Quick Update and Starling RAS progress.

Apologies for the lack of posts recently but I have been busy with one thing or another and there has not been a great deal of interest to report on the migration front. The dearth of migrants at Billinge and other sites I visit has continued with hirundines being particulary scarce. While it has not been a silent spring it has been a pretty quiet one and it wouldn't surprise me if national population declines are reported for many species when all the data is in.

Much of my ringing effort over the last 3 weeks has been directed towards my Starling RAS project and I have clocked up around 75 hours of recording colour-ringed Starlings feeding on the fat blocks in the garden. As I have been running the project for a few years most of my local Starlings are colour-ringed and I have resighted 100 Starlings that were ringed prior to the start of this year's recording period with over 25% of those birds being more than 3 years old. It didn't take long to record the first 60 or so individuals but after that it became more like looking for a needle in a haystack as it gets progressively harder to pick out any that haven't been recorded before from all the ones that visit the fat blocks on numerous occasions each day. In addition to recording all the previously ringed birds I selectively trap and ring any unringed Starlings to add them to the study population with 20 new adults being ringed and colour-ringed so far.

With at least 70+ different Starlings coming they are currently getting through 1.5 to 2 kg of home made fat blocks each day. This will increase as more young fledge.

It is often a bit of a scrum at the fat blocks with the birds jostling for position. This can make reading the codes on the colour-rings quite difficult.

The timing of breeding has been pretty much as expected and the first adult was seen carrying food on 21st April and this was soon followed by many others. The first young started to fledge about 6 days ago and the first juveniles started to follow their parents to the the fat blocks in the garden in the last couple of days. This is very similar to last year and just over a week later than 2016, which was an earlier than average breeding season anyway. While the severe cold spells in the early part of this spring delayed the onset of breeding in many resident species it doesn't appear to have had much of an affect on Starlings, in this area at least, or that is the initial impression. It still remains to be seen what the fledging rates and brood sizes are like overall so it will be later in June before we get a more complete picture.

Adult male A12 is one of the many regulars and was originally ringed in December 2014. This male has been recorded numerous times in each breeding season since being ringed.

The first juvenile ringed in 2018. This bird was caught earlier this morning (14/05/2018). The first juvenile was ringed on the same date last year and on 7th May in 2016.