Billinge: 5th & 10th September 2018

September is a month when autumn migration is normally in full swing and even if one species doesn't deliver another usually does. However, this September is starting to look very different to those of the past 4 years at Billinge and although there is still time for things to change things don't look very promising at the moment.

5th September 2018
A morning that got off to a good start with a Song Thrush caught in the first net just as the last guy rope was being tied off. September sees British Song Thrushes starting to move and the first continental migrants arriving with this bird likely to be one of the former. After that it was generally a lacklustre session with the numbers bulked up by a few too many tits. If I had to pick a highlight it would be the capture of the first 4 Meadow Pipits of the autumn although 4 is a relatively poor total for this date in September. The biggest news, if you can call it that, was the near absence of Goldcrests with only 2 caught. Goldcrests usually start to move through the site in good numbers from the start of September so a total of 2 is well below the norm of the past 4 years.

Meadow Pipit 05/09/2018

Totals for 05/09/2018 were: Blue Tit 11; Great Tit 6;  Willow Warbler 2; Chiffchaff 6; Blackcap 4; Goldcrest 2; Song Thrush 1; Meadow Pipit 4; Chaffinch 1; Linnet 3.

10th September 2018
If the session on the 5th fell short of what I have come to expect from the site in September this one was even more disappointing. The near absence of Goldcrests of the 5th became a total absence with none being caught, seen or even heard. To give that some context last September saw 21 ringed on the 1st, 17 ringed on the 10th September and a total of 77 over the first 10 days. In 2016 it was a similar picture with 50 ringed over the first ten days of the month and no blank sessions. It is starting to look like Goldcrests were hit really hard by spell of severe cold weather back in March.
It is getting a bit late for Willow Warblers so the capture of 2 was noteworthy but the near absence of Chiffchaffs was far more unusual with none caught and only 2 heard all morning. Chiffchaffs numbers normally peak in September and a capture total in low double figures should have been on the cards. The quiet theme was also reflected in the visible migration with only a few Meadow Pipits moving. It was the quietest I have known the site to be in September by some margin and it is to be hoped the rest of the month doesn't carry on that way.

Totals for 10/09/2018 (retrap in brackets) were: Sparrowhawk 1; Blue Tit 4 (1); Willow Warbler 2; Blackcap 2; Dunnock 1; Meadow Pipit 7; Chaffinch 2.

One of the Blackcaps caught on the 10th was still largely in juvenile plumage which is suggestive of some very late breeding.

The last bird caught on the 10th was this juvenile female Sparrowhawk.

Not much to report from the cold weather.

The recent cold weather didn't result in any significant increase in birds visiting my garden and perhaps that is because we didn't get much snow in this area. Siskin, Long-tailed Tit and Starling actually visited less frequently and in smaller numbers than they had before the onset of the cold weather, which was a bit of a surprise. The smaller numbers of Siskin and Long-tailed Tit was mirrored by a dip in the BirdTrack reporting rate so it wasn't just a local phenomena as far as those species were concerned. On the other hand, the reporting rate for Starling increased on BirdTrack so my garden bucked the trend in that case. Garden birds just didn't seem to be pushed for food in this neck of the woods and the only unusual visitor I had in the garden was a Black-headed Gull that dropped in and took some bread from the lawn. It was a one legged individual and would have found feeding more difficult at the best of times so the fact that it risked landing in a small enclosed garden, crossed by telephone lines, during a severe cold spell is not as surprising as it otherwise might have been.

I have seen some effects of the cold weather when out an about including a few Woodcock in unexpected places, a sizeable flock of Redwing foraging in a woodland and a few displaced Meadow Pipits, but that is about it for me. Several checks of the Black-headed Gulls on Orrell Water Park have only produced one ringed bird that I have not encountered before and that bird was ringed as an adult near Hempsted in Gloucestershire on 13th  January 2007. The Scottish and 2 German ringed Black-headed Gulls have been seen from time to time and all 4 ringed Black-headed Gulls were photographed yesterday along with a ringed Coot that was originally ringed in south Wales. 

EL71428 first photographed on 28/02/2018 and again yesterday.

It rarely kept still so I had to take quite a few photographs before I managed to get the full ring number - EL71428

Scottish ringed Black-headed Gull EZ33149 has been a regular this winter.

German ringed Black-headed Gull DEH IA141745 almost has a full brown hood now.

 German ringed Black-headed Gull DEW 5437612 has barely started to get its brown hood.

Coot GR03863 was originally ringed at Comeston Lakes, near Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan on 23/12/2010 and has been recorded at Orrell Water Park on numerous occasions since. 

More Goldcrests on the move.

There was a brief lull in the unsettled weather this morning so I headed up to Billinge to make the most of the calmer conditions. I set 3 nets in the top willows but used a different net configuration to the one I have been using recently as the breeze was due to strengthen from mid morning. It would have been a fairly quiet session but there was a rush of birds about an hour after sunrise that boosted the totals and accounted for nearly half of the 50 birds that were caught over the course of the morning.

The catch was dominated by Goldcrests (19) and Chiffchaffs (14) as is often the case at this time of year and one of the Goldcrest, a 1cy female, was a control (a bird ringed elsewhere). I suspect this Goldcrest may have been ringed on Walney Island (68km NNW of Billinge) as the ring number was fairly close to one I have had from there before, although that is only an educated guess at this stage and I will only know its origin for certain when the recovery report comes through. The best of the rest were a Grey Wagtail, the first Willow Tit for a while and 2 Yellowhammers.

Control 1cy female Goldcrest HDB637

1cy Willow Tit

There were a few more Meadow Pipits moving overhead than there have been so far this autumn but it was still not much more than a trickle and petered out as the breeze picked up. A few Reed Buntings were also on the move early on and was the first obvious movement of that species this autumn and resulted in 3 being caught. However, it very much had the feel that the weather was holding up diurnal migrants and more would have been moving had the conditions been clearer and the breeze hadn't increased so much.

Ringing totals (retraps/controls in brackets) for 10/09/17 were: Goldcrest 17(2); Blue Tit 1; Great Tit 1; Willow Tit 1; Long-tailed Tit 1; Chiffchaff 13(1); Willow Warbler 2; Blackcap 1; Wren 1; Grey Wagtail 1; Chaffinch 1; Greenfinch 2; Yellowhammer 2; Reed Bunting 3.

That's more like it.

Back to back sessions at Billinge yesterday evening and again this morning produced the goods with a combined total of 106 birds ringed and just 4 recaptures. Yesterday's session only started at 19:30 with 2 nets erected in the young willows that are colonising the higher part of the site. This area can be very productive in the evening, even with such a limited amount of netting, as it is a favoured feeding area for phylloscopus warblers, when they are about, and it usually holds an early Swallow roost.

Both Willow Warblers and Chiffchaffs were around in reasonable numbers and 6 of each were ringed along with 4 Blackcaps, 5 Linnets and a Goldfinch. I didn't think any Swallows were going to come into roost as only a few were seen on the run up to sunset but then about 80 quickly gathered just after the sun had set and 45 were caught. Interestingly 10 were adults of which 8 were males, 1 was a female and one was left unsexed. One of the adult males was a retrap and had been ringed at the roost as a juvenile on 21st July 2014.

Swallows mainly use this site for roosting in July, when they are still breeding, and I suspect it develops as a nursery roost for juveniles reared at nearby farms and they are accompanied by the off duty adults. This may account for the relatively high proportion of adults and for the majority of those adults being males. This is only a pet theory but an early roost with a high proportion of adults has developed each summer since I started ringing at the site in 2014 and in that year the roost started at the end of June. Yesterday was the first time I have checked for the Swallow roost this summer so I don't know when the roost started this year.

This morning I set 3 nets in the north east part of the site and the catching was fairly steady from the off. Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers and Blackcaps accounted for 34 of the 43 birds caught during the morning with the majority being juveniles. All the Willow Warblers were nearing the end of or had just completed their pj moult so could have included some birds that had dispersed or migrated from elsewhere rather than them all being locally bred. Once again there were very few tits around and there were certainly no signs of any tit flocks developing. Long-tailed Tits, in particular, were conspicuous by their absence with none seen or even heard during both ringing sessions.

Combined ringing totals (retraps in brackets) for 17th & 18th July were: Swallow 44 (1); Meadow Pipit (1); Goldcrest 1; Chiffchaff 20; Willow Warbler 15 (1); Blackcap 13 (1); Whitethroat 2; Blackbird 1; Blue Tit 2; Great Tit 1; Linnet 5; Goldfinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 1.

1CY Willow Warbler just finishing its post juvenile moult.

Adult female Blackcap

Adult Meadow Pipit looking strikingly brown and white in its worn plumage. It was a retrap and had been ringed last autumn, as a juvenile, when it would have looked very different.

This is what it would have looked like when ringed in autumn 2015.

Adult female Lesser Redpoll. Lesser Redpolls have bred at the site for the first time this year and this female had an active brood patch so is still breeding.

It also had a passenger in the form of a flat fly (hippoboscidae).  These parasites seem disproportionately large on small birds.

They don't look any better the closer you get. They sometimes leave their host when the bird is being handled and temporarily take up residence in your hair - just one of the many joys of ringing.

Hotchpotch

This post is an assortment of things that I have photographed over the last week along with a short summary of recent ringing activities.

Woodpigeons have caught my attention again but this time it was birds that were in the top of an Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior) across the road from the garden. I had noticed birds spending a lot of time there and hadn't really thought much of it as seeing Woodpigeons in a tree is hardly unusual. However, when I got my bins on them and had a proper look I could see they were eating the leaves and that was a bit of a surprise, to me at least. I knew Woodpigeons were partial to the flowers of Ash but I didn't know they also ate the leaves and they have really thinned out the leaves in the top of this particular tree.

This bird is about to swallow a piece of a leaf and you can also see that some of the smaller branches have been stripped of many of their leaves.

In this image you can easily see some of the leaves that have been partially eaten against the birds upper breast..

Another leaf is about to be eaten.

I am not into flowers in a big way but the meadow areas at the Billinge ringing site have some of the most impressive areas of Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) that I have ever seen and they are at their best at the moment. A few orchids are also flowering and while I hadn't gone looking for nests I found a Meadow Pipits while photographing the flowers.

Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) 08/06/2016

Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) 08/06/2016

Marsh Orchid spp. 08/06/2016, probably Southern Marsh Orchid or Southern hybrid.

Meadow Pipit nest 08/06/2016

Back at home the moth trap hasn't produced anything out of the ordinary but variety and numbers are slowly improving.

Lime Hawkmoth 08/06/2016

Ruby Tiger 08/06/2016

Green Silver-lines and Miller 10/06/2016

Pebble Hook-tip 12/06/2016

Peach Blossom 12/06/2016

Scorched Wing 13/06/2016

On the ringing front a very short ringing session at Crawford on the 9th and another there on the 12th produced combined totals as follows (retraps in brackets): Tree Sparrow 20 (4); House Sparrow 2; Greenfinch 17 (2); Goldfinch 9 (2); Chaffinch 2; Robin 3; Dunnock 2; Whitethroat 1; Great Tit 5 (1).
Tree Sparrows seem to be having a good breeding season as I have now caught 33 at Crawford in the last 10 days with 30 being juveniles.

Juvenile Tree Sparrow

Adult male House Sparrow; an increasingly scarce sight these days.
Studies have shown that individuals with larger black bibs are more dominant.

Juvenile House Sparrow 12/06/2016.
While Tree Sparrows seem to be doing ok the same can't be said for House Sparrows. They have virtually disappeared from my garden.

Juvenile Greenfinch 12/06/2016.
The extensive areas of yellow on the tail and outer webs of the primaries mean this bird can be easily sexed as a male.

I am still catching quite a few new Starlings in the garden (mostly juveniles but a few new adults too) and I have now ringed 287 juveniles over the last 5 weeks. Numbers visiting the garden should tail off rapidly now, as birds disperse and form post breeding flocks, so I don't expect to ring many more this breeding season.

More F F Fog

The forecast for this morning looked quite promising with a band of showers predicted to move through in the early hours and followed by a relatively clear and dry dawn. I expected this to result in a good movement of diurnal migrants over Billinge; however, my optimism was soon dashed when a misty early start deteriorated into a very foggy dawn. At one point visibility was down to around 200 metres and every time it looked like the fog was starting to clear more fog would roll back in.

It seemed like plenty of birds were itching to move and every now and then a few Meadow Pipits dashed through and gave a taste of what could have been had the conditions been better. Grey Wagtails weren't daunted by the conditions either and a total of 7 went south before the fog eventually cleared at around 10am. Other birds with itchy feet included a few Skylarks, Chaffinches, Lesser Redpolls, Siskins and Reed Buntings.

It was good to catch another 2 Grey Wagtails but without the fog I would have probably caught 4 or 5.

Grey Wagtails are easy to age with first year birds usually having 1 or more unmoulted greater coverts. This bird  had only replaced 1 greater covert and this feather stands out as being darker and fresher looking than the 9 unmoulted feathers.

It is getting late for Whitethroats now and this one could end up being the latest record for the site this year

The most unexpected sighting of the morning came when 2 Egyptian Geese headed north just after 10am. They really took me by surprise when I first glimpsed them out of the corner of my eye and they even caused me to lift my bins faster than usual.

Ringing totals were better than I had expected given the foggy conditions but fell short of what I had hoped for in terms of numbers if not variety. The Woodpigeon was a nestling from a nest I have been watching for several weeks now. The nest is only 4ft off the ground in a hawthorn bush and is the lowest Woodpigeon nest I have ever found.

A well fed Woodpigeon nestling.

Ringing totals (retraps in brackets) for 22/09/15 were: Woodpigeon 1; Meadow Pipit 2; Grey Wagtail 2; Dunnock 1; Wren 2;  Robin 1; Whitethroat 1; Chiffchaff 4 (1); Goldcrest 6 (2); Chaffinch 3, Goldfinch 1; Linnet 1, Lesser Redpoll 1; Reed Bunting 2. Total 28 new birds and 3 retraps.

17/09/15: Wave of Crests

The 17th produced the best catch of Goldcrests of the autumn so far with 34 being caught in the first couple of hours. There were a few calling at first light but not enough to give me the impression that there had been a significant arrival overnight; however, 9 Goldrests in the first net round rapidly changed my view on that. Most moved through quite quickly and by 9:00am they had largely gone with only the odd one being seen or heard in the following couple of hours. The turnover of Goldcrests at Billinge, as revealed by ringing, is really quite impressive with the numbers recorded fluctuating markedly during the course of a day and from day to day.

Last year I ringed 312 over the autumn which was far more than I expected and this autumn seems to be following a similar pattern both in terms of timing and numbers. None of the other sites I have ringed at in the area have such large and concentrated numbers moving through in autumn and 34 would have been a good annual total for some of them.

This Goldcrest is from the previous day (16th) when 11 were caught and I had a bit more time to take photographs.

The 13 Chiffchaff ringed underlined that there had been a small fall overnight as did 4 new Robins. A Willow Warbler was noteworthy as it is getting late for that species now and it could be the last of the year. The 17th was also another Lesser Redpoll day with 13 ringed and only 1 retrap from the previous day. On the other hand Meadow Pipits were still well down on the numbers that should be around or passing through at this time of year and only 3 were caught. Interestingly one of the Meadow Pipits was a retrap and had been ringed as a juvenile on 4th August last year so had come from the small local breeding population. All in all a busy and interesting morning.

Ringing totals for 17/09/15 were: Meadow Pipit 2 (1); Robin 4; Blackcap 4 (1); Chiffchaff 13; Willow Warbler 1; Goldcrest 33 (1); Blue Tit 1 (1); Goldfinch 4; Lesser Redpoll 13 (1); Reed Bunting 1. Total 76 new birds and 5 retraps.

Billinge 10/09/15

Being up at 5 am has become the norm for me in recent weeks, so much so that I now wake up before the first alarm goes off. The 10th was no different and I was out and setting up at Billinge by first light under a crystal clear sky. Although the forthcoming sunrise was starting to brighten the sky to the east it was impossible not to notice and be impressed by the sight of the Crescent Moon with Venus close by. It was one of those sights that would have been worth getting up for in its own right although my photograph doesn't really do it justice. Had I taken the photo a little earlier Mars would have been just visible in the left of the image.

The Crescent Moon and Venus stood out as dawn broke on the 10th.

Anyway back to birds and the stand out species were ones that continue to be conspicuous by their near absence. Meadow Pipit passage is normally well underway by now and this species usually makes up a good proportion of the birds ringed and the majority of the birds passing overhead but yet again there was hardly a Meadow Pipit to be seen. The odd one that was seen or heard seemed to be from the small local breeding population rather than being birds on passage. This is being noted elsewhere across the country and it looks like Meadow Pipits have had a particularly unsuccessful breeding season overall. There is still a slim chance that breeding was just delayed by the cold spring and that the birds will move later as a result but as each day goes by this becomes an increasingly unlikely outcome. Similarly there hasn't been any movement of Reed Buntings as yet and a poor breeding season seems to be the most likely scenario there too. On the other hand Grey Wagtails may have had a reasonably productive summer as passage started more or less on time and small numbers are now passing through daily.

Grey Wagtail

I have said this before but Yellow-vented Wagtail would have been a more appropriate name for the species, not that I am suggesting a change in name now.

The most regular of the migrants passing overhead at the moment are Siskins and frustratingly they have generally been dots in the sky with none coming down to the trees and net level. Today that changed and first 2 were caught in the last couple of rounds of the nets. Hopefully, these will be the first of many and more will drop into the trees to feed in the coming weeks as the the alder cones start to ripen. It is certainly turning out to be an interesting autumn and I am sure there are going to be more ups and downs in terms of numbers of birds to come.

1CY male Siskin

Adult female Siskin

Ringing totals for 10th September (retraps in brackets) were: Grey Wagtail 2; Dunnock 2; Blackcap (1); Chiffchaff 5; Goldcrest 2; Long-tailed Tit (4); Blue Tit 3; Great Tit 2 (2); Chaffinch 4; Goldfinch 5, Siskin 2. Total 27 (7)

Mostly Chiffies and Crests

I was back at Billinge this morning after being away for a few days helping out at the Spurn Migration Festival. The weather was ideal for ringing, being calm and mainly overcast, and I had 3 nets up well before sunrise. The bushes were quiet and seemed to be largely devoid of birds but the first few net rounds showed otherwise and were surprisingly productive with a good number of Chiffchaffs and Goldcrests being caught, along with a few Willow Warblers for good measure. One of the Goldcrests was a control (a bird ringed elsewhere) and it will be interesting to see where it has come from in due course.

Chiffchaff. This is usually the most numerous warbler in September by some margin with peak numbers moving through in the second half of the month.

This is the control female Goldcrest, HKK205. The details have been submitted to the BTO and I should get the recovery report with details of the ringing location fairly quickly.

Six Willow Warblers is a good number for the date.

Migration overhead mainly involved Siskins going south with small parties being seen or heard fairly regularly throughout the morning. I can't be sure how many Siskins went through but it was certainly in the region of a 100 birds at the very least. The first Lesser Redpolls of the autumn were on the move with 15 recorded and it seems highly likely that a great many more will follow in the coming weeks. Meadow Pipits were conspicuous by their near absence with just the occasional bird being noted. Meadow Pipit passage is usually well underway by now but has barely started and this may be due to the birds having bred later as a result of the cold spring. Similarly, only 3 Grey Wagtails were recorded which is well short of the number expected by this date. Other birds on the move were one Tree Pipit and a few Swallows.

The cold spring and unsettled summer may have also resulted in a poor breeding season for Meadow Pipits.

It certainly looks like there is going to be a major irruptive movement of Redpolls this autumn. It has been on the cards for some time and judging by the early and large scale movement of Siskins it could be a whopper.

There were only one or two Blackcaps around but several Whitethroats were noted in favoured blackberry patches. The best bird of the morning, in terms of local scarcity, was a Green Woodpecker which was heard calling a couple of times.

Ringing totals (controls/retraps in brackets) were: Swallow 1; Meadow Pipit 2; Robin 1; Chiffchaff 16 (3); Willow Warbler 6; Goldcrest 9 (1); Long-tailed Tit 2 (2); Coal Tit 1; Great Tit 1; Chaffinch 2; Goldfinch 1; Lesser Redpoll 8; Yellowhammer 1. Total 57.

The adult female Yellowhammer caught hadn't started moulting yet and may have only just finished breeding.