The Shiants

Though I'd better update this before I head off to the Wash for some cannon netting, so here we go!

I signed up for this trip not knowing a thing about what I'd be doing, but very excited because it contained a lot of words I didn't know the meaning of (grotting, fleyging..). What we actually ended up doing more than met my expectations, with the results that I am totally in love with certain species of seabirds!

The main ringing was split into roughly 3 categories. Puffin slope ringing, rock ringing and top-o-the-island ringing.

As Puffins were the main aim of the trip, I'll deal with them first. We set up lines of nets at different set heights throughout the main colony, catching in total around 600 birds. Puffins are funny little creatures. They have extremely strong beaks - just a little nip from them is enough to draw blood (my hands are testament to this) - and very little wings. To give a sense of proportion, they have wings the size of a blackbirds but are around 3 times heavier! So when they fly, they not only have to beat exceptionally hard, they also have to spread their feet out besides their tail to give them extra lift! They also make this bizarre groaning noise, both in their burrows (which you can hear if you listen carefully enough) and in the hand.

Also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8156866.stm for news of one of the birds we caught!

The other sort of ringing we did a lot of was rock ringing - my term for scrambling over and under boulders in order to try and find Razorbills, Guillemots and Shags (either adults or chicks). Unfortunately the Guillemots were still on eggs for most of the time we were there, and so we couldn't ring many of them (if you approach a Guillemot ledge they get flustered and whilst moving to the back of the ledge to 'escape', may accidentally knock off an egg, which obviously we tried to avoid at all costs!). This provided quite a challenge, as one area of the rock slope had this huge line of Guilly colonies, just about where we wanted to go down to the beach to have lunch, so we had to go all the way around to avoid disturbing them.

Instead we caught many Razorbills, and many Razorbill chicks. Razorbills are, I can tell you, aptly named. They have exceedingly sharp bills and an attitude to match. Their chicks are the complete opposite - small fluffy grey things that sit and cry in crevices. Their crying noise is all pervasive in the colony, it invades your ears. Even when you know there is not a razorbill chick around you, you can still hear them, and once I could have sworn I was hallucinating razorbill chick cries in my tent (it then turned out that I wasn't, thankfully, and that there was some sort of mass exodus/fledging event in the colony). They then go through an ugly down moult phase, and start to gain the adult plumage. This is when they are the best; lovely and fluffy, beautifully smart yet cannot bite too hard, no matter how much they try! The funniest thing about razorbill chicks is they think if they cant see you, you cant see them. So a razorbill chick that is out on a ledge might move further back into a crevice, but one with its head in a crevice and its fluffy bum stuck out thinks it is perfectly safe! Many razorbill chicks have one of their parents nearby though, so reaching out to pick one up may still result in hand injuries...


The third common species encountered whilst rock ringing is the Shag. Shags are absolutely amazing! Beautiful iridescent green plumage, with many of the coverts outlined in black. Adults have one of two noises - females 'hiss' and males 'gronk'. The gronk is a particularly incredible sound, and they have an amazing head shaking that goes with it, that makes shags look almost prehistoric. Shag chicks, though, are some of the funniest creatures alive. They are grey and floppy, and really very messy (their nests smell and their feet are often covered in all sorts of muck), but once they reach a certain size/age, they start to try and imitate the adults - they produce little, high pitched gronks, complete with the head shaking!!

The last main type of ringing we did was top-o-the-island ringing. This was basically an exercise in nest finding, which I am rubbish at! We found Bonxies (Great Skuas), gulls of 3 flavours (Greater and Lesser Black Backed and Herring), someone (not me, despite my efforts) also found several mippit nests. Whilst we're on about cute chicks, Bonxies are pretty amazing. They are fairly large, very fluffy, gingery, but with blue legs!

Other birds caught during the expedition include Eider(!), and Fulmar.

Thanks to Jim Lennon for organising the trip, and all the team members (you know who you are). Also to the Panton Trust for providing me with a grant to go!

Swallows, Swans, Sand Martins and Seabirds!

Exam term is over, with no more catches, despite my efforts with a potter trap and a tub of mealworms (which only emptied when I didn't have it set/wasn't watching it).

Almost as soon as I got back I was off ringing though, with Kane etc. around Windermere. The target for this trip was Swallow pulli, and to that end we visited a handful of farms down very twisty, very potholed, and occasionally very steep roads. We caught about 30 in total, including some adults we mist netted, before heading back to Bowness for a check on the Swans. Of about 80 there, only 5 didnt have rings on! Nevertheless, we recaught some whose darvics (plastic rings) needed adjusting/regluing, fixed those, and also caught one whose metal ring had this mysterious white substance on. We couldnt quite figure out what it was, but it looked suspicously like paint! I wonder what it had been up to.

On Thursday I signed myself up for a sand martin catching session with North Lancs Ringing Group. We set a single net on the edge of a river, just outside the sand martin holes, and before we were even done setting it, there were birds in the net! Overall we caught 99 birds, which was particularly impressive considering we only had the net up for 2 half hour sessions.

And lastly, the most exciting bit! On Monday I am headed off for a seabird ringing expedition in the Shiant Isles in Scotland! I dont really know what to expect but I'm certainly looking forward to it. More on this later...

More Tawnys...

The plot thickens, last night I heard a(nother?) Tawny owl calling from the trees behind my house!

Tawny

A bit of news on the tawny - I havent heard it for about 2 weeks, and was browsing through the weekly rag a few days ago when I came across an article. Apparently a Tawny owl was found dangling from a tree in a nearby park with its wing wrapped up in kite string. Poor thing! I strongly suspect this is 'my' tawny, it's certainly within the territory range and would explain why I havent heard mine in a while. In any case, the tawny has gone to a nearby birds of prey centre to recover and should hopefully be released soon.

I cant help but wonder about the ring-ability of such an owl - the ringers manual says not to ring a bird held captive for 24 hours or more, unless you get special permission, but even if I knew that this owl was definitely my tawny, it's still a wild bird and if I caught it should I treat it as such and ring it?

I got a phone call from my sister today, apparently there was an excitingly large package addressed to me sitting at home, and my mother was itching to open it! It turned out to be my newly ordered potter traps, which I expected to turn up here - never mind. They're now being sent down to me from home and hopefully I will be able to catch some of the bigger birds with them - watch out you magpies!!

An unsucessful morning. ish.

Last night I was in two minds about trying to ring this morning. The weather forecast was 'showers' but I knew if I didnt try, the weather would have been perfect for it. On the other hand, it was a fairly massive cloud passing over Britain, and I didnt want to disrupt my sleeping pattern (exams in 5 days!).

So I got up at 5, which was my compromise - to be up at dawn rather than to have the nets set for dawn, and by 6.20 I had 2 nets set and 2 blue tits in them. The weather was just about perfect - still, overcast, birds everywhere. And then it started to rain. And it carried on raining. At first I though I'd wait 5 minutes, to see if it would ease off at all, but no hope, so I took a net down (the one surrounded by high grass and has more potential for soaking my feet/legs). I then went to take the other net down, and it had caught another blue tit, which I think doubles the number of blue tits I've caught here!

Although the total catching time cant have been more than half an hour, I caught 3 blue tits, which is a very nice rate. It's just a bit disappointing in terms of time and species diversity. Where are all my blackbirds? And why has the rain now stopped????

Squirrels 5 - Limey 1

I've just been round to do a check/refill of my feeders, and guess what, they got another one. This was, admittedly a £3 feeder from the market, so not a huge loss, but it's the principle of the thing. This feeder I had repaired, duct-taped to within an inch of its life and have spent the last week and a half watching half satisfactorily as the levels in the feeder weren't dropping by much (no squirrel predation but equally few birds feeding). This afternoon the bird-standing-on thingy was hanging by a thread of duct-tape, which had been thoroughly chewed through. The transparent plastic has been chewed as well so it's no longer in a usable condition.

I'm still not quite sure whether or not the squirrel proof feeder is working - the levels are going down, and there is certainly no sign of squirrel chewing, however it's quite a light, small feeder and I find myself thinking that they could be rocking it to make the seed fall to the ground or something. Devious beasts! If only I had enough time to watch my feeders, but alas, exam term looms in the forefront of my mind and work must take some form of priority.

Wicken Fen Standard Sites Session

Last week I'd decided too much time had past since I last ringed at Wicken Fen. I hadnt seen a warbler in the hand for about 8 months! So, hoping desperately I could still remember everything about warblers, I emailed Chris to ask if I could join them and get a lift.

The standard sites sessions at Wicken run from 12 noon one day to 12 noon the next, and seeing a chance to get a spot of revision in (half an hour breaks between net rounds really are effective for that), I decided to go for the whole weekend. A nice break from the monotony of Cambridge

All was going well until, in the middle of a page about deer eating shearwater chicks (!) to obtain calcium from their bones, Chris walked in with a bird. It was brown. It was not a sparrow, or a dunnock, or a wren, or anything that you expect to be brown. It didnt look like I remembered a garden warbler to look, but seeing as I didnt have much more of a clue, that was my first guess. Chris shook his head. I look more closely at the bird. I cant think what on earth it could be - it had a faint eye stripe, but it wasnt that strong, and its belly was slightly lighter than the upper half of its body. 'Ummm'. At this point I look at the beak. It's a very fine, elegant beak, with whiskers at the edges. Which indicated 'warbler' to me.

'Reed warbler??' I asked hopefully, even though I knew it wasnt!

'Nope'. I dragged the bird book from the bookcase. I turned it to the warblers bit and started leafing through. Nothing looks quite right.

'Try counting the tail feathers.' So I did. 10. I know there are very few birds with 10 tail feathers in Britain.

'It isn't a Cetti's warbler, but I cant remember which other species have 10 tail feathers,' I say. 'I know there's at least 2 more species.'

'What makes you so sure it isnt a Cetti's warbler?'

I thought about this for a while. I turned back to the page containing Cetti's warbler. Sure enough, there it was, slightly more distinct than the bird I was holding, but a Cetti's warbler nonetheless. For some reason, I've never imagined a Cetti's warbler to look like that. I'd never seen one before, and I guess I had this image formed in my head from half remembered images in books. It was definitely not all brown.

So the Cetti's warbler was processed (it was a retrap) and released, and I wont forget what they look like in a hurry!! This type of thing is exactly why I carry a bird book with pictures as well as Svensson and Baker. We then proceeded to catch 3 more, prompting comments about it 'raining Cetti's warblers'. There was also a big effort to discover the other species with 10 tail feathers. From memory, they are:

Bittern
Occasional Barn Owls
Swift

White's Thrush (I think) has 14 tail feathers!

Please add to the list if you can think of any others - I know I've forgotten some!

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, there were quite a few birds, including a collared dove, and I watched a crack in my welly as it got steadily bigger. Thankfully the ground was dry. That evening, after we'd furled the nets, we watched the woodcock flying overhead. Someone made some vague reference to moth traps, at which my ears sharpened (my other wildlife-esque hobby is moth trapping). Sure enough, there was a moth trap in the distance. So I walked over to the guy who was beating the vegetation with a net (to loosen insects) and started talking to him. He moth traps at Wicken 4-5 times a year (not very much!) but said that a lot of people each do a small amount of time. He also mentioned that you needed a license from the national trust to do so there! Then he talked about the history of the Fen a bit (of which I didnt know much), and how it was initially set up as an entomologists reserve, and about the sort of moths you generally find. It was quite interesting to hear, because you dont generally meet fellow moth trappers!

After that I retired to my tent for a very cold nights sleep. At 4am I was up and by 4.30 all packed and on my way to the reedbed.

The reedbed was dry, compared to my previous experiences with other reedbeds, which is to say, there wasnt much standing water. The mud more than compensated for this! By the first net round my cracked-wellied foot had got soaked, and it didnt get better the whole morning. The ringing tick I got, however, made up for it. We caught a male cuckoo!

The totals for the morning weren't great, we caught 16 birds overall, and all before 0730. But overall it was a good and fun weekend and I learnt (or at least remembered) a lot!