Many happy returns

Last Friday, 23/10/2020, I was really pleased to find the German ringed Black-headed Gull (IA141745) had returned to Orrell Water Park. This bird has featured on the blog many times and its return always cheers me up. It was first sighted at Orrell Water Park on 27/10/2012 and has been recorded numerous times each winter since then, usually between late October and late February or early March. It was ringed as an adult on 29/04/2012 in northern Germany, not far from the Baltic coast and the border with Poland, and presumably breeds in that area.

IA141745 photographed 23/10/2020

A well worn and photographed ring.

Sunflower reaches new heights

• Where do you start when you haven't posted anything on your blog for the best part of six months and the simple answer for me was when I noticed a sunflower growing out of a neighbours chimney stack (14/10/2020). It was just one of those moments where I thought I need to photograph this and share it at some point.
• I had been walking home from Orrell Water Park, where I had been looking for returning ringed Black-headed Gulls, when I noticed the sunflower. My attention had not only been drawn by its cheerful, bright yellow colour but also by a Woodpigeon that was strutting about on the chimney before settling down to take in a few rays.

• It wasn't just its cheerful appearance that interested me but it also begged the question of how did it get there. The answer for me was quite simple with the most likely culprit being a Coal Tit. Coal Tits cache huge numbers of seeds and they seek out all manner of nook and cranny with my hanging baskets being testimony to that. However, most seeds are placed in locations that don't give them the opportunity to germinate and grow but this chimney pot location takes the ones that do to a new height.

Starling stuff

Well I am still here, for the time being at least, and my study Starlings seem too be doing particularly well. My RAS season started on 21st April and I have recorded 103 colour ringed Starlings visiting the feeders so far. This is an exceptionally good start to my RAS season and it looks like it will prove to be an earlier than average breeding season too.

DO6 is a regular visitor to the garden and has been recorded on numerous occasions during the breeding season since being ringed in February 2016. The photos are a bit crappy but my excuse is they were taken through a window in harsh light.

D06 again left and A59 right. Both are males and A59 has been recorded on numerous occasions each year since being ringed in May 2015.

Rig Recovery

I haven't had any overseas recoveries for a while but I received a recovery report the other day which was literally over the sea. The report was of a Redwing that had been found dead on an oil rig in the North Sea off Norway.



RY31120 Redwing
First Year      19/11/2018  Billinge Hill, Billinge, Merseyside.
Found dead  17/11/2019  Oil Rig Snorre B, Tampen, North Sea. 938km NNE

It wasn't freshly dead when found but is still likely to have reached the rig the same autumn as I wouldn't have thought a the body of a small thrush like a Redwing would last long on an exposed rig or remain unfound for very long either.

Late breeding

The breeding season is well and truly over for most birds in this part of the world but for at least one species it is not over yet. I was on the phone to my broadband provider at lunchtime today when I noticed a juvenile Woodpigeon on the privet hedge in the front garden and it appeared to be a young juvenile at that. The phone call quickly became the least of my concerns and I grabbed my camera and hastily took a few record shots through the window.

The original Boaty McBoatface.
Juvenile Woodpigeons have a wide almost boat shaped bill which helps them take pigeon milk, a crop secretion they are fed on, from their parents. 

You can see it had already replaced a few feathers on the head and the shoulder of its wings but that could have started immediately on fledging or even before it left the nest. Juveniles of some species start moulting before they leave the nest and this can be accelerated later in the season.

It quivered its wings from time to time which immediately suggested it was trying to solicit food from a parent and then I noticed an adult Woodpigeon a couple of metres away on the bird bath. The adult Woodpigeon then joined the juvenile and started to feed it. There is nothing subtle about an adult Woodpigeon feeding a juvenile and it often looks like a tussle and a trial of strength.

Get in there.

Woodpigeons have quite a long breeding season which can start as early as February and can extend into November and even December, although there can be some variation between years, regions and habitats. While this record of late breeding isn't without precedent for Woodpigeons it is certainly the latest I have recorded locally and for my garden in particular. Woodpigeons are one of the few species that are on the up and have benefitted from both garden feeding and some changes in agricultural practices.

Black-headed Gulls - old and new.

A few days ago (26/10/19) I went to feed the Black-headed Gulls at Orrell Water Park to check for ringed birds and one of the first to come to the bread had a metal ring on the right leg. I quickly identified it as the German ringed bird from the Hiddensee scheme that has wintered at the park each year since 2012. It has been recorded on over 90 occasions and is usually present from October to late February or early March. It appeared to be the only ringed gull present and I had almost run out of bread when a colour-ringed bird joined the 40 or so gulls present. It had a yellow colour-ring inscribed with the code T3WA on the right leg and a metal ring on the left. I hadn't seen this this particular individual before and had no idea where it had been ringed.

On getting home I checked the cr-birding website (link here) and quickly found that T3WA was a Polish ringed bird. I submitted details of the sighting on the Polish ringing scheme website and received details of where it was ringed the next day. It had been ringed on 17/06/2019 in central Poland at Skoki Duze, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, which is 1472km east of Orrell Water Park.

I didn't have my camera with me that first day but I have photographed both birds since.

DEH IA141745 photographed 27/10/2019

DEH IA141745 photographed 27/10/2019

T3WA photographed 30/10/2019

T3WA photographed 30/10/2019

Map to be added in due course.

Yellow-browed Warbler

I have not had time for blogging over the past few months but I have not totally given up on the idea of reviving it, yet. I hope to post some monthly summaries by way of a catch up sooner or later but in the meantime here is an image of a Yellow-browed Warbler that was ringed at Billinge yesterday (08/10/2019).

Yellow-browed Warbler 08/10/2019 © P J Alker

It is the 6th to be caught since ringing started at the site in 2014 and follows one that first year, another in 2015 and 3 in 2016. One was heard and seen briefly in 2017 but there were no records last year, although coverage in 2017 was less than in previous years. Yellow-browed Warblers may not be the rarity or scarcity they once were but they haven't lost any of their appeal or magic because of that.

It was a relatively quiet morning in all other respects with a totals of just 20 new birds and 1 retrap, although a first-year male Sparrowhawk did liven things up a bit and was the first to be ringed this autumn. 

Ringing totals (retraps in brackets) were: Sparrowhawk 1, Blue Tit 3, Coal Tit 2, Great Tit (1), Goldcrest 1, Long-tailed Tit 1, Yellow-browed Warbler 1, Blackbird 2, Redwing 5, Song Thrush 3, Bullfinch 1.