Billinge: 3rd to 7th October 2016

The ringing site at Billinge came into its own this week with the first significant arrival of Redwings on the 3rd. The site is a magnet for these birds as they move across and down through the country with birds usually arriving from the north or east or somewhere in that quarter and then heading off south. Estimates and partial counts (I was busy ringing) of Redwings moving overhead were 700+ 3rd, 600+ 4th, 120+ 5th, 400+ 6th and 200+ today. These numbers are fairly small by Billinge standards but then it is early days and the really big arrivals of migrant thrushes are yet to come. The 173 ringed over the period is a great start and certainly kept me on my toes.

Good numbers of Song Thrushes have been associated with the movements of Redwings with up to 20 recorded but the true number could have been higher on some days (again I was busy ringing). Most of the birds caught have been greyer continental birds, as is the norm at this time of year, and like the Redwings most are heading to wintering grounds much further south in France or Iberia.

Continental Song Thrush

Other thrush interest came in the form of a few Blackbirds that included 2 likely continental birds on the 6th (both had long wing lengths). Single Ring Ouzels were also noted yesterday (6th) and again today. Today also saw the first 2 Fieldfares of the autumn heading south.

Goldcrests continue to move through the site in reasonable numbers and in distinct waves judging by the number ringed over the five days. There is no indication of any influx of continental Goldcrests as yet so these movements involve birds originating from the local area or further north in the UK. The 20 Goldcrest ringed today brought the total ringed so far this month to 100 which is a fantastic total with most of the month still to go.

Ringing totals 3rd to 7th October 2016

I don't catch many Jays but one of yesterday's was one on the most vicious I have ever handled; it took lumps out of me. The other was a little less bitey but till made its presence felt in terms of pounds per square inch with its bill.

A very bitey Jay

Crawford 24th & 27th April 2015

Keeping the feeders going has paid off and resulted in a couple of interesting sessions over the past few days. The natural seed bank is at its lowest at this time of year and seed eating birds can still struggle to find enough food even though the weather is warming up. The number of Goldfinches using the feeders at this site is much greater now than it was earlier in the winter although this has not been reflected by the Goldfinches visiting the feeders in my garden. Lesser Redpolls only started coming to the feeders fairly recently and none had been caught before the 7 yesterday (27th). One of the Redpolls was a control (ringed elsewhere) but I suspect it was ringed at Kings Moss, just a couple of km away, as the ring number is similar to other birds that have come from that site. In addition there were 4 other controls, 2 Goldfinch and 2 Greenfinch, with these birds also likely to have been ringed at Kings Moss.

Ringing totals (retraps and controls in brackets) for 24th April 2015: Goldfinch 18 (3); Greenfinch 4 (1); Chaffinch (3); Yellowhammer (1); Coal Tit 1; Dunnock (1);  Blackbird (1); Blackcap 1; Jay 1. Total 35.

Ringing totals (retraps and controls in brackets) for 27th April 2015: Lesser Redpoll 6 (1); Goldfinch 7 (4); Greenfinch 4 (1); Chaffinch 3; Tree Sparrow 2; Dunnock 1. Total 29

Now the breeding season is getting underway the sex of some birds can be confirmed by checking for the presence of a brood patch and or the shape of the cloaca. In many species the female develops a large and distinctive brood patch with the cloaca not being very prominent and generally pointing back towards the tail while the male doesn't develop much of a brood patch, if any, and the cloaca is usually prominent (sometimes bulbous) and sits at a right angle to the body or points slightly forward. It was interesting that 2 of the 3 female Lesser Redpolls had brood patches as I initially thought they would all be birds that were still on passage rather than breeding somewhere nearby.

A well developed brood patch confirms this Lesser Redpoll is a female. A good blood supply to the bare skin keeps the eggs warm. The presence of a brood patch also indicates that the bird is probably breeding nearby and the condition of the brood patch suggests it already has a clutch of eggs.

A Lesser Redpoll with a protruding and slightly bulbous cloaca confirming it is a male.

Regular readers of this blog will know my interest in sexing Goldfinches from plumage features, that interest must be shared be a lot of people as my posts on this subject have and continue to attract the most page views by some margin. Not all Goldfinches are breeding yet but I checked each bird for a brood patch or cloacal protuberance to see if it confirmed the sex that was indicated by the plumage. This revealed a couple of interesting individuals that wouldn't have been easy to sex outside the breeding season although the majority were fairly straightforward.

Z414875 had a fairly extensive red mask for a female Goldfinch and no obvious white or grey nasal hairs. It is the sort of bird that is probably best left unsexed outside the breeding season. The lesser coverts were somewhat intermediate being less brown than some females and almost showing as much black as some less well marked males. Strong sunlight doesn't always help when looking at such features and doesn't help with the photography either. The sex was confirmed by the developing brood patch and shape of the cloaca. The bird is still in the process of losing feathers from the belly and lower breast so is only at the early stages of breeding.

Z414877 had a mask and lesser coverts that are not that dissimilar from the bird above although the black parts of the lesser coverts are much glossier and the brown fringes are more distinct. The thing that made me look twice at this bird was the short wing length of 76mm which is at the bottom end of the range for males and is fairly short for a female. It had a well developed cloacal protuberance which I didn't manage to photograph but confirmed it as a male. There is a difference in the intensity of the red of the mask but that can vary from orange-red to crimson in both sexes and shouldn't be used as a supporting criteria. Again this is a bird that may be better left unsexed outside the breeding season.

......and now for images of a couple of birds that show how different males and females can look and shouldn't pose a problem for sexing at any time of year.

Z414709 is a text book female with a restricted red mask and greyish nasal hairs. Unfortunately Goldfinches don't read text books and many females don't look like this. On the other hand the lesser coverts are broadly tipped brown and form a brown shoulder patch which is fairly common feature of female Goldfinches.

Z414876 is a well marked male with an extensive red mask and black nasal hairs. The lesser coverts are glossy black although it is not uncommon for them to have well defined narrow brown fringes. Note there are a couple of stray brown mantle feathers overlapping a few of the inner lesser coverts.

Among the other birds caught a Jay did what Jays do well and bit me. I got off fairly lightly at first but it flew back into one of the nets on release, despite having been let go in the opposite direction. On being taken out of a net for a second time it really let me have it.

About to take a good beak full.

I went back to check the feeders this evening and several were almost empty so I topped them all up and added another. With the feed going down so fast I will try and fit in another visit later in the week.

Christmas Day and Boxing Jay.

There have been a few bits and bobs over the last couple of days but Santa didn't deliver anything extra special on the birding front. One consequence of cooking a large turkey is that you have to get up early to allow for cooking and resting time. Having stuck a 6.5 kg turkey in the oven at 07:00 on Christmas Day I had a bit of time on my hands so I nipped to Crawford and put up one net for Redwings. The berries had been largely stripped from the hedges and despite the provision of a few apples a big catch wasn't expected and didn't happen. The net result (no pun intended) was 2 Redwings and a Woodpigeon. I don't catch many Woodpigeon so can't complain.

Yet another Redwing but I am not complaining. The last will be as good as the first.

On getting home and after basting the turkey I nipped to the park across the road to check out the Black-headed Gulls. I was working on the assumption there would be fewer offerings on Christmas Day, compared with the usual glut over the festive period, so I thought picking out ringed birds would be easier. There were about 90 Black-headed Gulls waiting for food including the regular German ringed bird but I didn't pick out any other ringed birds.

Black-headed Gull bread melee.

The regular German ringed bird was up at the front as usual.

Whilst seeing to the turkey and the usual accompaniments I was also keeping an eye on a bird table trap in the garden. This trap is manually controlled (old fashioned pull string like me) and is primarily designed for Starlings. I only added one Starling to my colour ringing scheme but I had caught 5 the previous day.

Starlings are not boring birds and have suffered dramatic declines (circa 80%) in recent years hence my RAS study.

Nearly forgot the turkey and sausages as you can tell. It was cooked breast side down most of the time so was still very moist despite its 'well done' appearance.

So we get to today, Boxing Day and I decided to double check the situation at Crawford, an easy option as it is only a few minutes away. I didn't get there too early but my supply of apples hadn't compensated for the depletion of berries in the area. Initially I only caught 1 Blackbird and 2 Redwings but I had put up an extra net by one of the feeders. This extra net produced a few tits and a Jay. There was a bit of an irruption of Jays in the autumn and there is no telling if this Jay is a local bird or part of that influx.

The ultimate Christmas nutcracker (apart from the real deal) and if you have held one of these birds you know what I mean.

Angry birds part 2

I went to my ringing site at Longshaw yesterday as the conditions were good for mist-netting. I only started to bait this site again recently because the winter has been so mild and there has been an abundance of natural food sources with last year being a mast year. There were fewer birds around than I had hoped but things could still pick up over the next few weeks as natural food sources get depleted.

The best bird of a meagre catch was a Jay but I think Nucklecracker would be a far better name for them as they have a fearsome bite. I usually manage to avoid being bitten but this one got me good and proper while I was taking out of the net. It also got called quite few other names until I managed to get it to let go. I was lucky to only catch one as a group of six had moved through the netting area. Catching six would have been nice but only if you have trainees with you.

I managed to get on the wrong side of this Jay and it certainly left its mark on me.

The garden feeders have started to attract a few Siskins in the past few days. This is a bit later than last year but only by a week or so. There were at least 8 today and hopefully numbers will increase to the same levels as last year when I had up to 30 or so visiting the feeders each day. They certainly didn't let the Goldfinches have all their own way and there were a few squabbles. However most of the interaction was between the Goldfinches themselves and there were frequent scraps even though there were unused ports on other feeders.

Goldfinches and Siskins were not the only birds in the mood for a fight today and I came across 2 Woodpigeons fighting in the street. It was a good job they were fighting at a junction otherwise they both could have been flattened. Lots of birds end up getting killed by cars in spring as roads often form the borders between garden territories.

These Woodpigeons had been trying to punch each other with their wings just before I grabbed this photo.  It was the noise from their wings that drew my attention to them.

The fight was broken by the arrival of a car. 

'Net shy' finches rule the day

I met up with John G at 7:00am this morning and we walked up to the ringing site at Longshaw. We had 3 nets up by first light and waited for the first birds to arrive. I had put out an MP3 lure playing Grey Wagtail as one had flown over at dawn on each of the last few ringing sessions. Like clockwork one came over, it dropped down to the lure and was caught.

Grey Wagtail (Motacilla cinerea)

A few Blackbirds were attracted to the apples I had put out during the week and several were amongst the first birds to be caught. Plenty of Bramblings and Chaffinches started to arrive but seemed reluctant to settle. Conditions were perfect at first but some mist and fog started to develop which didn’t help but it was obvious that the birds had the situation sussed anyway. Looking at the birds that perched in the tops of the willows it was obvious that a good proportion were already ringed.

It is not unusual for some birds to learn to avoid mist nets and to become ‘net shy’, especially where there’s a fairly static population and a regular ringing routine using the same net rides. It can be counteracted to some degree by leaving bigger intervals between ringing sessions, changing net positions and times of visits and I will be doing this over the coming weeks now that catching rates have fallen off.

Whilst we didn’t get the numbers we had hoped for we did get some variety with the aforementioned Grey Wagtail, a Reed Bunting and a very benign Jay that didn’t take any chunks out of us like they usually do. A few finches did get caught towards the end of the session including 4 new Bramblings and a control Greenfinch (ringed elsewhere) ring number starting TT09___.

male Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus)

Jay (Garrulus glandarius), a relatively benign individual but if looks could kill......

Ringing totals with retraps in brackets.
Blackbird 6 (1)
Grey Wagtail 1
Jay 1
Reed Bunting 1
Chaffinch 5 (1)
Brambling 4 (1)
Great Tit 2 - (1)
Greenfinch 1 (1 control)
Blue Tit (4)
Dunnock – (3)
Robin – (1)
Total 21 new birds, 12 retraps and 1 control.

I ventured onto Orrell Water Park in the afternoon to check out the gulls. There were plenty of Black-headed Gulls but only one ringed bird and that was the German ringed bird that I have recorded several times now.

 

On thin ice, Black-headed Gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus).

Black-headed Gulls (Chroicocephalus ridibundus) in action.

Sunday snapper

A few pics from a brief walk around Orrell Water Park before duty called me to a ruby wedding anniversary do. The photos were taken in a bit of a weather window but the lighting was difficult and the subjects were distant or at least that is my excuse.

Pinkies (Anser brachyrhynchus)

Blackbird heading south (Turdus merula), one of a few that seemed to be on the move.

Jay (Garrulus glandarius) having a bad feather day.

Jay (Garrulus glandarius)

Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) hummingbird style

Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo)

obligatory Brambling (Fringilla montifringilla)

obligatory Brambling (Fringilla montifringilla)

gratuitous Brambling (Fringilla montifringilla)

Sunday 7th October

Yesterday started off with a morning ringing session at Haigh. I had been baiting the site for a few days so I knew I was guaranteed a few birds but Goldcrests were the main interest. On arrival I heard my first Redwings of the autumn and at first light 60 or so flew out of the canopy.

 

I put up two nets; one near the feed and another near a large area of brambles that still have a good crop of blackberries in the hope of a few Blackcaps. I put on a Goldcrest lure and 6 new birds were caught within a few minutes. After that initial little rush the morning progressed in a steady fashion.

Overhead there was very little southerly passage apart from a few Meadow Pipits, House Martins, Swallows and Chaffinches. A few more Redwings blogged about in random directions along with one or two Song Thrushes but that was about it for visible migration. A very poor showing for the time of year and probably not helped by rolling banks of fog that affected the region.

Goldcrest topped the ringing totals with 12 new birds but two Jays made the biggest impression; on me at least. The biggest surprise was the complete absence of Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps.

 

 

 

 

Yes they really do hurt and they both got my finger in the same place.

 

Haigh Totals

Goldcrest 12

Coal Tit 6 (+3)

Great Tit 6 (+3)

Blue Tit 5 (+3)

Nuthatch 3 (+1)

Goldfinch 3

Chaffinch 2

Robin 2

Jay 2

Lesser Redpoll 1

Wren 1

Total 43 new (+10 retraps)

 

I briefly called at my mothers on my way home and the calls of Goldcrests tempted me to put up a net in the garden which added another two and a Dunnock to the day’s total.


Adult female Goldcrest



Adult Goldcrest tail feather shape

On getting home I rounded off the day trying for a few Goldfinches in the garden in near perfect conditions. Another 19 birds were added to the ringing totals including 13 new Goldfinches. 

Final ringing totals for the day were:

Goldcrest 14

Coal Tit 6 (+3)

Great Tit 6 (+3)

Blue Tit 5 (+3)

Nuthatch 3 (+1)

Goldfinch 16 (+2)

Chaffinch 2

Robin 3

Jay 2

Lesser Redpoll 1

Wren 1

Collared Dove 1

Dunnock 2

House Sparrow 1

Total 63 new (+12 retraps)