Cornwall is a colourful place (for rings)

Over the years various members of the group and local birders have reported a wide variety of colour-ringed birds in the county. As we run a long-term urban gull project, not surprisingly our most-reported species is Herring Gull, but what about other species? A quick look at the numbers from the BTO's DemOn (Demography Online) database gives us records of over 4,500 colour ring reads of 26 different species, summarised by year here:

As expected, other gull species feature right at the top, followed by species that we run RAS (Retrapping Adults for Survival) projects on: Kittiwake, Jackdaw and House Sparrow. We don't ring any smaller gulls ourselves, so all of the records of Mediterranean and Black-headed Gull resightings come from other schemes, often abroad. In fact a lot of the larger gulls are from abroad as well, with French Great Black-backed Gulls topping the table, closely followed by Belgian and French Mediterranean Gulls.

Polish-ringed Black-headed Gull at Swanpool, Falmouth (Mark Grantham)

French-ringed Great Black-backed Gull at Southerly Point, Lizard (Terry Thirlaway)

Belgian-ringed Mediterranean Gull at Coverack (Mark Grantham)

Irish-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull on Copperhouse Creek, Hayle estuary (Mark Grantham)

Lower down the list are some more unusual species, details of which we've blogged about before, including:

• German-ringed Caspian Gull in Falmouth
• Various Ospreys
• French-ringed Shag on Looe Island

Some of the other more unusual resightings include these smart birds:

Green A61 was seen at Lizard Lighthouse in March 2018 before being seen back on
Skokholm Island where it was ringed just nine days later (Terry Thirlaway)

This Dutch-ringed Sanderling was a regular on Marazion beach in winter 2016-17
and also once in January 2018, but was also regularly seen on
autumn passage in The Netherlands (Ben Porter)

 

This Dutch-ringed Sandwich Tern at Sennen Cove had been seen
three weeks previously in Tyne and Wear (Clive Richards)

We're always keen to receive new sightings though and can help in tracing birds with the different coordinators, so if you're lucky enough to see any colour-ringed birds then drop us an email with details - westcornwallringinggroup@gmail.com

Ageing gulls

I don't mean ageing as in the dark art of knowing if that dappled Herring Gull is a third or fourth calendar year bird, but more some of the interesting changes in plumage and bare parts we see as our colour-ringed Herring Gulls grow up.

W:245 was ringed as a chick on the University of Exeter campus in July 2018 and has been seen just seven times at various sites local to Falmouth since. It's interesting to look at how its bill colour has changed this year though, seen in the montage below.

It's also interesting to see how moult progresses through the year as birds rapidly change appearance. W:178 was also a chick ringed in 2018, this time in the middle of Falmouth town, and has been seen eight times since. Both photos below show W:178 at Stithians Lake, in June and September, but note how quickly it has grown through new flight feathers (with 'mirrors' on the tips) and also adult-type wing coverts.

W:178 on 29th June

W:178 on 25th September

Some birds really do change appearance in a matter of months as well. W:249 was also a 2018 campus chick and has been seen eight times in the local area. Below are a few photos of W:249 just from this year and the change is striking, although photos can be deceiving as the bird looks to have taken a step backwards in its moult in September!

January

August

September

Colour-ringed Ospreys galore

It's been a good autumn so far for Ospreys in Cornwall, with sightings being reported from numerous sites across the county. Interestingly, several of these birds have been photographed with colour rings and they tell some interesting stories.

Earlier in the monnth, one of two birds at Devoran was seen to be ringed and with a bit of persistence was read by photographer Andy Wilson as KC7, aka 'Tywi'. This male was ringed as a chick in Wales earlier this year at the Dyfi Osprey Project and was last seen there on 25th August.

Blue KC7 at Devoran (Andy Wilson)

Remarkably, a few days later another Osprey was photographed at Devoran but with a different ring! Blue JF1 was ringed as a chick in Scotland in 2017 and even more remarkably had been seen at Devoran that autumn, as detailed on the blog here. With KC7 also still present, it's amazing tho think that two known individuals from different countries were feeding together on the same stretch of river.

Blue JF1 at Devoran in 2020 (John St Ledger)

One other bird we've yet to receive details of is Blue 260, which was on the Gannel estuary, Newquay at the start of September. We presume it's a Scottish bird but will wait and see.

Blue 092 (or 260) on the Gannel estuary (Rhys Ellis-Davies)

This again just goes to show how useful colour-ringing is in tracking birds and the increase in value it gives to bird recording.

Interesting moulting gulls

Since the end of last year we've been collating photographs of as many of our colour-ringed birds as possible, hoping to document plumage changes of known individuals. This has come up trumps recently with some quite interesting moult recorded. Here are two of the more interesting birds which might be interesting to gull enthusiasts.

W:249 was ringed as a chick in July 2018. The photos below show the bird as a second-winter bird then moulting into second-summer plumage.

January 2020

February 2020

 

August 2020

 

 

W:369 was ringed as a juvenile in August 2019. It became very worn into its first-summer, but looks to have fitted in quite an extensive moult in a few weeks in its first autumn.

February 2020

June 2020

1st July 2020

14th August 2020

We're not sure how much work has been done on moult progression in large gulls, but it'll be interesting to follow this in the future.

2020 Barn Owl update

With the first Barn Owl broods now all ringed and boxes monitored, it's a good time to take stock and see how the season has gone. Averaging out the numbers in the table below, we can see that the project continues to grow and for the first time we have data from over 100 boxes which is a greeat achievement. The occupancy rate contineus to be relatively low, but we hope that previously unoccupied boxes will be taken up by new pairs as the years go by. Of the boxes monitored, clutch sizes appeared to be slightly down on previous years, but the subsequent brood sizes didn't necessarily reflect this. The figure of 3.2 hides a much more complicated story though.

	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Sites visited	32	34	32	44	41	47	64	85	87	106
Unoccupied	2	7	12	11	11	12	23	34	36	43
Occupied but no breeding	13	2	7	7	7	8	5	4	3	4
Average clutch size (where observed)	4.8	4.1	3.6	4.6	4.6	4.6	5.3	5.2	4.7	4.6
Average brood size (where observed)	3.1	3.1	2.4	3.5	3.5	2.8	3.0	3.3	3.0	3.2
Number of chicks ringed	33	46	19	63	70	47	90	126	119	170

It was apparent as the season progressed that brood sizes (and numbers of chicks ringed) was decreasing, but this is always hard to measure. But if we simply look at the number of chicks present at ringing through the season then a trend does seem to appear. The sample sizes are rather low, but we do think there's something in the data.

The much lower brood sizes later in the season we presume was due to the period of very unsettled weather, with plenty of rain. This makes feeding very difficult for adults which obviosuly has knock-on effects for chicks. We hope to be able to place cameras in numerous boxes over the winter (watch this space on that), which will give us much better data over the coming years.

Kittiwakes fail AGAIN

With slightly higher hopes than last time, we paddled out to the Kittiwakes sites at Trewavas Head to check up on the c140 pairs nesting at the three sites. The first stop was Trequean Cove where there were encouragingly still good numbers of birds, but a closer look revealed just 11 nests still with chicks which was a poor return from the 40 sitting birds we found in May. There were plenty of our colour-ringed birds and so far this season we've seen 13 birds at Trequean that have previously been seen at the main colony or at the engine houses colony. This might suggest that birds are slowly moving along the coast, but why they might be doing this is unclear.

The reason for this became apparent as we paddled along to the engine shouses, where the 28 pairs we'd seen in May were down to just half a dozen forlorn birds sat on empty ledges. The main colony at Trewavas Head wasn't much better either, as despite there being plenty of birds still present (including 17 of our own colour-ringed birds and a French bird), there were just three nests with chicks, down from the 65 sitting birds in May. Why these birds have failed again so disastrously is a a mystery, but it's interesting that the nests dominated by younger pairs seem to be doing better than the established sites, so maybe change really is for the better.

To back up this move away from the main colony, we received an email from fellow Kittiwake workers in France (Professor Emmanuelle Cam from the University of West Brittany) with a report of two of our birds seen in their colonies in Brittany in recent weeks. Both of these birds are regulars at Trewavas Head:

• EC was actually a chick ringed (metal ring only) on the Isles of Scilly in 1996, but we recaught it in 2015 and added a colour ring. It's been seen every year since as a breeding bird, last seen here on 2nd June 2020.

• EN was ringed as an adult at Trewavas Head in May 2015 and was seen 2015-2018 but not seen in 2019. It was however seen back in the colony on 19th May 2020.

These are the first of our birds seen in your colonies, and it's great to have the coverage that produces these sightings. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the coming years and whether the colonies can recover.

Mullion gull numbers

With the last of the (supposedly) calm seas for a while, we took the chance to get over to Mullion Island to ring any surviving Great Black-backed Gull chicks. At the start of the month we counted at least 59 nests with 146 eggs/chicks, but we know that survival is incredibly low to fledging, so we never know what to expect.

Worryingly the first chick we found on the island was tiny, perhaps only a week old and far too small to ring. With most chicks on Looe Island a good size now (we visited two days ago to ring them there) we wondered if Mullion birds were nesting far later and we'd struggle to find any chicks big enough to ring. The remainder of the island was a mixed bag though, with some nests still with eggs, one just in the process of hatching.

However, we did also find enough larger chicks to keep us occupied and in the end we colour-ringed 14 birds. This is still only 10% of the eggs/chicks we counted three weeks ago. but seems typical of recent years. We'll make a return trip in a couple of weeks time to see if the remaining chicks have survived, so the number may yet improve.

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
GBB Gull nests	-	62	37	83	70	60	71	(59)
GBB Gull eggs/chicks	98	174	90	204	166	-	195	(146)
GBB Gull chicks ringed	4	17	12	13	5	3	16	14

For the first time we also saw not one but two of our own ringed birds on the island, of an age now where they're probably breeding. It was good to see the rings on these birds were still looking good, as in some cases they can wear quite rapidly, making them hard to read. See below examples from Looe Island (taken two days ago) of worn rings from 2010 and 2011.

LDA2 was ringed as a chick in 2015 and has been seen several times at Southerly Point, Lizard
and once at Coverack. It was last reported in November 2018.

With a remarkably similar history, LBH7 was ringed as a chick in 2014 and is also a frequent visitor to
Southerly Point, has also visited Coverack once and was last reported in September 2018.

Not all ring wear is even though, as the photos above and below are actually different sides of the same ring (L:AL8)

Strangely there were still also one or two Cormorant chicks in the nest which is very late, but most were long gone, leaving just their mallow-stick nests as evidence.

A sorry reminder of the times we're now living in

More Barn Owl visitors from up-country

Following the recent arrival in one of our boxes of a Barn Owl from Manchester (details here), yesterday saw another visitor from up-country. Whilst visiting a regular nest site at Tregarne (St Keverne), a male bird flew out of the barn as we approached, but we managed to catch the female in the box, where she was sat with four downy chicks. Noticing she was ringed, we presumed it was the female we ringed there in 2017, but it was actually a female that had been ringed as a chick in 2017 at a site near Gweek (8km away). Oddly, this bird had bred elsewhere in 2018 and 2019 (near Crosslanes), 9km from where she was now nesting, so must have been a new arrival here.



As if this wasn't interesting enough, we then removed the bulk of an old Jackdaw nest in the box in the adjacent barn, finding the body of a long dead Barn Owl built into the nest. This bird was also ringed and remarkably was a chick from Devon ringed in 2019. When this bird arrived at Tregarne we won't know, but it must have been late winter or spring to be built into the Jackdaw nest, but there must have been some fight with two new females arriving at the same site to take it over!

Visitors from up-country

We recently received details from the BTO of a nesting Barn Owl we recaught in on of our boxes at the end of May. We mostly catch our own birds, ringed as adults or chicks, but just occasionally we welcome a visitor to Cornwall. GR53474 is now breeding in a box near Fraddam, but had been ringed in 2017 as a chick at Irlam in Greater Manchester, over 420km to the north!

Since we've been monitoring Barn Owls in the county, the only other long-distance visitor we've recaugt was a bird ringed as a chick in Suffolk in 2017 that was breeding in Newbridge the next year (see here). Apart from that, a bird ringed as a chick in Cumbria in 1990 was found dead near Golant in its first winter and incredibly we have also had birds ringed in Germany an The Netherlands found here.



The same day the Irlam Barn Owl was caught we were also able to catch up with another visitor from the north (the second line on the map above). Red AXF was ringed as an adult on Puffin Island off Anglesey in summer 2016 but since then has found Cornwall to its liking, breeding ever since at Western Cove, Portreath.

2020 seabird update

It's been a while now since we've updated the blog, but to be honest lockdown has meant that we've not really been up to much anyway! We've been out reading gull rings locally and that's about it. But now lockdown has eased slightly we've been able to get out and start to look at Barn Owls and some of our seabirds. More on the owls later, but it was great to get out to Trewavas Head and Mullion Island recently and see how our birds are getting on.

A quick kayak out past Trewavas Head last week found very healthy numbers of Kittiwakes back on the ledges, including lots of 'new' birds at Trequean which has only recently been used. This new site appears to have been taken on by younger birds, with several birds we've ringed as chicks now sat on the ledges there. A quick paddle found 23 of our colour-ringed birds and four French birds which is a great start.

We then had our first trip over to Mullion Island today to check on the numbers of Great Black-backed Gulls nesting there. We weren't able to get over to ring any Cormorants this year due to lockdown, which was unfortunate as they were in a very accessible part of the island! But we were able to photograph and count nests earlier in the year and the count of at least 53 (and probably 57) is the highest we've seen in recent years.

Some of this year's fledged Cormorants enjoying the sun

Back to the gulls, there was one section of the island we couldn't cover due to nesting Shags and Cormorants, but we covered a majority of the island and counted 59 nests, mostly still with eggs. This is slightly down on previous years, as was the 146 eggs/chicks counted.

Great Black-backed Gull nest with a view

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
GBB Gull nests	-	62	37	83	70	60	71	(59)
GBB Gull eggs/chicks	98	174	90	204	166	-	195	(146)
GBB Gull chicks ringed	4	17	12	13	5	3	16	?
Cormorant nests	24	52	50	39	47	38	47	53-57
Cormorant chicks ringed	11	19	7	16	0	0	14	0

We'll be back over in a few weeks to see how those 146 have got on, so more on that later.

Newly-hatched Great Black-backed Gull chick

French Shag on Looe Island

Recently we've been going back through some records and making sure that all of the French colour-ringed gulls seen on Looe Island (or more correctly St George's Island) over the years have been processed at the BTO end, thanks to the efforts of Claire the Warden's Assistant. There's been a Great Black-backed Gull colour-ringing project on the island since 2010 and Claire's efforts reading the colour rings are key to the success of the project. More details of the project can be found on the Cornwall Birds website.

But in amongst the gull records was a sighting of a colour-ringed Shag which is pretty unusual in the southwest. Claire photographed the bird by the jetty in December and it turns out it belonged to a French project, perhaps not surprising considering the closest UK projects are in west Wales and southern Ireland. K26 had been ringed as a chick in 2015 on Chausey, a small group of islands off the Normandy coast, geographically part of the Channel Islands group and managed as a bird reserve by the Groupe Ornithologique Normand.

It turns out that this is just the seventh record of a French-ringed Shag to be found in the UK. Of the previous six, three have been in Cornwall, sadly all young birds found dead in fishing nets (in 1982, 1984 and 1985). Of the other three, two were also in the southwest, found dead on the Isles of Scilly in 1981 and in Devon in 1989 (actually ringed 11 years earlier).

The only other record was also from the same French colour-ringing project, of a bird ringed as a chick in 2017 and seen later that year in Sheringham, Norfolk. The project on Chausey has ringed 1550 Shag chicks and remarkably these are the only two birds to have been seen in the UK, with the only other 'international' movements being two birds seen in The Netherlands. It's quite remarkable that these birds don't wander more widely, but know we all know what to look for we can hopefully find some more!

Thanks to Claire on Looe Island for sorting out all the records (and spending hours reading colour rings) and to Fabrice Gallien in France for the information on the birds and the project.

New Year, new Chiffs

It's been a long time since we've blogged, but what better time to change that than New Year. Today was a rare calm day and despite not being very cold we decided to have a couple of hours at Gwennap Sewage Works anyway. The vagaries of ringing at sewage works is that we often only use the smallest size rings (AA) and today was no exception. In the two hours (and just three nets) we ringed 28 Chiffchaffs, including this very smart tristis Siberian Chiffchaff. Unfortunately we didn't recatch any ringed birds from last winter (when we ringed 44 Chiffchaff here), but once the colder weather arrives I'm sure we'll be catching more.

There were well over 40 Chiffchaff on site (and two Yellow-browed Warblers), so plenty more to keep us occupied on the next calm day. The bycatch wasn't too bad either: Firecrest, two Long-tailed Tits and the obligatory Wren.