Dutch-ringed Chiffchaff (and 28 others)

With a carload of the group out of county cannon-netting ducks and waders with the Axe Estuary Ringing Group, I was on my own at Gwennap sewage works today. With just two nets, a couple of hours produced a very respectable 41 birds, including 29 Chiffchaffs!

The highlight was the bird below, which I thought was a British control (AAH203 - actually a Wren ringed in Cumbria in 2003) until I noticed the ring address which read 'ARNHEM HOLLAND'. Dutch-ringed Chiffchaffs aren't very regular in the UK, with fewer than 30 previous records. This isn't the first to be found in Cornwall though, as one was retrapped at Brew, near Sennen, in May 2007. Oddly this bird had been ringed just nine days previosuly in The Netherlands, so a very odd movement!

Another interesting bird was this Siberian Chiffchaff. Not the classic bird, lacking all olive and yellow tones, but a more subtle type. But it still showed very washed out plumage tones, along with a slightly flaring supercilium behind the eye and jet black legs.

Bit of sunny weather on a cold day was all it took to
bring out the insects and hence the birds

The 'bycatch' of the day wasn't too shabby either, including one of two Yellow-browed Warblers and one of three Firecrest present at the site.

Winter wanderings of a St Ives gull

We've recently been able to look at some of the data from the GPS data-loggers on the three gulls in St Ives and one of these in particular is quite interesting. Logger 4036 (colour ring Blue W:181) was a breeding male originally ringed on the roof of the Co-op in St Ives. Over November-December 2014 it took a couple of trips out to the north, visiting Lundy Island for an overnight stop on one date. A second trip then took it out to both Great and Little Saltee Islands, a brief visit to some fields near Duncormick (as far as 240km from St Ives) and then a visit to Hook Head.

What is also interesting is the time it spent at sea on its return, with a cluster of points in the Celtic Sea. It is possible that it was either following fishing boats feeding or a resting bird 'riding the tide'.

W:181 has always been a very pelagic bird, and the track below (in yellow) shows some of its movements during the breeding season, again wandering out into the Celtic Sea.

Many thanks to Peter Rock for getting to grips with the data and producing the maps here.

Reading Chiffchaff and Med Gull rings

The year seems to have started as it ended, with some pretty windy weather forecast... So looks like we won't be netting any time soon, but that doesn't stop us getting out and reading some rings. Photographer Tony Mills did incredibly well to get enough detail on a Chiffchaff ring at Sandy Cove, Newlyn, to get the whole number: HHB515. This was a bird ringed at Nanjizal, Land's End, on 20th November, so whilst only 11km away (as the Chiff flies), it's interesting to see how these birds move around during the winter.

More standard fare came from Men-aver beach on the Helford, with a good gathering of gulls producing three colour-ringed birds. These were two Mediterranean Gulls we've seen before this winter (Green RS92 from France and White 3P71 from Denmark) and one of our own Great Black-backed Gulls from Falmouth. L:BF6 was ringed as a chick on the roof of the Falmouth Marine School in 2013 and this is the first time we've seen it since. This is the second of the three siblings to be seen, following a bird in France in October.

Last few Chiffchaff of the year

Barring calm enough winds tomorrow to net a few garden birds, today saw the last mist-netting of the year for the group. A morning start at The Lizard caught a few Goldfinch, Greenfinch and House Sparrow, and we then headed on to Gwennap Sewage Works. The cold start to the day had brought reasonable numbers of birds into the works, but the afternoon sun meant the insects were up in the trees, so most of the 20 Chiffchaff and three Siberian Chiffchaff there were too high to catch. But enough were milling round the site that we still managed to ring seven collybita Chiffchaff and one tristis Siberian Chiffchaff.

The tristis Chiffchaff (left) stands out against the 'standard' bird on the right, lacking olive-green or yellow tones on the plumage. Seems odd, but tristis Chiffs always seem to fluff up...

Travelling between the two sites today, we stopped off to check a dead bird on the road for rings, but by the time we'd turned round it had miraculously recovered and was stood in the middle of the road! After narrowly being missed by a passing car, we managed to scoop up a stunned adult Water Rail and take it with us. After a short while in the bag we normally store our nets in (and a nice portion of Sardines we bought for it) it recovered and was quite feisty. So it was duly ringed and released into the more salubrious setting of the new reedbed at Gwennap.

Stithians Chaffinch in Norway and even more Welsh Stormies!

Our last blog post highlighted a few interesting recoveries received from the BTO, and with only a very slight alteration to the theme (this time "Autumn migrants going the right way and more Welsh Stormies"), this post highlights more recoveries received today. Normally the crown would be taken by the reports of three more Lizard-ringed Storm Petrels recaught in south Wales, but instead of the usual reports from Skokholm Island, these came from nearby Skomer Island. Two of these birds were ringed on The Lizard in 2013, recaught on 28th and 29th July 2014, but 2683255 was more interesting. It was ringed on The Lizard on 30th June 2014, before being recaught on Skomer Island at 23:25 on 25th July. Not satisfied with this, it was then recaught an hour and a half later (01:00 on 26th July) on Skokholm Island, 3-4km from Skomer. The chances of this must be rather slim, but it'll be fascinating to see if this bird is caught again in future years.

But this time round, the most interesting recovery was of a lowly Stithians Chaffinch, ringed as an adult way back in December 2011. We've often wondered how far these birds came to winter at Stithians and presume that they'd be local SW birds relocating, so this report from southern Norway was amazing! Y397543 was recaught near Høvåg on 25th March 2014, presumably on return migration to somewhere else in Scandinavia.

This is just the second Cornish-ringed Chaffinch to be found in Norway (following one in 1977), but four have made it to Sweden.

Last up was another northward-bound migrant, but this time a Sparrowhawk ringed in a Lizard garden on 6th September and sadly found dead on the road in Falmouth a month later.

Autumn migrants going the wrong way and more Welsh Stormies

We've just received a whole batch of reports back from the BTO detailing some movements of birds to and from the group area. There were rather a lot of local movements, but here are some of the highlights.

 

Our great run of Storm Petrel movements continues (see the first few here), with yet more movements to and from Wales. This time we received details of four birds ringed at The Lizard that were recaught in Pembrokeshire, on Skokholm Island and at Wooltack Point. Two of these were birds ringed in 2012 and 2013, but the others were quite quick same-year movements, at 38 days, 26 days and 20 days. In fact, all of these last three were ringed on the same date (30th June), the same date we also caught a Portuguese-ringed bird.

The Portuguese-ringed Stormie caught back in June

We then just had one Storm Petrel movement he other way, from Skokholm to The Lizard (194km), but in managed this in just one day! It was ringed at 00:40 on 24th July and recaught down at The Lizard at 00:30 on 25th July.

 

Two rather more unusual reports came from Nanjizal, with migrants moving north in the late summer/autumn. A Sedge Warbler ringed on 21st August was recaught 250km away in Dorset seven days later (so moving northeast) and even more bizarrely a juvenile Sand Martin ringed on 10th July was recaught nearly 500km away in West Yorkshire six days later! This again is a very quick northeasterly movement and seems most odd...

Six-day movement of Sand Martin Z118605

Lesson in fault bars

In what turned out to be a quiet morning at Predannack, I thought we'd just post up a pic of this rather obvious set of fault bars on a Chaffinch.

Fault bars are areas of weakness where growing feathers have been compromised by poor weather, food shortage etc, and are normally most obvious on tail feathers. This can happen at any age, but the key thing to remember is that juveniles grow their main flight feathers (including tail) at the same time (in the nest), whereas adults will moult them sequentially. So although birds of any age can show fault bars, the fact that on this bird the distinct pattern of fault bars is the same distance from the tip of all the tail feathers indicates these were all grown at the same time; ie this is a juvenile bird.

Nanjizal 2014 totals

After another succesful season at Nanjizal, the nets were finally taken down yesterday. Whilst there are boind to be a few more wintering Chiffchaff and Yellow-browed Warblers on site, it's time to focus on other things.

So time for a quick summary of the 2014 season, when an exceptional 5524 birds were ringed. The top five species ringed for the year were:

	2014 total
Blackcap	1305
Sedge Warbler	1274
Chiffchaff	753
Whitethroat	353
Robin	304

But some of the totals of scarcer species are perhaps more notable:

	2014 total
Tree Pipit	9
Grasshopper Warbler	146
Yellow-browed Warbler	10
Firecrest	9

Add to these totals a fair smattering of rarities (Aquatic Warbler, Paddyfield Warbler, Barred Warbler, Common Rosefinch and Little Bunting) and it's been a good year! If anyone is interested in ringing at Nanjizal (and joining the autumn warbler monitoring at Marazion  Marsh RSPB reserve), then check out more details on the Nanjizal page.

Netful of Grasshopper Warblers

Paddyfield Warbler

Aquatic Warbler

Barred Warbler

Little Bunting

Helston gulls and our first Skylarks

After putting up a new Barn Owl box with the National Trust yesterday, I couldn't resist stopping off with a loaf of bread at Helston Boating Lake to see what gulls were around. I soon had a good gathering of Black-headed Gulls, along with a few other scroungers. The few birds there included the regular White 23D8 from Berkshire, but also a young Herring Gull with a nice blue ring!

W:047 was ringed on an industrial estate roof in Falmouth in June. This is only 15km from Falmouth, but still interesting to see it leaving the town rather than hovering round eating chips.

White 23D8 and Blue W:047 hanging out together

Later in the afternoon we then set nets out at Predannack in the hope of catching some of the 100+ Skylark using the set-aside fields there. Setting up seven nets in an 'H' pattern, we put a 'tape' on pre-dawn and at first light walked the adjacent field, moving over 30 birds towards the nets. But with a little too much dawn light, we only managed to catch eight birds, but now know better for next time (tomorrow). These are the first Skylark ringed by the group and weighing in at almost 40g some were quite impressive!

Swithching the 'tape' (actually an MP3 player) to Meadow Pipit, which seem to be less wary of nets in daylight, we topped up the day's catch with 16 Meadow Pipits.

Bit hard to see, but the 'H' of nets now furled for tomorrow morning

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.

More Sibes at Nanjizal

Thinking we'd have a busy thrush day at Nanjizal, a few of us headed out to Penwith in anticipation, but it wasn't to be. The curse of Grantham struck again, and our catch total of 39 new birds (and a scattering of retrap Wrens) was a bit on the low side...

But it did include a couple of nice Siberian visitors, in the shape of a Yellow-browed Warbler and a Siberian Chiffchaff.

Very hazy, burned out but unedited photo of the Yellow-browed

I thought I'd leave it unannounced in a bird bag as a little surprise for Guill McIvor, who runs the Exeter University Jackdaw project around Stithians and Penryn.

See left the slightly bemused look on his face on taking something small out of a bird bag, before the lightbulb moment happened and the resultant childlike grin below developed!

Bit hard to see in this photo, but this bird was carrying plenty of fat (4/8 on the ringing fat scale), and weighed in at over 8g. Doesn't seem like much, but it is if you're a Yellow-browed Warbler

Our second Sibe of the day was a rather smart Siberian Chiffchaff (tristis). It wasn't calling unfortunately, but the general lack of olive tones (it did have a green wash over a lot of the upperparts), gleaming white underparts and striking face pattern did make it stand out amongst the five more typically olive local Chiffchaffs (collybita).

Cornish weather can be a bit unpredictable, so you've got to use only the best storm ties!

Birds of a feather...

...and a rather smelly feather at that! But do they really stick together?

We've just received various reports of our ringed birds from BTO, detailing when/where they've been found subsequently. For a House Sparrow and Blue Tit ringed at the Stithians feeding station this wasn't too far, being found just along the road; the former found dead and the latter killed hitting a window.

But we did also receive news of two of our Storm Petrels recaught on Skokholm Island. Both had been ringed at Hot Point, Lizard, on 11th July 2013, being recaught on Skokholm on 24th and 30th July 2014 (see details on the Skokholm Island blog). Interestingly, last year ringers on Skokholm also recaught two other Stormies ringed on 11th July, so there musty have been something special about that night. Looking back, we ringed 78 birds that night, which is the second most we've ever caught in any one night at Hot Point, beaten only by 80 birds on 7th-8th July 2013 (blogged here). So maybe there was just something special about that week...

The map below shows Hot Point, Lizard, in yellow and all of the sites where we've exchanged Storm Petrels in red, with Skokholm highlighted in orange. The bias towards the English Channel and southern Irish Sea is perhaps not surprising, but it's a bit surprising we don't draw in more passage birds heading to colonies further north.

Blackcaps galore and a smart Little Bunting: October at Nanjizal

After a really good September's ringing at Nanjizal, hopes were high for an even better October, but sadly it wasn't to be. Strong winds, rain and fog reduced October ringing sessions considerably across the county and despite its sheltered location, Nanjizal suffered as much as any.

Despite the weather though, over 800 birds were ringed during October, including 355 Blackcap and 135 Chiffchaff. The late run of Blackcaps brought the year total up to an incredible 1253, which is already by far the highest-ever annual total ringed in the county. The BTO online ringing report shows county ringing totals back to 2006, and the highest Blackcap total since then was 624 birds in 2011. In fact, the average annual total since 2006 is just 389 birds! So even considering the well-documented population increase in Blackcaps in recent years, the massive jump in ringing totals is amazing.

Other species ringed in good numbers included Sedge Warbler (bringing the year total to 1204), Whitethroat (340) and Grasshopper Warbler (136). On the rarity front, with so many Yellow-browed Warblers arriving up-country, we were hoping to beat last years total of 12 birds ringed, but just six were ringed in October: maybe November will see a big push of birds heading west. The pick of the bunch though, was a very smart Little Bunting ringed on 11th October; still not an annual visitor to the county.

Although the east coast has recently seen huge numbers of thrushes arriving in the last week, very few have been coming through Cornwall. Also seemingly lacking are the expected big numbers of Chaffinch, although the last few days has seen a notable increase, as well as the first flushes of Redwing and Song Thrush. So here's hoping they arrive soon, before Nanjizal closes down for the winter...

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.

Urban gull swaps Falmouth for France

It's been a while since we've blogged, but the weather's not been conducive to much ringing, and apart from a few Meadow Pipits and Linnets at The Lizard and a few more PIT-tagged tits, all's been quiet.

But today we received interesting news of one of our Great Black-backed Gulls from Falmouth, ringed in addition to the birds on Mullion Island. In 2013 we ringed three chicks on the roof of the Falmouth Marine School, but these then disappeared. We presumed they'd stay locally, but then several of the Herring Gulls ringed in the town have wandered, so perhaps Great Black-backs are likely to wander further.

But on 12th October, L:BF8 was seen at Baie de Lampaul on Ile d'Ouessant in western France. We know that birds from Looe Island will wander quite widely into France, but this is the first of our own birds (from Falmouth or Mullion Island) that has been seen abroad.

Thanks to Benjamin Griard for reporting this bird and it'll be interesting to see if it stays around the island over the winter.