Billinge: 1st October 2018

A light northerly breeze and generally clear conditions weren't likely to produce many birds so I wasn't surprised when a session in the top willows started off very slowly. Only 9 birds were caught in the first couple of hours so I decided to pack up early but then a flock of 8 Long-tailed Tits was caught in what was going to be the final net round and tempted me to stay a bit longer. I am certainly glad I decided to stay as the catching rate wasn't too bad for the next couple of hours, although it was largely made up of tits.  However, there were a few Goldcrests too and they included a bird that was already wearing a ring from elsewhere which was the clear highlight of the morning. The final total of 44 new birds and 1 control was much better than expected and was a good start to the month.

The control Goldcrest had a ring number with prefix KHV and it looked like a very new ring so may have been ringed quite recently. With Goldcrest numbers being very low this autumn I thought my prospects of getting any controls or recoveries would be very low too so this bird was a very welcome surprise.

There haven't been many Redpolls on the move so far this autumn and today's was the first adult male.

Adult male Lesser Redpoll

Noisy Coal Tits are often a feature of clear days in late September and much of  October but how many actually move very far is open to question.

Photographs of Great Tits rarely appear in the blog but I had to include these two as they show how different the intensity of the yellow can be. Both were first-year females. I have looked back at the sexes of the Greats Tits that were caught in September and there was a clear preponderance of females; of the 44 handled 31 were females,12 were males and 1 was left unsexed as it hadn't completed its post juvenile moult.

Ringing totals for 01/10/2018 were: Coal Tit 4; Blue Tit 8; Great Tit 6; Long-tailed Tit 9; Chiffchaff 2; Blackcap 1; Goldcrest 10 (1 control); Blackbird 1; Dunnock 1; Bullfinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 1. 44 new birds and 1 control.

Billinge: 25th September 2018

The prospect of catching more Redpolls tempted me out again this morning and the usual 3 nets produced 34 birds in just over 3 hours but no Redpolls were ringed.

Highlights and observations of note were as follows:

• A Willow Warbler was ringed and is a fairly late record but still well short of the latest for the site which was on 23/10/2014.
• Goldcrests just managed to scrape into double figures for the first time this month with 10 ringed but it still looks like the UK population has taken a tumble as double figure totals should be the norm for much of September. Interestingly, 9 of the 10 Goldcrests were females.
• This was the first session of the autumn without a Blackcap being ringed and none were seen or even heard.
• Tits are starting to show signs of getting itchy feet with Coal Tits becoming much more vocal and flighty. While I sure some do move others may just go through the motions and turn back or only go a relatively short distance.
• Great Tits also showed a sex bias today with the 7 ringed all being females.
• There was next to no visible migration despite the clear conditions and fairly light breeze with only a handful of Meadow Pipits, a few Skylarks, 4 Reed Buntings, 2 Siskins and 3 Redpolls being noted.

Ringing totals for 25/09/2018 were: Coal Tit 3; Blue Tit 4; Great Tit 7; Willow Warbler 1; Chiffchaff 4; Goldcrest 10; Chaffinch 2; Yellowhammer 2; Reed Bunting 1.

Willow Warbler 25/09/2018

Tit knocker

Tit and knocker, and more commonly their plural forms, are often used synonymously in slang and certain types of humour but in this case the tit and knocker is a Great Tit that acts like and old fashioned knocker-up by tapping on the bedroom window every morning. If you are not familiar with the term 'knocker-up' it was a profession in Britain and Ireland that developed during the industrial revolution when alarm clocks were relatively expensive and not very reliable. The knocker-upper would go around and wake clients up, often by tapping on their bedroom window with a long stick, so they wouldn't be late for work and it was common job in the industrial towns of northern England (link here).

Our knocker-upper has been coming to the bedroom window for about a week now and the tapping usually starts about 6:30am and continues periodically throughout the morning and possibly longer. It is probably attacking its reflection but it is not a male as might be expected, no, our knocker-upper is a female Great Tit and can be sexed by the narrow and broken black stripe on the underparts.

This bird isn't coming across it reflection and then attacking it on each occasion as it usually appears from a direction that wouldn't allow it to see its reflection first. I suspect it has developed this behaviour from an initial chance direct encounter with its reflection and all of the return visits are to check for an intruder but when it gets level with the window it obviously sees its reflection again and responds as if an intruder has returned. This behaviour is very similar to the Dunnock that displayed to its reflection in the car wing mirrors last year. It returned to the mirrors in anticipation of seeing another Dunnock and not because its reflection suddenly came into view (link here) and I confirmed that when I covered the mirrors in bags and it still came back looking for its reflection. I think the female Great Tit is doing something very similar and is flying up to the window in anticipation of seeing what it thinks is another Great Tit rather than responding to something it has just seen.

Now you may be wondering why I am posting about this Great Tit rather than any ringing I have been doing at Billinge. Well, the simple answer is that it has been extremely slow going at Billinge over the last ten days with only a very slow increase in the number of summer visitors present and virtually nothing in the way of visible migration. Hopefully that will change now that some warmer weather with a more favourable wind direction has finally arrived and with a bit of luck I could have a visit worth posting about in the next few days.

All Smiles

It has been a busy week at work and the weather has been poor so I haven't been up to much recently. However, I have been keeping an eye on the Great Tits nesting in the garden and decided it was time to ring the nestlings this evening. The following photographs show their development over the last week or so. Only five nestlings were in the box which is a fairly small brood and they have been reared with the help of artificial food supplies because of the cold conditions.


03/05/12 Great Tit nestlings



07/05/12 Great Tit nestlings



07/05/12 Great Tit nestling. A face only a mother can love.



11/05/12 Great Tit nestlings



11/05/12 Great Tit nestling. Looking more like the real deal.



11/05/12 Great Tit nestling just ringed.

The ring has been darkened with a felt tip marker to make it less noticeable to the parent birds. The young are at least a week off fledging so still have some way to go.