Another Stormie falls prey to a French cat

The weather continues to put a damper on any real mist-netting plans, but there's stil the occasional interesting bird to keep us happy. We were glad to hear last week that a Short-eared Owl that had been picked up in November with a badly-injured wing was almost ready for release, having been cared for by the guys at the Screech Owl Sanctuary. So this female was ringed before release, along with a Barn Owl and two Tawny Owls, so here's hoping we meet them again in happier circumstances!

We also received news today of a couple of our Lizard-ringed Storm Petrels that had been found in France. A bird we ringed on 17th June 2015 was recaught by French ringers just two days later on Ile de Bannec, 173km from Cornwall. Sadly though, a bird ringed in August 2013 was killed by a cat on Ile de Molene, which lies very close to Ile de Bannec. This is the third of our Storm Petrels killed by a cat on the island, so it is rather worrying to think how many other birds are being killed!

We asked Bernard Cadiou in France for some extra info on the problem and he replied: "In 1999 only 18 corpses have been found, but predation increase since 2007 with less than 100 birds killed per year, and since 2013 with about 300 birds killed per year!

The total is now around 1500 petrels killed by cats, mainly wandering prebreeders.

A first campaign of cat control with sterilization was launched in 2011 by the Iroise Natural Marine Park, but unfortunately nothing else was done since then."

Foreign gulls and legless gulls

The blog has been a bit quiet recently, but that's mainly due to a long overdue holiday in Turkey! But I came back to a bit of a flurry of gull reports, all of which were quite interesting...

The first two were a bit sad, as Herring Gull W:062 appears to have lost a leg! It was seen with both legs intact in amongst the thousand other gulls in Cadgwith Bay in January, so has obviously suffered a mishap since then. It was reported from Swanpool, having been ringed locally in Falmouth in 2014.

We also heard that W:197 from St Ives had been found with a broken wing and broken leg in St Ives, so had to be euthanased by a local vet. Better news came in the form of W:060, originally ringed on Falmouth High Street, which is now also on it's holidays, being seen in France. This is the first foreign sighting of one of our Herring Gulls, so was great news!

We've also only ever had one previous foreign sighting of one of our Great Black-backed Gulls, so receiving two in a week was a surprise. Our only other foreign sighting was L:BF8, ringed in Falmouth and seen in France in October 2014, and it apparently liked France as it was reported from a different site again at the start of May (delayed as reported by letter). Also heading south was L:BJ3, ringed on Mullion Island in 2014 and seen at Lizard Point twice in August 2014. It was seen on Chouet Landfill, Guernsey on 13th July and it's about time one of our birds made it to the Channel Islands.

Apart from this, since the last blog update we've been doing some ringing, so below are a few highlights in the form of pretty pics!

It was another year of low productivity for our Great Black-backed Gulls on Mullion Island, with just nine chicks making it to an old enough age to colour-ringed

Our Kittiwakes have been doing slightly better, with 25 chicks and 15 adults now ringed at Trewavas Head

It's not been such a good year for resightings of French-ringed birds though, with just five birds seen. This bird was ringed at Ponte du Raz, France in 2002 and has been seen at Trewavas Head in 2012 and 2015.

This is also a French bird, ringed as a chick in 2007 and seen for the first time at Trewavas Head this year. Caught inadvertently, we noticed that the colour rings (in particular yellow) were starting to fade so we replaced them with one of our numbered rings.

Away from seabirds, we are also continuing to ring rehabilitated owls at the Screech Owl Sanctuary, these being some of the eight young Tawny Owls ringed recently.

23D8 returns

It's that time of year when we should be out catching migrants, but it's also the time of year when the weather is never calm enough to open nets. So it's also the time to await the arrival of some of our returning winter birds, including some real creatures of habit. One such regular is 23D8 that we've blogged about before (see here).

Breeding in its natal colony at Hosehill Lake, Berkshire, 23D8 is a regular winter visitor to Helston Boating Lake, but in recent years has paused briefly on the Camel estuary en route to Helston. This winter it arrived back bang on cue on 24th October, and for once we thought it had slipped through the Camel estuary unnoticed, but having just heard back from the ringer, that's apparently not the case!

23D8, third from the right (honestly!), back on bread-stealing duty

Over the last few years, 23D8's movements can be summarised as...

• last seen in Berkshire June 2012
• Camel estuary 4th October 2012
• Helston Boating Lake 21st October 2012 (to 1st March 2013)
• back in Berkshire by 19th March 2013 (last seen 2nd July 2013)
• Camel estuary 22nd July 2013 (and again 24th August)
• Helston Boating Lake 17th October 2013 (to 16th February 2014)
• back in Berkshire 9th March 2014 (last seen 4th June 2014)
• Camel estuary 23rd June 2014 (and again 3rd October 2014)
• Helston Boating Lake 24th October 2014

Pretty much the only other ringing we've managed recently was this very rusty rehabilitated Tawny Owl ringed at the Screech Owl Sanctuary last week. This is part of a long-term project monitoring the success of their rehab programme.

The year's first rehab owls

As part of our work monitoring breeding Barn Owls in the county, we also help the guys at the Screech Owl Sanctuary in their rehabilitation work. They do some great work taking in and rehabilitating orphaned and injured owls and before they're released we drop in to ring them to help monitor post-release survival. This has been really successful in recent years, with a few subsequent reports showing that birds survive well after a spell in care. This year has been really quiet at the sanctuary (is that a good thing?), and this afternoon we ringed the first birds admitted so far this year.

Barn Owl chick needing some tlc after being found
on a barn floor, but looking pretty good now

Three orphaned Tawny Owl chicks on the left and a road casualty adult on the right,
all looking much happier and healthier after a stint in care. These birds are very
close to being released now, currently residing in their own private, undisturbed aviary

All birds are ringed with standard BTO rings before release

Whilst most of the birds admitted are Barn and Tawny Owls, we have also ringed one Short-eared Owl which was found with a broken wing near The Lizard. It didn't look good for a while, but after surgery the bird was fit enough to be released back at The Lizard. The sad end to the story is that this bird was killed by a car at Roche (53km from The Lizard) just 25 days later, presumably on its way back north to breed.