Super early Kittiwake chick

A quick trip out to Portreath this morning to check for Kittiwake eggs brought an unexpected surprise. Aside from three French-ringed birds and several birds on 1-2 eggs, an adult was seen brooding a single downy chick. This is 5-6 weeks earlier than in previous years and seems to be incredibly early compared to other studies.

Back in the reedbed

The settled weather gave us the chance to get back into the reedbed at Gunwalloe for our second CES visit. It was a bit windier than forecast, but that's Cornwall for you! The session ended with just 17 birds, which is average of 23 for this visit below the (lowest is 15 in 2014 and highest is 33 in 2011).

As per normal the catch was dominated by Reed Warblers, including two birds ringed in 2013. But the oldest birds caught were both ringed back in 2011: a Cetti's Warbler and a Blue Tit. Whilst the latter had been recaught in 2012 and 2013, the Cetti's had avoided recapture since ringing!

Cornwall ringing isn't for the faint-hearted!

The last couple of days seem to have been a bit full on, but full of adventure! Yesterday a small team joined the ringing legend that is Tony Cross to do the annual round of Chough sites in the county, colour-ringing chicks to continue the RSPB's long-term work on the recolonisation of Cornwall by these enigmatic birds. It's a dirty and very hard job, requiring an array of climbing kit, but a full-day saw us checking most of the sites, with mixed success. Whilst some nests were empty or predated, we did ring healthy broods of two, three and four, with a few more to check next week. This might not seem very many, but the breeding population is dominated by young, inexperienced birds at the moment, so things will improve in time...

Some sites are more accessible than others!
After a long abseil and then a secondary abseil down this ominous hole,
this nest was seemingly predated...

Somewhere near the bottom of this very large hole lies a very well-hidden nest site...

Ascending back to level ground after a 50m abseil down to the afore-mentioned nest,
where four chicks were ringed

Even by Chough standards this was a pretty tight squeeze!

Three chicks from an open mine shaft site getting their first view of the outside world!

The long day yesterday was followed by a more sedate one today. Accompanied by two surveying apprentices from Natural England we did the first of our checks on Barn Owl boxes. We only visited half a dozen sites, finding birds on eggs, including one clutch of five eggs.The afternoon was then spent kayaking out to one of our Kittiwake sites at Trewavas Head to read some colour-rings on returning birds. Whilst we only found four of our own birds and a single French-ringed bird, we take any opportunity for a kayak out on a sunny day!

Standard kit for West Cornwall Ringing Group being a wetsuit
and a dry-bag to put your scope in!

Bonjour mouette tridactyle!

...which literally translates as hello three-toed gull, but really just relates to a few French-ringed Kittiwakes at Portreath this afternoon. 'Tridactyle' also relates to the Kittiwake's scientific name (Rissa tridactyla), and there are many other tridactyl animals, including a sloth, a giant-anteater, a woodpecker, a Jacamar (related to kingfishers), an Australian marsupial, a plume moth, a polychaete worm, an extinct scorpion-like arthropod and, oddly, Plum Powdery Mildew!

But back to Kittiwakes... So a sunny afternoon just cries out for a trip to the cliffs to check out the satellite colony at Portreath, with the main colony only viewable from sea. But even this small gathering of birds was worth an extended look, and no fewer than four French-ringed birds were recorded. All of these birds will have come from Point du Raz in France, so it'll be interesting to see when they were ringed and if they have interesting histories...

Two of these appeared to be 'squatters' which aren't actively breeding but just prospecting. Birds will exhibit this kind of behaviour until a nesting 'stump' becomes available which they will occupy. Excuse the poor photo quality, but phone-scoping at 60x magnification in heat haze is never going to produce the best results!

The satellite colony at Portreath is up and left from the beach in this view

OWM-YGO looks to be a settled breeder

ONM-OLY was seen on several 'stumps' so is more likely a squatter

OBM-WBG was probably also a squatter

Back into the mud for the Gunwalloe CES

The start of our Constant Effort Site season at Gunwalloe is always a slow affair, but this morning's session was even quieter! The new boardwalk in one of the rides did make life rather a lot easier, but the catch of just 12 birds was a bit disappointing... We've actually only managed the first session twice since 2011 as it's normally too windy, but catching 16 birds in 2014 and 19 birds in 2015.

The warbler catch was just four Reeds and three Sedge, but three of these were already ringed, which is where the real value lies. The retrap Sedge we'd ringed in May 2015 (and recaught a month later) and the Reeds were ringed as an adult in 2014 (and recaught twice in 2015) and a juvenile in 2013 (recaught once in 2014 and twice in 2015).

Eastern or Western Bonelli's Warbler at Nanjizal???

With the winter weather taking its toll on the vegetation, Nanjizal still has a rather wintry feel and the leaf must be a month behind normal. Spring migration has also been very slow, with only a couple of periods when birds arrived in any numbers. The best arrival so far was over 21st-23rd April when a decent south-easterly wind and rain dropped a few birds in, primarily Willow Warblers and Blackcaps. Virtually all the birds were very light and obviously finding the cold, wet weather hard going.

One unexpected surprise for Kester though was a Bonelli's Warbler (of some sort) caught on the 23rd. This bird didn't look like the birds he had caught before in Cyprus, but similar to birds he'd handled in Greece. It also didn't look quite right for the milky-tea coloured birds from Spain. As you can see below, the obvious pale edges to the greater coverts and tertials are very fresh and not worn or bleached. If pale edges are a feature of eastern birds, it looks like it's a plumage feature rather than relating to the age of the feathers. The bird's long-billed appearance (more reminiscent of Western BW (Phylloscopus bonelli) than Eastern BW (Phylloscopus orientalis)) was maybe exaggerated by a few feathers missing from the top of the bill. Luckily the bird did leave behind a feather though, so it'll be interesting to see what the DNA comes back as!

Dippers and French Kittiwakes

The end of last week saw a couple of group members back out ringing the local Dippers in Idless Woods. This has turned out to be their best year yet, with very healthy broods of four and five to ring. We were also able to catch a couple of the adults (male from one pair and female from the other), so it'll be interesting in future years to see if these are regular birds.

We also took the chance of a fine day to head down to the Kittiwake colony at Trewavas Head, which involves a bit of a scramble, a climb and some dodging of waves! But it's always worth the effort, with good numbers of birds on the ledges.

We were also able to resight 18 colour-ringed birds, including three French-ringed birds. Two of these had previously been seen at the now almost-abandoned colony at Rinsey Cliff, so it was interesting to see them moving down along the coast. One of our own colour-ringed adults from Rinsey (ringed last year) had also switched site, so it'll be interesting to see how many of these stay to breed.

OWM-RNN was ringed as a chick at Point du Raz, Finisterre in 2007,
being seen at Rinsey Cliff in 2012 and twice in 2013 and now at Trewavas Head

BM-BRB will be another French bird, but seems to be missing a colour ring.
Luckily, with a bit of patience we were able to read the metal ring number so all is not lost!

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.

Gunwalloe finally gets some boardwalk!

Many months (or even years!) in the planning, we finally managed to lay some boardwalk at our CES site at Gunwalloe. The boards were ones taken up at College Reservoir to be replaced by newer boards, so we were able to relocate them to our reedbed ringing site. Considering the net-ride was waist deep in mud and water in places, this was no mean feat, but a small group of ringing group regulars suffered the mud to get the job done.

The before and after photo above gives an idea of the vast improvement this will make for accessing the site!

Sad diver and owl news

We received news today that the Great Northern Diver we rescued from illegal netting on Carnsew Basin (more here) was found dead last week (54 days after ringing). Found by the RSPB warden for the area on a litter pick, there was no obvious reason why it had died, but sadly it wasn't fresh enough for a post-mortem examination.

There have only been 12 ever ringed in the UK, with one ringed at Selsey Bill, West Sussex, in February 1973 found just 11 days later.

We also heard that one of our breeding Barn Owls was hit by a car in Lostwithiel last week, having to be put to sleep at a local vets. This was the female from the local pair, ringed just last summer, but hopefully it's still early enough in the season for another female to take over the territory...

Well-travelled Blue YM23

After a great start to the gull-watching ear, it's been a bit quiet recently for gulls on the Lizard, with colour-ring sightings drying up a bit. But the drought was broken with the very nice record of an Icelandic-ringed Lesser Black-backed Gull: Blue YM23.

This bird was ringed as an adult back in May 2010 at Sandgerði in western Iceland. Since then, it's been seen in three different winters in Portugal (on the coast and at landfills) and in-between times also seen in Co Wexford (December 2012), our very own Hayle estuary (March 2015) and then at Southerly Point, Lizard a few days ago! A round-up of its trips are mapped below, but it's certainly covered many more miles than this...

This is the only Icelandic-ringed Lesser Black-back to be seen in Cornwall, so hopefully we'll see it again next spring!

Sibe Chiffs meet nesting Dippers

Well apparently yesterday was the last day of winter, so it was fitting that we had a day out that saw us cooing over the remnants of winter along with looking forward to the summer.

Whilst failing to put up a couple of Dipper nestboxes, we peered over the fence at one of our local sewage works (Constantine) to find the bushes there heaving with small stuff. At any one time there were at least 25 Chiffchaffs buzzing round fly-catching, and in amongst them were at least five Firecrest and two Siberian 'tristis' Chiffchaffs.

So that was the last gasp of winter, and the first signs of spring came in the form of a nest-building Dipper (where we were trying to put a box!) and also 39 Cormorants sat on nests on Mullion Island. Once again they've moved location, this time preferring the landward side of the island. There were also some signs of spring at Rinsey, with several Shags starting to nest-build and the first Kittiwakes also back on ledges, including CA (below), ringed as an adult in 2013.

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."

Gunwalloe Swallow in Spain

We tend to ring a lot of Swallows at the roost at Gunwalloe, but the 'return' on these birds is rather small, with very few ever being found or recaught again. In fact, of the 2,007 Swallows ringed in the reedbed, four have been recaught in the reedbed within the same autumn, five have been caught a year after ringing and two have been recaught two years after ringing. Just one has been found dead (in Helston a year after ringing) and we've had two longer-distance movements.

One of these was a bird we ringed in August last year that then headed north, being recaught in Devon 26 days later! A rather more conventional movement has only just come to us via BTO, which was a bird ringed in July 2014 that was then recaught on southward passage in September in Guadalajara, central Spain. This is over 1,000km from Gunwalloe, but this bird obviously had a lot further still to go!

Ringing group report 2015

With all the ringing and resighting data in, we've just finalised the group report for 2015. This details some of the projects we ran through the year and also some of the more interesting movements of birds reported. You can download and view the report here: