Control Blue tit!

I went ringing on Saturday morning at college - lots and lots of birds! Here's some pics of the best..



A dunnock with a rather bizarre hair-do



A very nice Bullfinch




A pair of Blue Tits which I'd caught together in May last year, next to one another once again in the net (the one on the left wouldnt stop biting my finger, for even a second!)


But the best bird of the day was my first control - Blue tit number X652526. Unfortunately no photo available as it was the last net round and I was in a hurry to get the nets down in time to get to my lecture. I'll update this when I know where it came from...

Below is a picture of one of my nets, just as I was about to take down - it had just started snowing and the snow was hanging really prettily in the net.

The problem with term..

9am lectures 6 days a week do not a good ringer make.

Saturday lectures are looking like they might be abandonded in favour of some gull/wader ringing, but this still doesnt leave me much time to catch on my own site - and there's some very attractive fieldfares flying around!

A dreadfully late update on ringing over the past 2 months

WWRG special sanderling catch

On 5th November we took a small catch of mixed waders, mainly sanderling. We looked at the retraps caught and selected 6 which were present over a previous winter, and to these birds we added a geolocater. The geolocater contains a light sensor, which records time of sunrise and sunset, allowing us to calculate the birds position when we (hopefully) recatch them and download the data next year. They sit on a small harness around the birds back and are practically invisible in the field. These will enable us to see if such a set up works well on small waders, and hence if they can be employed on Spoon-billed Sandpipers in the near future. We were filmed by Countryfile and a radio crew (for 'World on the Move').



NTGG

In late November I went out to Pitsea rubbish tip with North Thames Gull Group, to catch some gulls. Despite the trip being off, and on, and on, and off with the weather, we made a reasonable catch of mixed gulls. The large proportion of which proceeded to bite and scratch the team members!

Highlights include one of the tip workers, who came over to look at the gulls and the ringing process, offering his knuckles to one of the Herring Gulls. I dont think he'll be doing that again soon.



BTO Conference

Was fantastic, saw lots of people I knew and had heard about but never actually met. Learnt a bit about birds and failed miserably at the 'bird bums wot I have known' round of the quiz!



Ringing in college

Reasonably successful, earlier on in term I had a few mornings with over 10 birds, including several Redwing. Later on the going was tougher - a morning with 1 blue tit being the low point.



Ringing at Roudsea

Part of the reason for me going home over Christmas was that my trainer (Jim) was definately going to be home and we could actaully do some ringing together! We went out to his pet site, Roudsea Woods, where he has a RAS on Marsh tits and Great tits, and caught a lot of retraps. Everything was hungry and the feeder was really busy, which meant that we caught around 35 birds. I took my boyfriend (who is a trainnee) along and he got to handle his first Marsh tit, but no woodpeckers appeared for him to extract..

WWRG yet again!

Last friday I finally baited up my feeders and then set off for another cannon netting weekend on the wash, happy to get away from the piles of work which characterise term, to see 'real' people, birds, dogs, sea, sand.. all the things I miss.

We arrived just as a large team left to set some mist nets - for, very unusually, the tides were such that we couldnt cannon net on the saturday morning (high tide was before dawn), but good enough to try mist netting. But there was a slight problem with the wind - it was beyond the level of what we could catch in, but due to die down overnight.

After not very much sleep, we woke to find the wind had died down, so we set off to catch - and were rewarded for our efforts by 49 bird, mainly Redshank (we seem to be catching a disproportionate number of Redshank recently, apparently due to a fantastic breeding season in Iceland).

For the evening set we went to snettisham, to try and catch oystercatchers. Things were going well until (probably) a sparrowhawk spooked them, and they lifted and did not return.

Given the success of the previous morning's catch, and the lack of any good cannon netting option, it was decided to try mist netting again on the Sunday morning! This was even more successful, with 101 birds (again mainly redshank), but was kind of strange for me because my body decided to let freshers flu catch up with it at that point. Sitting in the middle of a saltmarsh for an hour or so probably didnt help it much!

Icklesham and back to Cambridge...

On the recommendation of a friend, who had told me stories of the thousands of birds (And the cool birds) that they catch, 2 weeks of my summer were spent at Icklesham. Sure enough, there were lots of birds, and there were lots of amazing birds - in particular, there was a Quail (which I never thought I'd see outside of a farm building), a beautiful but strange little bird, which I still cant imagine migrating! (see the Demog blog for an interesting story of a Quail recovery - you may have to scroll down a bit).

There were also some beautiful birds. I fell in love with Cettis warblers in particular, but also Stonechats, Robins (again), Sedge Warblers.. and really anything that I ringed/processed.

Highlights include
- catching 111 Yellow Wagtails
- the duck trap
- seeing some fantastic birds in the hand - quail, kestrels, bearded tit..
- the amazingly deep and comfortable mattresses in Luxford house, which made going to bed so much more attractive but getting up before dawn less so.

The 'lowlight' was getting stung by a weaver fish!

I'm now back in Cambridge, and went ringing to Wicken Fen yesterday, a decent catch of 91 and a good chance to catch up with some fellow ringers! My site needs a little bit of TLC before I can put my nets up (feeders need washing and filling, vegetation needs to be chopped back a bit), but watch this space!

The Wash Weeks (cannon netting on the Wash)

One of the highlights of my summer last year were the two 'wash weeks', two weeks cannon netting with WWRG on (funnily enough) the Wash. So the obvious decision for me when organising this summers ringing was going again.


The first week, mini week, we started with a small catch on Snettisham (an RSPB nature reserve) to get everyone into the mood. This was swiftly followed by a decision to go and set on Wainfleet island. There are several Wainfleet islands, divided roughly into North and South, and all of them require a hefty walk over saltmarsh, carrying heavy cannon netting equipment whilst trying to avoid falling into the numerous creeks. One way is invariably in the dark, which adds a new dimension of fun, feeling the way with your feet whilst watching the person in front of you in the line to see where they do/dont fall in. There are some amazing phosphorescent creatures (plankton? Insects? I dont know) that sparkle as you walk through them at night, which is something really special to see.

Anyway, we set on the large north island for an evening catch, and I was asked to act as a potential twinkler on the other island (a twinkler is someone who tries to move the birds into the catching area by walking/crawling/making themselves shown to the birds so that they walk, or fly). Which was great – I enjoyed my time lying under a sand-coloured blanket on the other island, listening to the Sandwich Terns fly overhead and watching the other waders out to sea.. As we got closer to the catch I did a bit of twinkling as askedduskythorn, crawling around the island, until I heard a 'bang' noise (meaning that a net had been fired). I got up and ran back towards the other island but was quite quickly stopped in my tracks. The volume of water that was running through the (once crossable) creek was large, and crossing it suddenly seemed more interesting than it had a few hours ago! The first fork of the creek proved deeper than I expected, up to my waist, and I quickly stripped off some of the dry clothes I had remaining and threw them onto the other side, before wading (swimming) through the second creek! This amused the other ringers somewhat.

Mini week had 2 very good catches – one (on a cabbage field) of 951 Dunlin and one of over 300 Barwit. It was very nice to see some waders in the hand again, I think I might be becoming addicted to them! Seabirds just have something about them, some amazing quality that I love.

Main week, on the other hand, was something of a flop. On the first tide, we fired 3 nets, each at a different time (which only happens very rarely). Each took a catch of around 20, but the second net unfortunately didnt go out properly, with one of the cannons not firing. We then spent several tides with no catches, either through the birds not landing in the right places, or because we had net problems (wind blowing it up etc.). In particular, there was one catch on the Horseshoe (a patch of saltmarsh) which went a bit haywire. The net was set well, and we were all in place in time before the birds started to come off the mud flats to begin roosting. A cow then got its back legs tangled in the cables, which meant that Steve had to get out of the hide to disentangle it, and then reconnect and recheck the net to see if it was safe and able to fire. At this point (unsurprisingly) we lost all the birds on the pool, which is never a good thing, as birds act as attractants to other birds and an existing nucleus will draw in other individuals. We then gained a small number of birds, and Steve decided to fire on them as the tide was about to become too high to stay on the marsh. We all ran out upon hearing the bang, and got to the nets quickly only to discover that there were no birds.. not only that but the net hadnt even covered the decoys (which were well within the catching area. The water had weighed the net down so much that the projectiles couldnt drag it out!

After that, we didnt have any successful cannon net catches on the Lincolnshire side, although 2 moderate mist netting sessions (more night saltmarshing!), and the other team took a very nice catch of mixed waders on a pool at Terrington.

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!