Nest building Collared Doves

It may have been a bit chilly today and is forecast to be colder tomorrow but it has been another relatively mild winter so far.  Many birds are starting to show territorial activity now that the days are getting longer and species like Mistle Thrush, Song Thrush, Starling and Great Tit have been singing, on and off, for a week or two now. 

Whilst watching the birds in the garden this morning I noticed a Collared Dove flying into some ivy about 6 metres up a tree and I suspected it had joined another that was already there. The ivy clad tree is in the park just across the road from the front garden and I had seen a Collared Dove visit the same location a few days ago, so I began to think it was a pair that could be nest building or at least prospecting.

I watched for a while and saw that one bird kept flying down to the ground and then going back up to the same location in the tree, and although it was a bit too far away for me to be sure I thought it had carried some nest material on at least one occasion. I decided to check it out so I grabbed my camera and went for a closer look.

On entering the park I could see what I presumed to be the male Collared Dove searching for fine twigs along the side of the path. There were loads of fine birch and alder twigs on the ground for it to choose from but it was fussier than I expected. It would pick up a twig and then discard it and then go on to another. This process was repeated several times before it found one it deemed to be suitable which it then took up to its partner at the nest site in the ivy.

The other Collared Dove, presumably the female, stayed at the nest site and arranged the twigs that were brought by its partner. Given that a Collared Dove nest is usually a fairly flimsy platform of twigs there was a lot of careful placement, turning around and treading of the twigs into place. Although the nest is well concealed on a branch in the ivy it appeared to be quite substantial by Collared Dove standards and probably not far off completion.

Collared Doves have been recorded nesting throughout the year where food is abundant, although breeding activity is generally much reduced in winter. Day length probably has a part to play in reducing winter breeding activity in the UK rather than a shortage of food as there is likely to be a greater and more reliable supply of food from garden feeding through the winter than at other times of year.

While it may not be unheard of to find a pair of Collared Doves nest building in late January it is still relatively uncommon in this area and a welcome sign of spring.

Garden ringing and a big bill.

I haven't posted anything about my ringing activities so far this year but that doesn't mean I have been sitting on my hands. Much of my effort has been focused on the garden and Starlings in particular. The fat cakes have been attracting far more Starlings than I usually get in winter (despite the generally mild conditions) which has allowed me to get a lot of resightings of birds that were colour-ringed as part of my RAS project and also ring a good number of new birds. Yesterday was no exception with 9 colour-ringed Starlings recorded and another 4 new birds ringed.

D61 is a frequent visitor to the fat cakes at the moment and was ringed as a juvenile last summer.

Most Starlings can now be sexed from their bill colour with males having a blue base to their bill and females having a pink pink base to an otherwise similarly yellow bill. Some birds, all probably 2cy+, were showing these breeding season colours before the end of December but the rest are catching up now. There are other differences between the sexes with the colour of the eye being another useful feature and one that works for most individuals throughout the year. Males generally have an evenly coloured brown iris whilst females usually show a pale orbital ring within the brown iris.

Male Starling 21/01/2017

Female Starling 21/01/2017

Whilst watching the Starlings yesterday I noticed one with a deformed bill that I hadn't seen before. The lower mandible was much longer than normal while the upper mandible was quite a bit shorter than usual. It had a unique way of feeding on the fat cakes and slid the lower mandible along the side of the fat cake which allowed it to nip bits off when the upper mandible made contact with the fat cake.

Luckily it went into the bird table trap and I was able to catch it. The upper mandible looked like it had suffered some sort of damage which had allowed the lower mandible to over-grow. Normally the upper mandible overlaps the lower at the tip and, along with normal wear from feeding, helps to prevent this sort of deformity.

Male Starling with deformed bill 21/01/2017.

Male Starling with deformed bill 21/01/2017.

Male Starling with deformed bill 21/01/2017. It was an adult (2cy+), in very good condition and had clearly learned to cope with its deformity. However, it may struggle if the lower mandible continues to grow and it is likely to have difficulty feeding young if it manages to find a mate and breed.

It's not just Starlings that I have been watching and ringing as the other feeders have been attracting large numbers of birds and Goldfinches in particular. There are 7 seed feeders around the garden and the birds are currently getting through over a kilo of sunflower hearts each day.  

The scene around one of the 7 sunflower heart feeders yesterday.

 Male Goldfinch 21/01/2017

Adult male Siskin 21/02/2017

This morning I took advantage of the calm and overcast conditions and a short session with the usual 6m net resulted in a catch of 33 birds (18 new birds and 15 retraps). This was made up as follows (retraps in brackets): Goldcrest 1; Blue Tit (1); Great Tit 1;  Long-tailed Tit 1 (4); Robin 1; Goldfinch 11 (9); Siskin 3 (1).

Scarlet Elf Cup

I was talking to a couple of people the other day that had been looking at some fungi and I happened to mention that it wouldn't be long before there should be plenty of Scarlet Elf Cup showing. Well a few days on and I came across a cracking display of this brightly covered fungi in a local wood. The literature says it can be found from early winter through to early spring but I usually come across it in second half of that period, and February and March in particular.

A cheery bit of brightness on what was a very dull day

The best display was in this tangle of dead branches. They aren't obvious at this distance but you can just make out a few amongst the moss in the foreground..

Get in a bit closer and there are some on nearly every branch.

It is one of those things that always cheers me up when I see it and I just can't resist taking photographs of it.

Goldcrest recoveries

A couple of Goldcrest recoveries landed in my inbox today and although one went much further than the other both are interesting in their own way.

JDH982 was ringed on 09/10/2015 on Billinge Hill and was one of 15 caught that morning. It was controlled just over a year later on 20/10/2016 at Oxwich Marsh, near Swansea (237km SSW) by Gower Ringing Group. I follow the Gower Ringing Group blog and it was one of 29 Goldcrests they caught that morning with the control Goldcrest being overshadowed by the capture of a Little Bunting. A link to their blog post for that day can be found here.



The other recovery was over a much shorter distance but is no less valuable because of that as it adds to the picture of movements of this diminutive species. KAD115 was ringed on 30/10/2016 on Billinge Hill and was one of 19 Goldcrests ringed that morning. It was controlled 8 days later on 07/11/2016 at Woolston Eyes, near Warrington (18km SE) by Merseyside Ringing Group. A link to MRG website can be found here.



Links to previous Goldcrest recoveries and controls and be found here, here, here and here.

Common or Coues's; that is the question.

I caught a frosty looking Redpoll the other day (30th) and while some people may say it is just a Common (Mealy) Redpoll there was something about it that made me think it could be a Coues's Arctic Redpoll. It is not what you would call a 'classic' Coues's by any means but then there is no such thing and when the term 'classic' is used people really mean 'easy', 'obvious' or 'most likely to be accepted'. The most readily accepted Coues's are the very pale (snowball) examples that have extensive, unstreaked white rumps but such birds are usually adults, often males and are not representative of the species as a whole.

Anyway back to the bird in question and it is important to say that it is a first year bird, based on the shape of the tail feathers, and possibly a male as there was a slight pinkish wash on a few of the feathers of the rump. Now I am not going to rhyme off all the reasons why I think it could be a Coues's, or perhaps I should say Coues's type now that research has shown there is essentially no genetic difference between Lesser, Common and Coues's, but relevant comments accompany some of the images.

It certainly had the feather mass and ability to fluff-up its feathers as you would expect with a 'Coues's Arctic'. The dense feathering of the nape and the sides of the neck also gave it a bull-necked appearance.

The sharply pointed tail feathers made it easy to age as a first year bird.

Spot the pink. There are a few feathers on the rump that have very slight pink tones and while this suggests it is a male such a limited amount of pink makes that far from certain. There was no pink (concealed or otherwise) on any of the feathers of the breast or the cheeks. 

The rump is one of the critical features and while the unstreaked area is not as extensive as on some Coues's it still falls within the range of streaking that can be displayed.

A slight change of angle and lighting and the head looks even paler. The limited flank streaking is set against a pure white ground colour.

That puffed-up look again. While there is some streaking in the rump the ground colour of the rump and lower back is pure white.

The streaking on the underparts was fairly light and ill-defined and confined to the sides of the upper breast and a narrow zone along the flanks. The streaking on Common Redpolls is usually much heavier and well defined, not diffuse and relatively fine as on this bird.

The bill was fairly stubby and conical. The eye also looked relatively small which is also a feature of Coues's.

The culmen was straight if not ever so slightly concave. The extensive and dense feathering around the base of the bill is also suggestive of Coues's. The green plant material stuck to the bill is interesting and suggests it has been feeding on the seeds of herbage rather than tree seeds. It certainly hasn't spent much, if any, time feeding on alder as it would have brown tar like deposits running in the other direction across the base of the bill. I am not suggesting this is diagnostic in any way but Coues's is a bird of the tundra and perhaps feeds more commonly on ground plants than other Redpolls.

There was some faint and very diffuse streaks on 3 of the undertail-coverts. Light streaking on a few feathers is not uncommon in Coues's (especially first year birds and females) but is unusual for Common (Mealy) Redpolls (except for a few adults, usually males). 

Such faint streaks would be virtually if not impossible to see in the field. I had to separate the feathers slightly to show that there were three marked feathers as only one was noticeable when the feathers were in their normal alignment, with that being the faint streak on the longest undertail-covert.

So what is it? Well it is...... ummm, one of them isn't it - not easy and not straightforward. There simply isn't a clear cut divide in appearance between Common and Coues's so a bird like this will always be controversial to some degree but that doesn't mean it should be called a Mealy because it is the 'safer' option. As the late Martin Garner put it 'Calling a bird a Mealy Redpoll when it is really an 'intermediate'/possible Coues's should be a bookable offence!' Some of his later writings suggested he had become much more confident about identifying streaky Coues's and again as Martin put it 'Most Arctic Redpolls are streaky. Really. They are. Which is annoying as they are supposed to be nice and plain and white in redpoll folk lore. It's often subtly different kind of streaking, but they are often streaky, even some adult males. Streaky is OK.'

So what a way to end my ringing in 2016. This was the last bird caught in the last ringing session and literally came in the last minute of extra time..... and it certainly is one of them, isn't it?

There is tons of stuff on the web about the identification of Coues's Arctic (Hoary) and Common (Mealy) Redpolls and some I found useful can be found by clicking on the following links:

Identification of Arctic Redpolls carduelis hornemanni exilipes, British Birds

Arctic Redpoll Carduelis hornemanni exilipes an identification review based on the 1995/96 influx, British Birds

Intermediate Arctic Redpoll, Birding Frontiers

Arctic Redpoll and Mealy Redpoll, Change the ID Culture, Birding Frontiers

Urging caution when identifying Common Redpolls, Sibley Guides Notebook

Goldcrest controls autumn 2016

A total of 757 different Goldcrests were handled at Billinge this year which is a phenomenal total for an inland location and follows on from the 705 caught during 2015. The discovery of this volume of migration through the site has been one of the major findings that ringing has revealed over the last three years and is certainly something I hadn't expected.

The vast majority of birds are caught in the autumn and, in 2016, that started with the appearance of dispersing juveniles in July and August. Autumn migration proper got into full swing in early September and continued throughout October and into the first half of November, before finally fizzling out at the beginning of December. Monthly totals (new birds only) for the second half of 2016 were: July 10; August 39; September 237; October 377; November 85; December 2.

There were 4 controls (birds ringed elsewhere) amongst the birds caught this autumn but, surprisingly, not a single retrap from 2015. This lack of retraps is in stark contrast to the situation in my garden, just a couple of km away, where I ringed 4 Goldcrests in late November / early December 2015 and retrapped 2 of them amongst the 5 caught during a similar period this year. I know the ringing in my garden only involves small numbers by comparison and was outside the main autumn migration period but it does help to emphasise the migratory nature of the birds that move through Billinge.

Details of each of the controls are given below and on the following map. 

6T1477       Goldcrest 4F
Ringed        04/10/2015  Oxmoor Wood, Runcorn, Halton.
Controlled   09/10/2016  Billinge Hill, Merseyside. 17km N, duration 371 days.

This bird was on passage when ringed at Oxmoor and its recapture at Billinge just over a year later, also when on passage, shows it was following a similar timing and route through the region.

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HDB361      Goldcrest 3M (photo below)
Ringed        04/09/2016 South Walney, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria.
Controlled   15/09/2016 Billinge Hill, Merseyside. 68km SSE, duration 11 days.

This bird is likely to have originated from a breeding site in the far north of England or Scotland.

HDB361 Goldcrest 15/09/2016

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HHJ969       Goldcrest 3M (photo below)
Ringed         05/10/2016 The Headland, Hartepool.
Controlled    14/10/2016  Billinge Hill, Merseyside. 165km SW, duration 9 days.

When it was controlled this Goldcrest was considered to be a 'continental' migrant from its appearance and the ringing location on the east coast just 9 days earlier certainly supports that. This is the second Goldcrest controlled at Billinge to have come from The Headland at Hartlepool, with the first being last year. 

HHJ969 Goldcrest 14/10/2016

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HXN392       Goldcrest 3F (photo below)
Ringed         14/10/2016 Isle Of May, Fife, Scotland.
Controlled    03/11/2016 Billinge Hill, Merseyside. 299km S, duration 20 days.

This Goldcrest was also considered to be a 'continental' bird when it was controlled and again the ringing location fully supports that. There was a big 'fall' of migrants on the Isle of May on 14th October that included 400 Goldcrests, 300 Robins, 400 Song Thrush, 150 Blackbirds, and 119 Brambling, just to list a few of the species and numbers recorded on the island that day.

HXN392 Goldcrest 03/11/2016

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The yellow pins mark the ringing site of each Goldcrest and the purple pin marks the site at Billinge.

.................................................and as it is that time of year

......Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

From Red to Wax, wing that is.

I went up to Billinge this morning with a view to catching a few more Redwings. It was a little bit misty in places on the drive up but nice and clear when I got to site. I quickly set 3 nets just before first light and heard the odd Redwing going over in the darkness while doing so. Fog started to roll in as the sky started to brighten to the east but, luckily, it didn't get too dense and the sky directly above the site remained visible to some degree for most of the time I was there. There was a nice flurry of activity for the first hour or so during which 11 Redwings and 2 Fieldfare were caught. Not big numbers but very good for the site this late in the year and considering the conditions.

Both Fieldfare were first year birds with one being a male (image above) and the other a female. They showed some of the plumage differences between the sexes really well as can be in the collage below.

The male on the left has broader dark centres to the crown feathers and much darker centres to the feathers of the mantle. The differences aren't always as obvious as they are in these two birds. There is also a difference in the colour of the tail feathers with males having black or blackish tail feathers whereas in females they are more of a dark brown to blackish-brown colour.

I know I have shown loads of photos of Redwings but there is always room for one more.

Things went very quiet after the initial flurry of activity so I took the opportunity to have a quick walk around the site before the next net round was due. There was very little to be seen or heard but on the way back I thought I could hear Waxwings calling and as I got nearer 12 Waxwings flew from the direction of the nets and over my head. On checking the nets only 2 birds had been caught with one being a Redwing but the other was a Waxwing, the first I have caught this winter.

1CY female Waxwing. The bird was fitted with a coded colour-ring in addition to the usual BTO ring which will increase the chance of finding out about its movements.

Only one ringed but hopefully there will be more as the winter progresses.

There are no berries on any of the trees at the site other than those I sometimes place (speculatively) in one the bushes along one of the net rides when I have nets up. I hadn't put many berries out this morning as the supplies in my freezer have nearly run out but it certainly proved to be worthwhile, this time at least. Trying to catch Waxwings this way is a bit of long shot, even with the added assistance of an audio lure, but as Billinge is such a good site for migrants it was always going to be worth giving it a try, especially in a good Waxwing winter like this one. The fog closed in shortly after the Waxwing was caught so I decided to pack up having ringed 12 Redwings, 2 Fieldfare and 1 Waxwing.

With good numbers of Waxwings in the country and a few starting to be seen locally I am often asked if I have started to put apples out in the garden or if I have had any Waxwings back. The truth is I have been putting a few apples out in the garden since early October as I do every year as part of my routine winter feeding and they are not just there in the hope of attracting Waxwings. If I am lucky enough to get any Waxwings in the garden again this winter I wouldn't expect it to happen before February or March, when berries usually start to get in short supply.

When I got home today one of the first birds I saw in the garden was a male Blackcap feeding on one of the apples and that is one of the species I always put them out for in winter. This particular Blackcap has been visiting the apples and fat feeders for the last three days and is easily recognised as it is re-growing most of its tail. The garden was really buzzing with birds with Brambling being the most unusual visitor. 

This Blackcap is the second I have seen in the garden this winter with the first being a female that was only seen on one day.

Bramblings are usually a garden rarity but a female I ringed nearly a month ago has been coming to the feeders regularly and this new female appeared today.

Goldfinches are by far the commonest bird with up to 60 coming to the feeders on any one day and its anyone's guess what the turnover of birds is during the course of a day.

I don't usually get many Starlings in the first half of the winter but good numbers have been coming to the fat cakes over the last 6 weeks or so.

All in all a really good day with a nice selection of species.