Garden Ringing: 20th January 2018

The weather hasn't been suitable for mist-netting over the last week or so but yesterday morning presented a brief opportunity ahead of a belt of rain that was due to move in. I set up the usual 6 metre net in the garden shortly after first light and caught 22 birds in just over an hour before the forecast rain put a halt to proceedings. The catch was much as expected with Goldfinches accounting for the majority of birds caught and another 2 new Siskins continued the early presence of that species in the garden.

The light was shocking yesterday (that is why it was so good for mist-netting) so this and the following photos of finches were from a few days ago.

Female Siskin being photobombed by a Goldfinch (also a female).

........and again.

That could have been that but the rain stopped towards mid-afternoon when I caught 2 Starlings in the manually operated bird table trap with one being a new bird and the other a retrap. I try to avoid recapturing colour-ringed birds but now and again the opportunity to catch a new bird takes precedence. The new bird had a full yellow bill which was well ahead of a lot of the other Starlings seen or caught recently. This bill colour change often goes unnoticed but the predominantly yellow colour of the adult bill changes to black towards the end of the breeding season, generally starting in late June or July, and juveniles start life with an all dark bill. The change back to the yellow bill of the breeding season can begin as early as November in the British population and generally a bit later in migrants from the continent and there are also differences between age classes with older birds generally changing first.

Male Starling ringed 29/11/17. Note the bill is starting to change from black to yellow and the base is becoming blue, showing it is a male. The uniform eye colour also indicates this bird is a male.

Female Starling ringed 20/01/18. The bill is all yellow and the base is turning pink showing this bird is a female. The pale eye ring also confirms the sex as female.

The ringing didn't end with a couple of Starlings as I decided to put the net up again because the weather conditions were perfect (very overcast and no wind) and the forecast for the next week was looking pretty dire. The net hadn't been up for more than ten minutes before another 10 Goldfinches had been caught and another half hour saw the afternoon total rise to 17, all Goldfinches (16 new and only 1 retrap). I could have carried on but I decided to call it a day as I was more that satisfied with a day total of  35 new birds and 6 retraps plus I had other things to do. Final ringing totals for the day (retraps in brackets) were: Goldfinch 29 (4); Chaffinch 2; Siskin 2; Greenfinch 1; Starling 1 (1); Coal tit (1).

Now you may have noticed that the ringing totals aren't listed in any sort of species order but my thoughts on that and recent changes to the British List can wait until another day, but the one thing that should really stand out is the lack of tits. There are very few Blue, Great and Coal Tits visiting my feeders and it has been pretty much the same all winter, but more so since the turn of the year. I don't know if it is because their populations are particularly low or if there is plenty of natural food that has allowed them to stay closer to their woodland breeding sites but there is no doubt that my garden is generally devoid of tits, apart from periodic visits by the Long-tailed variety. I am not complaining as I am not what you would call a tit man (can you say that anymore in these overly PC days) but Blues and Greats seem to have been unusually scarce in the garden this winter.