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.

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

Ringing demo and the first chicks to ring

This weekend saw the annual Cornwall Wildlife Trust wildlife celebration at Trebah Gardens, where the ringing demonstration is one of the highlights (allegedly). Over 2,500 people came along last year so it's a great event to get the word out about what amazing wildlife we have in the county. This year was a bit quiet bird-wise, but we did still manage to show people a range of birds, including Nuthatch, Chiffchaff and Coal Tits.

We also run a couple of walks checking what's happening in the nestboxes, but with the event being much earlier than previous years that was a bit quiet as well! Instead we taught people how to find open-nesting species and even show them Robin and Song Thrush feeding chicks and the Robin nest below on five eggs. Everyone seemed keen to get home and look in their own nestboxes, so hopefully there will be a rush of Nestbox Challenge registrations soon...

Away from Trebah, the weekend saw us ringing the first chicks of the year, but in quite different places! Saturday saw us ringing the first of our Dipper broods in Idless Woods, with five chicks being a pretty good start!

Sunday was an all-together more adventurous evening, as we paddled over to Mullion Island to ring a few Cormorant chicks. We timed it perfectly, with the biggest birds not so big that they were all running around, with seven broods with chicks big enough to ring. Cormorants are very asynchronous and some birds were still incubating eggs, and there were also many chicks that were still too small to ring. But we did manage to ring and colour-ring 15 birds, which compares pretty well to previous years (11, 19 and 7 in 2013-15).

The timing of the trips over is also variable, with this visit being earlier than the last couple of years: previous ringing trips were on 6th April 2013, 17th May 2014 and 7th May 2015. It did mean that we weren't able to count the Great Black-backed Gull nests, as most were just at the building stage. In fact, we only found two nests with eggs in, with two in each, so may have to plan another trip over to count these.