroats and 2 Dunnocks!

Later in the evening a spot of lamping at Ynyslas with Jane produced 22 Dunlin, 2 Ringed Plovers and a Whimbrel and Gareth Richardson, a regular visiting ringer, down for a few days holiday had an additional 17 Dunlin. There was a heavy passage going on with hundreds of Dunlin and at least half a dozen Whimbrel present. Tonight's weather forecast is looking foul so dare say we'll be out again!!

Sorted for E's and Whimbs

There's a pretty hefty passage of Whimbrel at the moment so on Saturday night I headed down the coast to try and get a few more colour-ringed. Good job its Chough ringing time of year as well otherwise I might have been caught out with insufficient ring stock!! Amazingly I managed to catch 30, that surely has to be some sort of record Whimbrel catch!! Had enough E's on me but ran out of colour-rings with one bird left to do - sod's law is that'll be the one! Certainly a night to remember and a counteraction to all those doom and gloom stories about how good things used to be! Still can't quite believe it!

The following day saw Paddy Jenks and his daughter Deryn, Wendy James and I tackling some of the more difficult to access Chough nests in south Ceredigion. Four nests checked and 3 broods colour-ringed (2 x 4, 1 x 2). The other was still sitting on 4 eggs so need to go back in a months's time. Slept well last night!

Tern, tern and tern again!

 Last night Paul, Jane, Dave Reed and I were joined by Marc Hughes and his son Aled to have a go at netting the high tide roost at Ynyslas. This year there are loads more terns than normal with unusual numbers of comic terns (170+) joining the 500+ Sandwich Terns present. There have even been a few Little and Black Terns and a lone Gull-billed Tern thrown in. Last nights high tide was a bit early in the evening so it wasn't quite dark enough to catch on the rising tide, even so, a total of 46 birds were caught comprising 25 Dunlin, 3 Knot, 3 Turnstone, 3 Oystercatcher, 1 Redshank, 1 Whimbrel, 8 Sandwich Terns (including 1 control), 1 Arctic Tern and (most of) 1 Common Tern! (-it didn't have an upper mandible!!)

Given the weather this year it is a long time since so many bird bags 

were called into use at the same time!

 

Juv Arctic Tern

A rare autumn Whimbrel. This juvenile was the 53rd we've caught so far this year but the only one since May!

Aled enjoying a late night Sandwich

A noteworthy observation was that the majority of the Dunlin were adults - this is very unusual in autumn catches at Ynyslas where the vast majority of Dunlin caught on Autumn passage are normally juveniles!

Off to have another go tonight before the windy weather returns and scuppers things for a while!

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. 

Peewit project...

Last night Silvia and I headed out on to the hills of mid Wales, to a couple of our regular 'winter wader dazzling' sites to see what Storm Ophelia would help us catch. As predicted, the winds were very strong. This had clearly effected the number of birds that were feeding out in the open in the fields. Thankfully there were still some birds to have a go at catching! One of our target birds for the night was Lapwing as the group had recently received permission to start colour ringing them, and the colour rings themselves had just turned up in the post! Despite seeing up to 7 Lapwings at the first site, I couldn't seem to get near enough to catch them so I was beginning to think that we would have to wait to kick start the groups new project. Thankfully at our second site there were a few more Lapwings to try and catch. I altered my approach to the birds, and bingo within the space of a few minutes I had trapped 2 Lapwings.

CA and CC became the first two Lapwing to have our colour rings put on.

All of the Lapwings we catch from now on will have a red plastic ring above the metal BTO ring on the right tarsus, and a white darvic on the right tibia with (for now) 2 letters in black writing. Since 2010 the group has ringed over 200 Lapwings without receiving a single recovery. With our coloring ringing projects on Golden Plover, Curlew, Whimbrel and Dunlin already giving us some fantastic recoveries, we're hoping that putting colour rings on Lapwings will increase our chances of recoveries, and hopefully help us identify where our birds are coming from, and why they are declining as a breeding species in this area!

Its been a very productive few days for dazzling, and in the last 8 nights Silvia and I have had some very good catches. Total birds trapped are - 54(+4) Golden Plover, 2 Lapwing, 1 Woodcock, 29(+2) Snipe, 22(+7) Jack Snipe, 1 Redwing and 10 Meadow Pipit.

Numerous Notable Numenius

Over the summer I have once again been busy working on the Curlew Country project trying to reverse population declines of this charismatic wader in the Shropshire Hills and Welsh Marches. Part of this work involves colour-ringing adult Curlews at the Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust's Dolydd Hafren Reserve on the Severn between Welshpool and Newtown. To date we have colour-ringed 114 adults there along with about 40 at other sites including a coastal site at Llanrhystud, just south of Aberystwyth. Our main focus is to gather information on breeding site fidelity and adult survival rates but long-distance movements are always of great interest. In May, a mate of mine, Clive McKay, emailed to say that whilst he was out doing survey work he came across one of our colour-ringed Curlews on its nesting territory in Lanarkshire. This bird proved to be one of the ones colour-ringed at the winter roost at Llanrhystud. On 4th May 2017, another of the birds from this roost was resighted nearly 2,000km NE on its breeding grounds in Lapua, Finland. These two recoveries show clearly how birds wintering together at a single site may have very different origins. Then, on 11th July 2017 the curlew below, ringed at Dolydd Hafren, was photographed at Petit Port, Jersey, Channel Islands by Mick Dryden- was this a local breeding bird moving south having failed in its nesting attempt? 

Curlew at Petit Port, Jersey © Mick Dryden

Finally, to cap off a great set of recoveries,  a short while ago, on 24th September I was netting again at Llanrhystud and caught a German-ringed Curlew wearing colour-rings. 

                                                                    German-ringed Curlew at Llanrhystud © Tony Cross

I had hoped that this bird would have been one ringed by Natalie Meyer, with whom we have been working to promote Curlew conservation internationally and had spent some time with recently at the International Wader Study Group conference in Prague but alas it wasn't and I am still awaiting details.

Curlew Resightings Map © Mid Wales Ringing Group

The map above shows all the Curlew colour-ring sightings so far with wintering sites shown as blue markers and breeding season records as orange markers Although a fairly new project the Curlew colour-ringing has already provided a wealth of information and will continue to do so for many more years to come.

Whilst I'm blogging, here's a great shot of one of the other Numenius we colour-ring! A Whimbrel photographed on its breeding territory in Iceland for the second year running by Camilo Carneiro - ringed at Llanon on 26th April 2012.

Two massive milestones

Whilst out ringing Dippers recently, as a (very) temporary addition to BTO staff, I ringed our 500th Dipper of the year! This is something we have never achieved before and shows the increase in the scale of our Dipper project. Congratulations to Paul, Lloyd, Vince and Bryan who all played a part in this mighty achievement. This bird, or one very close to it, was also the 100,000 bird to be entered onto my IPMR database.

The database details birds ringed, retrapped or controlled on my permit since I became a 'C' ringer back in August 1980 (but is not yet complete as I still have to enter historical data for all birds ringed in 1981 - 1986!)

Notable new bird species totals (reflecting our specific projects) include:

(figures in brackets are % of British and Irish all-time total 1902-2012)

Little Egret 337  (38.6%)
Chough 2,955  (37.9%)

Red Kite 2,621  (32.9%)

Raven 2,821  (20.2%)

Woodcock 1,803  (12.5%)

Hawfinch 277 (11.5%)

Golden Plover 608 (8.0%)

Whimbrel 204  (7.1%)

Dipper 3,892  (5.1%)

Little Grebe 65  (3.9%)

Nightjar 223 (3.6%)

Pied Flycatcher 7,612 (1.2%)

Doesn't bear thinking what I might have achieved with all that time and money if I hadn't been introduced to bird-ringing at school!