Super Saturday!

If the Olympics can have a Super Saturday so can I! Saturday's ringing session in Sheffield was great with 65 bird ringed (16 by me), a ringing tick and a new bird for the site, in the form of a Linnet, and I also extracted birds from the nets for my first time - 2 House Sparrows.

Linnet

Other birds ringed today by me were: Blackcap (adult female), Nuthatch (1 juvenile), Dunnock (2 juveniles; 1 new and 1 retrap), Long-tailed Tit ( 1 juvenile), House Sparrow (3 juveniles), Blackbird ( 1 juvenile), Great Tit (1 retrap), Blue Tit (2 juveniles), Goldfinch (2 juveniles) and a Greenfinch (1 juvemile male).

Swallow roost success

On Tuesday night I went out with the Sorby Breck Ringing Group  for the first of the year's Swallow roost ringing sessions at The Avenue Washlands site in Chesterfield.

The Avenue at nightfall

We set up at about 6.30pm and managed to get a small catch as the first few birds began to arrive at the reedbed. This first catch contained 2 Sand Martins (a ringing tick for me), a Reed Bunting and 1 Swallow. However, this was just the start as, by the end of the night, we'd caught an amazing total of 150 birds!! Of these, 143 were Swallows with the others being those mentioned above along with 3 Reed Warblers. What a night!

The Sand Martins that we caught were my first encounter with this species, but, as seen in the photos below, were very easy to age as their plumage was very different.

Juvenile bird

Adult bird

One of the real joys of ringing birds is when you recapture a bird that has been ringed before. In amongst tonight's Swallows was one adult that was wearing a ring. On checking the group's records it turned out that this bird had been ringed at the same site by a member of our group on 31st August 2011 as a juvenile bird. This bird, therefore, has flown all the way to South Africa, spent the winter there and then flown back to Britain to breed again this year. Pretty amazing!! Hopefully we'll see him again next year and perhaps also some of this year's birds. Fingers crossed.

Other birds seen on site tonight were: Swift (approx.10 and my latest ever record in Derbyshire), House Martin, Mallard, Moorhen, Coot, Grey Heron, Canada Goose and Barnacle Goose ( 1 feral bird with the Canadas),

Return to the reeds- ringing tick.

Way back in March I blogged about a ringing trip to Poolsbrook Marsh near Chesterfield (see here).  Unfortunately, until Sunday we've been unable to get back to this site to do any ringing, due to the terrible weather we've been having.

Sunday's trip was a very early start of 5.30am and, once we'd reloacted the ringing rides, cut back the reeds and put the nets up, we waited to see how the reedbed breeders had fared. The first net round seemed okay when 2 Reed Warblers (1 adult and 1 juvenile) found their way into the nets. Unfortunately, the following rounds were very disappointing with just 1 more Reed Warbler ( a retrap, possibly from last year) being caught and absolutely no Sedge or Grasshopper Warblers at all!

Reed Warbler (my first!)

Luckily, we had also put up a couple of nets in the scrub around the reedbeds and we did get a good catch of mixed tits and warblers (Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Willow Warbler and Chiffchaff) in them bringing the day's total to 21 birds.

Other birds seen on site were: Swift (2), Swallow, Mute Swan, Grey Heron and Kingfisher.

The Reed Warbler was a year tick:

149 - Reed Warbler

Cornwall news

Hi there. Just got back from a lovely two weeks in sunny Cornwall, so here's a short post about some of the things I've seen.

First news is that whilst away I managed to add a few more species to the "Year List".

143 – Little Egret

144 – Common Sandpiper
145 – Whimbrel
146 – Mediterranean Gull
147 – Manx Shearwater
148 – Sandwich Tern

Most of the new additions were from the RSPB's  Hayle Estuary reserve. Little Egret were seen on all visits, usually around about 5 birds, 2 Common Sandpipers were seen on most visits and around 4 Whimbrel were feeding with 70+ Curlew.

Whimbrel

There were at least 3 Mediterranean Gulls (2 moulting adults and 1 juvenile bird), usually seen in the high tide roost.

Mediterranean Gull

Away from the reserve the Manx Shearwaters were seen daily flying past "The Island" in St Ives  with hundreds of Gannets and the Sandwich Terns were seen fishing around the causeway at St Michael's Mount in Penzance.

In addition to the birds I also managed a couple of new butterflies and moths; Garden Tiger Moth and Dark Green Fritillary.

Linacre news- at last!

Sorry that I haven't been blogging about Linacre much, but I did get down this morning, so there is something to blog about. I spent four hours with the Sorby Breck ringers this morning and managed to ring nineteen birds.

Out of the 19 birds I ringed 5; 2 Coal Tits (1 juvenile and 1 adult), 1 Dunnock, 1 Willow Tit and a Great Tit. Interestingly and quite worryingly, the young Coal Tit was the only young bird we caught today. Where are all the youngsters? We ringed nearly 150 Blue and Great Tits in the boxes at Linacre, so we were hoping to retrap some of these in the nets. Perhaps during the autumn/winter when there isn't so much natural food around and feeders become more important?

Other birds ringed today were Blue Tit, Chiffchaff (1), Nuthatch and Chaffinch.

There were a few insects around this morning including 4 species of butterfly: Red Admiral, Small Tortoiseshell, Meadow Brown and Ringlet.

Ringlet

This ladybird was also feeding on a teasel. I think it's a Harlequin, but I'm not sure.

Harlequin ladybird?

Baslow Sewage Farm

A return visit to Baslow Sewage Farm this morning was a big improvement on my last visit, with 22 birds of 6 species ringed, including two new species for me; House Martin and Jackdaw.

The House Martin was the second bird of the day and turned out to be a bird born last year. I'd read that they have feathered legs, but today's bird was my first chance to see it in the flesh- lovely!

House Martin

The other new bird, a Jackdaw, was one of four rung today. Mine was one of this year's birds, a 3J which had begun it's post juvenile moult and therefore became a 3JP! The picture below is one of the adults we rung. Note the silver hood and blueish iris.

Jackdaw

Other birds rung today were: Swallow (all adults, no juveniles!), one juvenile Chaffinch, juvenile Grey Wagtails and several adult and juvenile Pied Wagtails. 

I'm off to Linacre tomorrow (at last), so hopefully I should be able to bring you some updatres from there.

That's more like it!

Following last week's quiet ringing session this morning saw the group out at a private site in Sheffield in near perfect conditions. 3 nets were set and during the morning, 22 birds were caught.

Species caught today were: Wren (juveniles), Blackbird (juveniles), Blue Tit (adult), Goldfinch(juveniles), Dunnock (juveniles), Whitethroat(1 juvenile), House and Tree Sparrow(adult and juveniles) and Great-spotted Woodpecker (1 juvenile). Unfortuntaely I'd forgotten to take my camera and I couldn't work out how to use my 'phone's camera, so no photos today!

What was really good to see was the number of juvenile birds present, so at least some birds have survived the recent terrible weather. Out of the 22 birds, I managed to ring or retrap 7, including one particular Tree Sparrow which was one that we had rung in the boxes that are present on this site. Hopefully we'll catch it again over the coming months.