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.

Highs and lows in the Kittiwake world

Just for a change of scenery I headed up to look for some colour-ringed birds in the Kittiwake colony at Porthmissen, Trevone this afternoon. In many ways this was a day of highs and lows, quite nicely reflecting the life of a Kittiwake.

The first high was the site, as this part of the north Cornwall coast really is quite stunning! The birds are best viewed from across a narrow isthmus looking back into the colony, nesting along a series of narrow ledges across the sheer face.

The high was soon replaced with a low though, as on scanning through the colony it soon became apparent that a vast majority of the nests were empty, some with attendant adults, some abandoned. This has recently been one of the key sites in the county for Kittiwake and to see it so devoid of new life was quite depressing. The last few years have seen huge declines in Kittiwakes across the whole south of their range, so we're just hoping that the big declines in key sites in Cornwall are just temporary blips.

The next high came when scanning through the core of the colony, waiting for birds to stand or and shuffle to check them for rings. I was expecting to find one or two French-ringed bird, but found none. But far more interesting to me was a bird that leap out at me as having one of our rings from the Lizard (60km away)! Thankfully it wasn't too far away to read and it turns out that 'AL' has a far from mundane history. It was actually ringed as a chick on Gugh, on the Isles of Scilly, in 1999 and was recaught by us at Rinsey in June 2012, when we added one of our colour rings. It was then seen three more times at Rinsey in 2012, six times in 2013 and just once in 2014 which was the year the colony crashed there. So we don't really know when it first moved to Porthmissen, but it is certainly one to look out for there in future.

The world's worst digi-scoped photo, with the 17-year-old AL on the right

After that quite special high, I was then plunged into a rather depressing low with the arrival of a juvenile (female?) Peregrine. After a short while visiting empty parts of the colony, it then happened upon a ledge with four nests on it, all with attendant adults. The first brooding Kittiwake put up quite a fight, but with the adults soon displaced, the Peregrine proceeded to jump from nest to nest along the ledge, taking all four chicks from these nests (all were broods of one) over 45 minutes. The first three were eaten at the nest, with only feeble mobbing from the parents, though one adult did manage to knock the Peregrine off the ledge, which then carried the last chick off to the clifftop to eat.

Juvenile Peregrine predating the first of the four Kittiwakes nests in this photo,
with other attendant adults unable to intervene

Whether this is a new behaviour or a regular occurrence is unknown, but this may go part way to explain why there were so many empty nests in other parts of the colony. That's nature though, even if it is mightily depressing!

Peregrine update

We blogged at the weekend about the unfortunate Cornish Peregrine found in Portugal, so thought a short update was in order. Thanks to the sterling efforts of the Wildlife Rescue Centre at the University of Trás-Os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD), this bird was operated on and is now doing well. But what did transpire during the surgery was that it had actually been shot originally, as evidenced by the pre-op x-ray.

Here's hoping all their hard work pays off and MV will recover...

Portuguese Peregrine and a few old friends

We have recently received a report via BTO of one of our Peregrines ringed this year. GR80973 was one of two chicks ringed near Morvah in July and was sadly found with a broken wing in northern Portugal at the end of November. It is currently in care and we'll post an update as soon as we know anything more...

This is an especially notable movement, as can be seen from the map below of Peregrine movements from the BTO's Online Ringing Report. In fact, this is just the second report of a BTO-ringed Peregrine in Portugal (following one from Co Louth found dead there in 1981), with only one other bird further south; a bird from Northumberland found dead on Lanzarote in 1998.

There's not much other ringing news to report, what with the weather being so poor! But we've been out reading a few rings (coloured and otherwise), catching up with a few old friends. From east to west...

• Black-headed Gull ES72115 remains at Par Beach Pool. Ringed as an adult in November 1995 it's getting to a good old age now, but still has a way to go to beat the UK longevity record of 32 years!
• The Black-tailed Godwit flock on the Truro River is now at 65 birds, including at least two colour-ringed birds. One was a male bird ringed at Farlington Marshes, Hampshire, in September 2005 and has been seen most autumns since in Hampshire (July to October) and in spring in Kent (March to April), but rarely in the winter months. It was seen twice on the Exe estuary, Devon, in November 2009 but not since, but has now become a regular on the Truro River, having been seen in December 2012, November 2014 and twice this month. The other was also a male, ringed in July 2010 in Iceland, and has been seen at Devoran and the Truro River in four different winters and also back in Iceland every summer since. Interestingly it has also been seen at Frampton Marsh and Welney on migration.

The Hampshire godwit at Boscawen Park in November 2014 (John St Ledger)

The Icelandic godwit at Devoran in December 2012 (John St Ledger)

• Down at Devoran, the two regular colour-ringed Curlews remain, ringed in August 2015 in Powys (the first from that project to be seen elsewhere) and in June 2013 in The Netherlands.
• On Gillan Creek, the roosting gulls haven't received the attention they deserve of late, but it's nice to now that the regular Green R16X is still with us, ringed in France in June 2009 and seen on the Helford and down at Coverack every winter since.

Peregrine and Blue Tit on the move

Unrelated movements I'll add, but both quite interesting nonetheless! At the weekend we were emailed the photo below of a Peregrine seen at Pointe de l'Herbaudière, Ile Noirmoutier in western France. It's a bit hard to make out in the photo, but the ring was read by two people as Yellow JF, which makes it a bird we ringed as a chick at Kenidjack in May this year. This is a really interesting movement in its first winter (some 417km), but not unprecedented, with one other Cornish-ringed Peregrine seen in France.

Our second exciting movement of the day came from a new ringing site near Predannack, where a wild bird seed crop has been planted at Teneriffe Farm. Our morning session didn't catch many of the finches (Chaf, Green and Linnet) in the field, but did produce a surprisingly large number of Blue Tits. One of these was already ringed though (with a group ring), so we presumed it was from a Lizard garden just a few kilometres away, but it was in fact a bird ringed as a nestling at Bonallack, near Gweek, some 10km from Predannack. This doesn't seem the longest of movements, but in the Blue Tit world it's quite impressive!

L930113 had been moving so fast it even came out blurred in all my photos!

The fields at Predannack do look quite promising though, with over 110 Skylark in two large fields and a good scattering of finches and even the odd Snipe, Lapwing and Golden Plover. A couple of brief calls very reminiscent of Red-throated Pipit also livened up the morning, but we never managed to pin that one down...

Sunrise at Predannack - for no reason!

Thanks to Dominique Robard for reporting and photographing the Peregrine in France.

Pulli weekend

It's that time of year when we're pretty occupied ringing pulli and this weekend was no exception. Friday saw us ringing the last few nestbox tits, including these Blue Tits (two of the five ringed) from the camera box on the side of my Lizard house. They're actually quite late, as most of the birds being monitored by University of Exeter students have already fledged or are close to.

I was also able to join Dale Jackson to ring one of the numerous broods of Peregrines he monitors and rings on behalf of the ringing group. They've not had the best year so far, with only 17 birds ringed (and colour-ringed) so far, compared to 25 in a 'normal' year - if that exists these days!

It's been a long time since I've jumared (you'll get the idea here),
so getting back up from this nest was hard work!

We were also able to revisit a few local Barn Owl sites that we either hadn't got round to yet, or had eggs/small chicks at the previous visit. We ringed a few broods of four (with a couple of smaller chicks going unringed), including this very smart-looking bird near St Keverne. But not all were so far advanced, with one bird near Gweek still sat on six eggs...

At least three of our sites still have birds on eggs,
which may well be replacement broods after failures

While we were in the area, we were also able to drop in and ring a brood of Song Thrushes in one of Greg's nestbox woods. The brood of four were a good size for ringing and were obvously hungry...

What's for tea!

With some of our urban gulls growing up wuick we'll no doubt be visiting a few Falmouth rooftops soon and then back over to Mullion Island for some Great Black-backed Gulls!