CES Visit 5 - Priory Country Park

Todays bird ringing session - CES visit 5 at Priory Country Park - was dominated by juvenile birds.

41 birds of 13 species, 32 new & 9 retraps (retraps in brackets).

Chiffchaff 4 (2) - 5 of these were juveniles
Great Tit 4 (0) - all 4 juveniles
Wren 1 (1)
Blue Tit 7 (0) - all 7 juveniles
Long Tailed Tit 1 (0) - a juvenile
Bullfinch 1 (0) - a juvenile
Dunnock 1 (2) - of these 2 were juveniles (the other being a retrap adult)
Blackbird 4 (0) - 4 new juveniles
Robin 2 (1) - including 1 new juvenile
Blackcap 4 (2) - including 1 new juvenile
Greenfinch 1 (0)
Chaffinch 1 (0)
Song Thrush 1 (0) - a juvenile

That's a total of 27 juveniles. Here are some of the cast:

Above: A juvenile Blackbird on the left and an adult female on the right for comparison.

Above: A juvenile Song Thrush - note all the thorn shaped markings on the wing.



Above: A juvenile Chiffchaff.



Above: A juvenile Robin (left) and adult Robin (right) for comparison. It will be a while yet before the baby Robin gets its own red breast - it has to replace and grow more feathers before that happens.

Above: A juvenile Bullfinch

Last weekend, we made a visit to 'the crescent' where we caught 20 different adult Reed Warblers moving between the reed bed and surrounding vegetation. Of the other 10 birds we caught, of only note was our first juvenile Blackcap of the year at this site.

Now to hope the wind dies down a bit so I can make the most of my weekend ringing activities.

Blackbird Recovery

News came through yesterday of a Blackbird ringed at Priory Country Park on 9th December 2009 as a juvenile male. Unfortunately, it had met a sad end - this is a common way for ringers to find out what happens to some of our birds. The fortune this time was on our side as it had made its way to FINLAND!

It was found on 23rd September 2011, at Vistanvagen, Soderudden, Vaasa, Finland - 653 days after it was ringed in Bedford - a distance of 1775km in a North Easterly direction.

Details of the ringing session this bird was caught on can be found here (it was the first bird caught that day).

My January highlights

The weather has been variable recently, to say the least. December was freezing and with all the snow, this stopped ringing activities. By the new year the snow had gone and a session Sandy Smith Nature Reserve (SSNR) on 8th Jan produced just 3 birds; a Coal Tit, Blue Tit and this:



Above: A Kingfisher that had survived the December freeze!

SSNR on 22nd Jan: 4 Blue Tits, 5 Great Tits and 1 Coal Tit.

SSNR on 30th Jan: 4 Blue Tits, 2 Great Tits, 1 Robin, 1 Chaffinch, 1 Coal Tit and 2 new species ringed for the site, 2 Goldfinch and 1 Blackbird.



Above: The first Goldfinch ringed at SSNR.



Above: The first Blackbird ringed at SSNR.



Above: A female Chaffinch.

11th December 2010

Between 8am and 12.30pm today 30 birds of 10 species were caught, ringed and released in 'the rough.' New (retrap):

Great Tit 4 (6)
Blackbird 3 (0)
Great Spotted Woodpecker 0 (1)
Blue Tit 4 (4)
Dunnock 1 (0)
Wren 0 (1)
Marsh Tit 1 (0)
Long Tailed Tit 0 (3)
Bullfinch 0 (1)
Robin 0 (1)



Above: This Marsh Tit V670965 (an adult) is only the third caught & ringed at this site (the second this year, the only other being in 1993). DK got some photographs for the Priory Bird Report but DB & JA missed out having already left.

The Bullfinch was first ringed as a youngster on 11th October 2008 (also recaught a few times inbetween) and a retrap Great Tit was first ringed in Box 4 in May this year.

On my last visit (27th Nov.) I retrapped a Blackbird that was first ringed in August 2005 as a youngster.

Posted by BTCV Ed at 16:57

Haar, haar.

Got out early in anticipation of maybe a bit of 'grounded scarce'. The heavens were obscured by a layer of cloud as I put some nets up. The wind was also a lot stronger than the 5mph forecast. The next hour was busy with 19 birds to extract and process. First up was a Song Thrush that was being 'got at' by a juvvy male Sparr - but my intervention saved it and it got away with a few ruffled, and bloodied, back feathers.
Some minor damage to the rear end of today's Song Thrush

The bird was a Euring code 4 and much bigger than our known locals, so was probably a continental arrival.

With a little more light in the sky a couple of female Blackbirds popped by, both birds of the year and like chalk and cheese. The smaller one (123mm wing) had just 1ogc and the larger (133mm) had 4ogc. Here is the larger one that also had a fat score of 2.5
The 'continental' female Blackbird in a hurry to get away.

Then, with the MP3 lure on, it was the turn of 2 male Blackcaps to 'weigh in'. The smaller of the two was the heavier.
Shy 'teenage' Blackcap (3M) with 2 ogc; the lighter one .

By now the light was about as good as it was going to get all morning. The tits started to visit the feeders for a while starting about half an hour after (theoretical) sunrise. However, after a bit of a flurry, interest in the easy come by source of food failed to attract much enthusiasm. Four Bushtits did the honours, three of them newbies and most likely young of the year with their red eye rings.

So, after three hours of boredom, when I processed 3 more tits and a Dunnock and was thinking of taking down as the wind had backed to a worse direction, what should pop by but a young Treecreeper that I ringed a couple of weeks ago. So that was it. 24 birds of 10 species, of which one third were re-traps.
Last bird of the day - Treecreeper, aged 3, male on bill & hind claw.
Young Treecreeper with 2 ogc's and unmoulted, large white tip to alula.

Blue Tit 4 (3)
Great Tit 1 (2)
Long-tailed Bushtit 3 (1)
Blackcap 2
Treecreeper (1)
Wren 1
Blackbird 2
Song Thrush 1
Dunnock 2
Chaffinch (1)

No Chiffs, no 'crests, no Redwings, no King Harry's. The day started as it had begun - gloomy!

Observations made up for it some what, with the Sparr, 8 Lesser Redpolls, a Green Sand, 5 Swallows, 1 House Martin, several small parties of Chaffinch, 8 Wigeon, 6 Gadwall, a Grey Wag, a Pied Wag, 4 Mipits, 3 Sky Larks, a count of 180-200 Starlings west, just 1 Redwing ... and about 2 thousand Jackdaws as I was unlocking the gate on arrival.
Pie in the sky today! Next time? I've put a request in for light winds, as well.

Lots of productivity

We thought it would be a dream day for ringing. 7-eighths cloud plus a gentle, subsiding wind, it looked as if it might get better. Dream on. It was COLD! During the first half of our Constant Effort session we, Ed and I, caught eight (8) new birds, and no retraps, of seven species. Put another way, that's one every net round, just about. Mind you, one of them was a full adult male with a stonking brood patch - and his tongue hanging out! Ed had done the last one and I normally give them away to trainees - but today there weren't any, so I had it for myself!
Today's adult male Green Woodpecker (D Kramer)

As the cloud cover increased, it warmed up a fraction. On the minus side, the north west wind picked up a shade, too. "Blow me down", at half-eight, the tit flock passed over and we ended up with ten (10) birds in the nets; the six tits, three with 'nest box rings', also pulled in four more warblers. Well, we thought that was it, a fluke, and over for the day. Perhaps another six might see us to the end of the session, finishing a bit below par for the site and time of year.

Not to be, thank God. We ended up with a grand total of 35; 26 of them were new and 27 of them were birds of the year (four already ringed). So it ended with a list like this:
Green Woodpecker 1
Blue Tit 3 (1)
Great Tit 1 (3)
Chiffchaff 4 - all youngsters
Blackcap 4 - inc a new adult pair
Garden Warbler 1 (1) - the retrap male was ringed as a 4M in May 2008
Whitethroat 3 (1) - our first 3J's of the year & 2 of them had started PJ moult
Our first young Common Whitethroat of 2010

Wren 2 (2)
Blackbird 2 - 3JM & 3JF of the 'longer-winged' variety
[we seem to have 2 sub-populations; with short wings and long wings]
Robin 2 - a couple of spotty juvs caught simultaneously
Dunnock 3 (1) - new youngsters and an old favourite lady from 2007 who was in egg again.

Just to finish off: record shots of the net rides after this week's grass cut and the sides trimming up

Nets 2 & 1 (run N/S) - now disappears into "ash woodland"

Nets 3 & 4 (run E/W) - 'downhill' towards Fingers Lake

40' extra net run - useless until autumn passage; also used as 1 of 2 winter feeding sites.

Two days from Priory

With rain persisting through much of the daylight hours on Saturday, ringing was obviously dropped from the wekend program. Looking out at first light on Sunday, it was apparent that we would have to ring somewhere with a bit of shelter. So we, of three different rankings, had a makeshift session at the back of "the sheep pen".

The main accomplishment was picking up several young birds, evenly split between Blackbird and Robin.
So the tally was 10 new birds and 9 re-traps as under:
Blue Tit 1
Great Tit (1) - this had 'moved house' from the CES area
Blackcap (1) - a 5M
Garden Warbler 1 - a 5F
Whitethroat (1) - another 5M
Wren (1)
Blackbird 4 (2)
Robin 4
Dunnock (3) - oldest, a 4F in July '08

Female Blackcap with "gunge" from feeding her youngsters.

Bank Holiday Monday took us back to CES, visit 4/12. My 'C' ringer from Bucks joined us for some practice in extraction and looking at "funny little birds". [He spends much of his free time checking birds of prey and ringing things in boxes].

Regular Ed with 'newby' Dave (but permit numbers say otherwise)

We were lucky enough to catch seven 3J's, considering the conditions; 1 Dunnock, 3 Robins, 1 Blackbird & 2 Greenfinches.


Young Robin and young female Greenfinch

The best moment for me was catching both of a pair of LESWH, that had arrived about three weeks ago. You never know when these are around because of the very short song period of the males and their 'hushed' contact calls.

Lesser Whitethroat (2CY female [5F])

Ed proudly presented us with the 12th species of the day, a 2nd year Reed Warbler; note the abrasion.

Immature male Reed Warbler - prospecting?

Today's tally was a modest tit-less 23, 16 new and 7 re-traps.
Long-tailed Bushtit 1
Chiffchaff 1 - a breeding female
Blackcap (1) - nesting female
Lesser Whitethroat 2 - a pair
Whitethroat (2) - a pair with young nearby
Reed Warbler 1
Wren 1 (1)
Blackbird 1
Robin 3 (1) - re-trap male was ringed as a '3J' exactly 3 years ago!
Dunnock 1 (2) - one time juveniles from '04 and '07
Greenfinch 3 - 2 juveniles and a female novice breeder
Bullfinch 2 - both 2CY females

Female Bullfinch

Because of the gentle/moderate westerly, a lot of insects were been blown off the willows. To our delight, we were entertained by the comings and goings of 150 to 200 Common Swifts for much of the morning. And I nearly forgot; something has been nobbling our nestlings. The evidence was found in the middle of the rack.

[Click on picture to enlarge, then click again (+)]

Now that we've managed to get this visit in, we can think about ringing a new site next weekend. We've had 2 "out of season" recce's, so we'll see whether it's worthwhile ... or not, as the case may be.

Blackwing Passage!

Reports have started coming in of the years first spring/summer migrants to enter Britain such as alpine swifts (having gone too far!) and sand martins (one having been seen at Priory Country Park this week), but we haven't forgotten about our winter migrants that are on passage back to their summer breeding grounds much further north or on the continent.

Today we put up several nets in the sheep pen at Priory CP hoping for blackbirds and we weren't disappointed.

The tally was - 16 new (3 retraps):

Long Tailed Tit - 3 (0)
Blue Tit - 0 (1)
Great Tit - 1 (1)
Blackbird - 6 (1)
Redwing - 5 (0)

We think 4 of the blackbirds were probably continental types (usually bigger/heavier than the British version and harder to age & sex!).



Above: One of 7 blackbirds we caught today (a male born last year).

The surprise were 5 redwing. There was no sign that any were around, we were walking around checking the nets and must have made them change location because a net that was empty 2 minutes before suddenly had 3 redwing!

As Errol wasn't looking, I put them safely into bags and pretended they were Song Thrushes. "Funny looking Song Thrush" said Errol when he finally got to clap an eye on one!



Above: Ageing Redwing in the hand is partly done by the white/cream/buff markings on the tips of the tertial feathers and Greater Coverts. The above bird (an adult), has little or none of these markings whereas the bird below (a juvenile) has the classic markings for its age. Though not shown here, sometimes there are 'inbetweeners' sent to confuse and test us!



Below: I can't think of a valid reason why I added this photo except that it was an excuse to show you a frontal picture of a Redwing rather than its back!



PS. If you look up into the sky occasionally, you may see flocks of Redwings and Fieldfares pass overhead on their way home (or sand martins coming here to breed)!