Mullion gull's Spanish holiday

It was a bit of a surprise this week to receive an email asking for details of a sighting of one of our Mullion Island gulls from January 2018, as the finder had misplaced them. Lucky for us this was chased up as the bird had never actually been reported to us and is the first of our birds to be seen in Spain! So many thanks to Antonio Gutierrez for chasing this and to Juan Carlos Andrés for photographing the bird (below) in Ondarroa harbour on the north coast of Spain.

The ring code (L:BJ9) did sound familiar though and this bird had actually been photographed over the summer on a fishing boat in the Helford River back in Cornwall (below). What's interesting to see is just how worn this bird became over just five months.

Local fisherman Darren Thirlaway reports numerous
colour-ringed gulls from his boat on the Helford

This is only the fourth of our birds to be seen abroad: L:BF8 and L:BJ3 have both been seen at Lampaul, Ile de Ouessant, France and L:DC3 has been seen on Ile d'Yeu.

Cornwall's first colour-ringed Caspian Gull

Recent high tides and stormy weather have dumped large amounts of seaweed along the south coast and large groups of gulls have been making the most of the feeding opportunity. Many of these birds have been roosting on the rocks off Swanpool and Maenporth, giving Greg Wills from the group a chance to check lots of legs for colour rings.

In amongst the throng of birds at Swanpool beach on 13th November, one beast stood out though, with long legs, white head and very long wings; all classic Caspian Gull features. It was also sporting a yellow ring which really was exciting, as there's never been a record of a ringed Caspian Gull in Cornwall.

X609 at Swanpool beach on 13th November 2018 (Greg Wills)

Many thanks to Ronald Klein in Germany who quickly replied to confirm that this was indeed one of his birds, ringed as a chick at Grabendorfer See in eastern Germany. The island colony does hold good numbers of breeding Caspian Gulls, but it's thought that there are also numerous hybrids produced in the colony. The consensus on this bird though is that it's a pure Caspian Gull and not a hybrid. Interestingly, this same bird was also seen at Newhaven, Sussex in September, with the photo below on the Sussex Ornithological Society news page.

X609 in Sussex in September 2018

Also of note in the melee of birds at Maenporth was an old friend not seen for a few years. Red S:037 was ringed as a rehabilitated bird at Secret World in Somerset, being released near Burnham on Sea in July 2011.

Colour-ringed juvenile gulls in the release pens at Secret World

It may well have originated in Cornwall, as it has since been seen at Newlyn (October 2011), Lizard (March 2014) and Swanpool, Falmouth (December 2014). It was actually the first bird from the project to be resighted away from the release site, so nice to still see it doing well!

Red S:037 at Swanpool in December 2014 (Samuel Perfect)

Red S:037 at Maenporth in November 2018 (Greg Wills)

Welsh Stormies and Falmouth gulls

It's been a while since I've got round to blogging, but then it seems of late we've just been looking at colour-ringed gulls and not much else! But we did receive some interesting reports from BTO recently, involving Storm Petrels recaught at Skokholm Island in south Wales earlier in the year.

The Bird Observatory recaught no fewer than 11 birds ringed by us, including four on just one night (22nd July, when 142 were caught on the island). Of these 11, six had been ringed in 2015 and 2017 at Hot Point, Lizard, with the other six all ringed on 15th July at Gwennap Head, Porthgwarra. This further highlights the link between sites in the English Channel and Irish Sea.

As part of a PhD application for one group member we've also been looking at some of our gull data from Falmouth, so thought we'd share. So across all of our gull sites we've colour-ringed 276 birds, including 199 chicks. Just in Falmouth the figure is 140 birds colour-ringed, of which 85 were chicks. These Falmouth birds have then generated 509 sightings, with 63 of the 140 being seen at least once after ringing. Some of these have only been seen once, but our most reported bird has been seen 60 times now.

Number of resightings of individual birds colour-ringed in Falmouth

Obviously the more sightings we receive the better we understand their behaviours and movements, so if you are a local birder then please keep an eye out for our blue-ringed birds.

Cornish Barn Owls in 2018

With all of our Barn Owl sites now visited for the year, it's a good time to crunch the numbers and see how they've fared this year. This is our eighth year of monitoring boxes in Cornwall, but we'll just compare 2018 to the last five years for ease:

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
Sites visited	32	44	41	47	64	85
Unoccupied	12 (38%)	11 (27%)	11 (27%)	12 (26%)	23 (36%)	34 (40%)
Occupied but no breeding	7 (22%)	7 (18%)	7 (12%)	8 (17%)	5 (8%)	4 (5%)
Average clutch size (where observed)	3.6	4.6	4.6	4.6	5.3	5.2
Average brood size (where observed)	2.4	3.5	3.5	2.8	3.0	3.3
Number of chicks ringed	19	63	70	47	90	126

The larger number of boxes visited is due to the funding from Paradise Park which has allowed us to really expand the scope of the project. There are several more new sites for 2018 as well which we hope will be occupied in the coming years. The high rate of unoccupied boxes is also due to the large number of new sites that birds have yet to move into.

However, we did see several regular sites unoccupied for the first time which may well be due to the mortality over the hard late winter weather. These two periods of snow cover won't have made it easy for birds to get in condition for breeding and it does seem that some regular sites weren't occupied, but those that did breed made the most of the good spring weather by laying quite big clutches (including a clutch of seven at one site). But we then saw one of the hottest and driest periods on record, which seriously stunted grass growth, and no grass means no voles. So most sites then saw significant brood reductions, though the average of 3.3 chicks still compared well to previous years.

We also think the 'Beast from the East' has had a greater impact on the breeding population than you might think, apparent by the number of birds breeding in their first year. This summer we've caught 15 adults already carrying rings, of which six were ringed as chicks in 2017. Compare this to the totals from the previous few years:

Year	Ringed adults caught	Ringed as chick previous year
2018	15	6
2017	11	0
2016	9	2
2015	8	2
2014	13	0

We can only assume that these birds (some at regular sites) were new recruits following the death of an 'original' adult, but if this has happened across the whole population then that my lead to quite a drop in the average breeding age. But that's why we do what we do and what the project is all about; understanding these changes in the county's Barn Owls.

Cracking Stormie night and more French Kittiwakes

Same old, same old it seems at this time of year, but when the 'same old' is ringing Barn Owls, Kittiwakes and Storm Petrels then it's not so bad! With over half of our second visits to owl boxes now completed, it looks like the good start to the year hasn't quite come to fruition. Out of the clutches of five or six eggs we were seeing, we seem to be down to broods of just two or three chicks now, which perhaps isn't surprising considering the weather. It might be glorious out there, but the lack of rain means a lack of grass growth and a lack of rodents, so not good for demanding owlets! It's not all been bad news though and we have still seen a few broods of four or five chicks.

Sometimes the adults are just all very relaxed at nest visits,
watching from a handy perch!

Aside from owls, we had our first big Storm Petrel catch of the year at Gwennap Head, Porthgwarra at the weekend. A long busy night saw us ringing 159 birds, also catching six BTO-ringed birds from sites as diverse as Calf of Man, Cape Clear and Hartland Point, Devon. We also caught one French-ringed bird which I have a feeling is an old one, so it'll be interesting to see when that was ringed.

Last but not least, we caught up on some Kittiwake ringing and resighting recently and managed to ring 24 chicks at Trewavas Head. It's a real pity here that most nests are out of reach of a double ladder, but I guess they need to be safe from the Cornish swell! A quick look at Cornish resightings so far in 2018 shows that we've now seen 26 different French-ringed birds this year; eight at Trewavas Head, eight 'loafers' at Lizard, six at Ralph's Cupboard, Portreath and three at Rinsey. This is even more impressive when you consider that to the end of 2016 there had only been 92 reports of French-ringed Kittiwakes in the UK outside of Cornwall! We're sure there are many more out there, so we'll be out again in the week to check...

Seabird Saturday

Our annual gull-ringing trip over to Mullion Island is never the most productive affair, with the Great Black-backs there having very low productivity indeed. But kayaking over this morning we were met with a bit of an eerie silence, with very few alarming adults overhead. It looked like the hot weather had wilted off most of the vegetation on the island, most of which was laying flat, making it hard to check for chicks. But despite our best efforts we could only find a single gull chick on the whole island! We estimated over 60 nests for the island earlier in the year, so if they've only produced one chick then something is very wrong...

Perhaps linked to the poor breeding season of gulls on Mullion Island, there has also been a large gathering of non-breeding Kittiwakes off Lizard Head. We've seen at least on of our Rinsey/Trewavas birds there (but too distant to read the ring), but this morning three French-ringed birds were present, photographed by Terry Thirlaway.

Two of these were birds ringed as chicks in Brittany in 2016 and 2017 (hence definitely not of breeding age yet), but the other refused to show off it's full ring combination so remains a mystery for now.

Our first ever KITTI chick returns!

Oh we love a high pressure! The weather has been just perfect the last few days to catch up on a few seabird chores, so a small group of us ventured out to our Kittiwake sites at Trewavas Head on Friday. While two of us paddled round from Porthleven, two scrambled round to meet us at the bottom of the cliffs for a lift around the last section only normally accessible on a low spring tide.

Having already caught many of the 'low-hanging fruit' in the colonies, it's becoming harder to target new birds, but perhaps that's a good sign that our catching has been going well. So between the two sites we only ringed a further nine adults, but did also manage to read a good number of rings on adults ringed in previous years. We also resighted a new French-ringed bird to us, originally ringed as a chick at Pointe du Raz, Brittany, in 2013.

But the highlight was spotted as we paddled back along the coast. A small face we've had our eye on had three Kittiwake nests on it with a few adults hanging round, one of which looked to be ringed. So with some dubious kayak-landing and a bit of a sketchy climb in shorts and wetsuit boots, we managed to confirm that this was PP (below); the first ever resighting of a bird we'd previously ringed as a chick (in 2015).

Meet Antonio and José

The group had a busy weekend, out and about on both days. On Saturday we were once again helped out by Alan and Roo (from Rope Geeks) to safely access the first Chough nests of the season to continue the colour-ringing project. We managed to access two nests in mine shafts in West Penwith and a sea cave nest site on the Lizard, ringing a total of 10 chicks. This is a great result for all of these sites and we hope to be visiting a few more in the coming week.

There were of course a couple of other big events happening on Saturday (Royal wedding and FA Cup final for those reading this way in the future), so in recognition of this, meet Antonio and José who we ringed at one of the sites.

Brood of four chicks happily back in their sea-cave nest after ringing

Sunday was a bit less strenuous, but rather busier, as we were running a ringing demonstration and nest-finding trips at the Cornwall Wildlife Trust event at Caerhays Castle. In the nets we caught a nice variety of birds, including Great Spotted Woodpecker and Jay, and also managed to show families various nests including Robin, Dunnock, Song Thrush, Blue Tit, Great Tit and Coal Tit.

Newly-hatched Song Thrush chicks

Endoscope view of a brooding Great Tit

First owls of the year

With the prospect of a late breeding season following the spring snow, we had a tour round a few Barn Owl sites yesterday to see how birds were getting on. Covering a patch from Hayle up to Newquay we visited 14 sites, with rather mixed results.

A couple of the sites are quite new to the project, so it wasn't surprising they weren't occupied, but three sites we'd expect to be occupied were empty. There were also two sites with birds present but not breeding, so this does seem quite a high number.

This did leave several sites with birds in residence, but even some of these sites had new, unringed birds present. In fact we ringed nine birds at six sites, with just one recapture and even this was a bird ringed as a chick nearby the previous year. So although many of these birds had clutches of five or six eggs it may be that many new birds have been recruited, so it'll be interesting to see how the season progresses.

The best fieldwork site!

It was such a stunning spring day yesterday that there was only one place to be... out on the water! So we fitted in another visit to the Kittiwakes at Trewavas Head, this time managing to land by the engine houses. This part of the colony was worryingly quiet though, with fewer than 50 birds on the ledges, instead of the usual 65+ pairs! Just three of our colour-ringed birds were present, but hopefully this is just a slow start to the season here.

The main face at Trewavas Head was slightly busier which was encouraging. Here we were able to record a further dozen of our own birds, including two that have previously been seen on their wanderings - see here and here.

It was also great to see two of our birds as a pair now,
giving us much better information on the workings of the colony

In amongst our own colour-birds were three French-ringed birds. Two of these are known to us already, but typically the one new bird to us was so high up on the face we could only see two colours and part of the metal ring, so it remains unknown (for now!).

ONN-YOM was ringed as a chick at Pointe du Raz in 2002
and has been regular at Trewavas since we first visited in 2012

OWM-RNN was ringed as a chick at Pointe du Raz in 2007
and has been seen six out of the last seven years at Trewavas

Any excuse for a paddle

This morning a couple of us took to the opportunity for a paddle out to check out the Kittiwakes at Trewavas Head. Leaving from Porthleven, the swellier-than-predicted swell made things a little slow going and we were also unable to safely put the kayak in at the engine houses, so had to make do with a visit to just the main headland colony.

With only around 60 birds there at any time, numbers were down on previous years, but the to-ing and fro-ing of birds mean that we were able to record 19 colour-ringed birds as part of our RAS (Retrapping Adults for Survival) project. The 19 included 17 of our own birds and two French birds that are now regular breeders here. One of 'our' birds was originally ringed as a chick on Gugh, Isles of Scilly, in 1996, having a colour ring added by us in 2015. So at 22 years old this is our oldest bird in the project.

The pic above shows two of the other more interesting birds. AP is a bird we ringed as an adult at Rinsey Cliffs in 2012, remaining there until 2014 when the colony there effectively collapsed. It was one of the few birds that relocated to Trewavas Head, seen just once in 2016 and 2017. The rather more colourful bird was ringed as a chick in 2007 at Pointe du Raz, Brittany, France. It was seen in France in 2009 and 2010, then at Rinsey in 2012 and 2013, before moving to Trewavas Head from 2015 onwards.

Of the other birds, two had also been seen on their coastal wanderings, with one photographed at sea off Longstones Lighthouse in July 2014 and another seen at Gwennap Head in August 2017.

Russian-ringed Siskin visits Penryn!

It's been a while since we've blogged, but with incessant poor weather and a late breeding/migration season we've really not been up to much! But some regular ringing did pay off recently, as Robbie Phillips relates:

"After ringing on the University of Exeter’s Cornwall campus for the last four years it’s always nice to have a new species for the site, so to catch three iskin midweek was a highlight. We were out again last weekend when a ringed Siskin was found in the net and I just expected it to be one from earlier in the week, so it was a shock to find that it wasn’t. Even more surprising was that it was carrying a foreign ring, and from Russia!! Where abouts in Russia the bird, aged as an adult female, had come from we thought would take some time to find out. For my first foreign control, I couldn’t have asked for more, well worth the years of visits and hundreds of Blue Tits."

Incredibly, just 10 days after catching this bird, we heard news from the Russian Ringing Scheme. 'Our' Siskin had been ringed as second-year female in April 2017 at Rybachiy in the eastern Baltic, over 1800km from Penryn. It had presumably been ringed on spring migration, so may well have bred even  further east than Rybachiy! There have been fewer than 20 Russian-ringed Siskin found in the UK, but this is also the first ever foreign-ringed Siskin to be found in Cornwall.

Spring is in the air

It hasn't really felt like spring the last couple of mornings, with frosty cars and freezing cold metal poles! But once the sun was up, Dunnocks and Chiffchaffs were singing and Goldcrests displaying to each other at the sewage works, so things are definitely getting going.

But there's still plenty of signs of winter around, with this rather subtle Siberian Chiffchaff one of the last birds ringed this morning at Carnon Downs STW. It showed quite a lot of green tones to the upperparts and tail, but was nice and plain underneath and also had the distinctive long supercilium we see of some Sibe Chiffs. There was also a remaining Yellow-browed Warbler, but even this was darting round wing-fluttering at a Goldcrest!

In fact the last bird of the morning could be a sign of winter of a sign of spring, as this male Blackcap could wel be a wintering bird, but the fact it had a good amount of pollen on its forehead might indicate it was travelled from points south recently. We did look around for any pollinating trees nearby but even the local catkins weren't producing much pollen yet.

But the fact that we only caught three Chiffchaffs at Carnon Downs STW this morning and just one at Gwennap STW yesterday is perhaps a sign that birds have already started to move north, or at least have other things on their mind...

Wandering Peregrine

It's not often we get the chance to read colour-rings on Peregrines outside of the breeding season, as birds are often hard to pin down to a single location to read the ring. But with a few local photographers becoming more aware of the various colour-ringing projects we run, the chances of reading rings on fly-by birds is increasing.

But it was a member of the ringing group who photographed a passing Peregrine near Predannack Airfield yesterday, only to find it was wearing a yellow colour-ring.

The group has been using yellow colour rings on Peregrines for several years now, so we presumed it was a local bird, but it was a surprise to find it was actually ringed as a chick in north Cornwall in 2016. We've had a few long-distance movements before of our own birds, but it's always nice to have a surprise like this. Thanks to Tony Blunden for the photo and Tony John for confirming the details for the bird.

Returning Sibe Chiff kicks off 2018

In the first mist-netting venture of the year, it only seemed right to head to the sewage works. So just two of us braved the early morning frost to get a few nets up at Gwennap Sewage Works. It took a while for the sun to stir up the insects enough to get birds moving, but once they did (and with the addition of a 'sewage mix' on the MP3) we didn't do too bad, ending up with 62 birds.

The total included 23 Chiffchaffs, two of which were Siberian 'tristis' Chiffchaffs. Interestingly, one of these was already carrying a ring, having been ringed at Gwennap in December 2016. This is only the second time we've recaught a tristis in a subsequent winter, adding to the evidence that these are returning wintering birds, not lost vagrants.

Of just as much interest was the recapture of the bird below, originally ringed in September 2016 in North Norfolk! This was presumably a recent autumn arrival in Norfolk when ringed, so was presumably from points north/east.

Just to round off the day nicely, and very typical of this autumn/winter, we ringed an impressive NINE Firecrest, which is a good winter total, never mind from one morning.