First Damselfly of the Year

Popped down to Ecclesall Woods in Sheffield this afternoon and whilst there spotted my first damselflies of the year; a pair of Large Red Damselflies. No photos of this pair, but here are a couple from previous years.

Pair in tandem

 

Large Red Damselfly

Pulli ringing at Linacre

Last Tuesday I went down to Linacre with the Sorby Group to check the nest boxes and ring the first of this year's chicks or pulli. The first box we checked, Box 18, contained a brood of 4 well developed Great Tits.

Great Tit pullus

 

Over the next 3 hours my trainer and I checked all the boxes and ringed another 40+ pulli of either Blue or Great Tit. We also checked on the Song Thrushes and found 3 birds in the nest, which we ringed (my first Song Thrush pulli).

 

Song Thrush pullus

 

Some birds were still too young to ring on Tuesday, so I returned today with Alan and we ringed another 46 pulli (all Blue Tits) and 1 adult Blue Tit, a 5 female (born last year) with a very well developed brood patch, that was brooding some young chicks in one of the boxes. After checking the tit boxes we checked the 2 Mandarin boxes to see if the eggs had hatched. Last time we checked them (see here), both boxes contained brooding females with 10 eggs in each box, but today they were both empty, except for 2 addled eggs in 1 box and 1 dead duckling in the other. Hopefully the other ducklings got off safely. Out on the water the first Great-crested Grebe chick of the year was spotted on it's mum's back on the middle reservoir.

 

Again, there were still a few nests with young chicks not ready to ring, so I'll be back again next week!

Colour-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull and possible Caspian Gull

Whilst in Suffolk last week I spent quite a few hours at RSPB Minsmere. One morning, whilst looking out over the scrapes I spotted a colour-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull (see below).

Lesser Black-backed Gulls

 

I sent off the record to the BTO and am currently awaiting information to say where and when it was ringed. It could possibly be from nearby Orford Ness, where many birds have been ringed and tracked on their winter migration (see details here).

 

Also out on the scrapes was this large, immature gull, (left hand bird) that I think is a Caspian Gull.

 

Immature Caspian and Lesser Black-backed Gulls

 

I love looking at gulls, but I'm not great on identifying them in juvenile plumages, so if you can positively identify this bird for me, please let me know.

 

 

UPDATE: I received an email today (3rd June), telling me that my colour-ringed LBB Gull was ring as a pullus at Havergate Island, an RSPB site in Suffolk, in July 2010. This is the first sighting back in England, but it was reported 3 times in winter 2010 in Portugal and then moved south to Agadir in Morocco, where it spent the early part of 2011 and returned again in winter 2012. Interestingly, this is very similar movement to the birds from Orford Ness, in the BTO research shown above.

 

UPDATE 2: Just heard from Dominic that the above bird is definitely a Caspian Gull, so thanks for that Dominic and I'll update the Year List:

 

141 - Caspian Gull

Westleton Heath and Easton Bavents

Following on from the two posts at the weekend I thought I'd better update the blog with  some more pictures and info from my recent Suffolk visit.

First up  was an early morning visit to Westleton Heath, where, after a little searching I managed to locate a few Dartford Warblers.

Dartford Warbler

 

Also present on this site were Linnet, Chaffinch, Mistle Thrush and a singing Woodlark.

 

Later that day I "twitched" a beautiful Red-backed Shrike that was present in bushes at Easton Bavents near Southwold. Not the world's best photo, 'cause the bird was quite distant and there was a heat haze! Beautiful bird!

 

Red-backed Shrike

 

Linacre Red Kite and Nest Recording

Last year I blogged about a sighting of Red Kite over Linacre through gritted teeth, as it wasn't me who had seen it. Today, however, I can blog about my own sighting - hurrah!!!! I managed to see one very low, about 15m above my head, flying west over the top reservoir. It's been a long time coming, and I hope the next sighting will come much sooner. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a photo as I was too busy looking at it and getting over the shock/excitement.

Away from the Kite, the main reason for the trip to Linacre this morning was to check up on the progress of the nest boxes. It was quite a strange experience as I found 28 active nests (27 in the boxes and the Song Thrush nest), which was very good news, but what was weird was the fact that some had chicks that were nearly ready to fledge while others had clutches of eggs still being incubated! In previous years most of the nests have been pretty synchronised, but this year the rule book's been thrown out and anything goes!

Great Tits nearly ready to fledge

 

Eggs- not ready to fledge yet!

 

Of the 27 nests in the boxes 6 were definitely Great Tits, 12 were definitely Blue Tits and 9 were either of these two species, but couldn't be identified as they were either eggs or very young chicks. Unfortunately there was no sign of the Pied Flycatcher today and no evidence of a nest in any of the boxes. I'm popping back later in the week to ring those chicks that are old enough. More news and pictures then.

I was also very pleased to re find the Song Thrush nest and even more pleased to find it jam packed full of 4 well grown juvenile Song Thrushes. As you can see they're pretty big. Hopefully they'll still be there on Thursday!

Song Thrushes

On the water breeding was confirmed for Mallard, when a group of 9 ducklings was seen, Coot with 1 group of 3 chicks and Moorhen with 1 small chick on the middle reservoir. In addition, there was an active Coot nest on the middle reservoir and active Great-crested Grebe and Moorhen nests on the top reservoir. I couldn'y see any evidence of the grebe nest on the middle reservoir, but it could have been hidden by the vegetation, which had grown up a lot in the last two weeks.

Mallard and 8 ducklings

All of the above nests will be recorded as part of the BTO's Nest Record Scheme.

Avenue Ringing - 1st June 2013

Out this morning to the DWT's Avenue Washlands with the guys from the Sorby Breck Group for a few hours. The ringing was quiet with just 14 birds ringed, but it was nice to be out again and we were treated to our first Robin and Great Tit pulli/juveniles of the year, a new ringing tick for the site, Mistle Thrush, and to a great sighting when a Great White Egret flew up out of the reedbeds!!! This is still a pretty uncommon bird here in Derbyshire, a first for the site, and my first county record, so I sent the record off to the Derbyshire Ornithological Society.

Birds ringed today were: Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Wren, Goldfinch, Mistle Thrush, Great Tit, Blue Tit and Robin.

My totals were: (new/retrap)

Wren 0/1, Robin 1/0 and Blackcap 1/0.

juvenile Robin

RSPB Lakenheath- 28th May 2013

During our recent trip to Suffolk Jayne and I popped across to the RSPB's Lakenheath Reserve in the search of a male Red-footed Falcon, that had been present for over 3 weeks. Unfortunately, the day before our visit it had had a run in with a local Sparrowhawk and wasn't playing ball. Added to that, the weather had turned cool, wet and windy, so we left slightly disappointed!

Despite the "no-show" from the falcon, we did manage to see and hear 25 species of bird including 3 Hobbys hunting together, hunting Marsh Harriers, Reed, Sedge,Cettis and Grasshopper Warbler, "pinging"Bearded Tit, a Kingfisher and several Cuckoos, including this one that perched briefly.

Cuckoo

This Reed Warbler sat singing in the reeds near the path and I managed to grab a few shots before it disappeared again.

Reed Warbler