Wednesday, May 23, 2018

A Packet Of Smarties

I met up with Andy for our first Sand Martin ringing session of 2018. Like me, Andy had been on holiday, me in Menorca, and he in Turkey. Birders and ringers are ultra-competitive and as we swapped tales of sunny days his Eleonora’s Falcon was pretty good but I reckon I smashed him with 5 Golden Orioles, a European Roller and a Red-footed Falcon. 

There was no such exotica today. It was back to the bread and butter of Cockerham, the piping of Oystercatchers and the steady buzz of Sand Martins all around us as we waited to catch. Last year was very poor for our catches here as the so-called summer kept thwarting our planned visits. 

This year the colony is more tightly packed and so far at least, the weather is much better. We counted 200+ Sand Martins in attendance with most of the occupied nests in the softer strata layer of the quarry face with at least 75 holes in use. 

Sand Martin colony 

Sand Martin

We caught 68 Sand Martins. The catch was made up of 63 new birds, 3 returns from previous years (all from June 2015) and one bearing a quite old ring. The ring series beginning D350 told us that this bird had been ringed a number of years ago as our own series beginning “Z”, finished last year. We are now on the newer series of rings with a three letter prefix and four numbers. 

We also caught a male bearing a Paris Museum ring - “Click the pic” below. After these records are entered on the BTO database Demography Online, we will find in due course find out where both the French ringed and British ringed D350512 Sand Martins visited during their extensive travels. 

Paris, French Museum bird ring 

Sand Martin 

On the way home I checked out the Oystercatcher nest mentioned here on the blog on May 3rd, the day before I set off to Menorca.  I really didn’t expect to see the Oyk still sat after the attentions of the local crows. But there she was large as life, with a little vegetation cover, and now hopefully just a day or two until those chicks hatch. 

Oystercatcher 

Stay tuned. there's more birding soon from Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Eileen's Saturday Blog



10 comments:

David M. Gascoigne, said...

Good morning Phil: You certainly have far greater success than we do in capturing birds banded elsewhere. We have never had the pleasure yet, nor have any of our birds been recovered by other banding stations, although we do know from our radio tracked Barn Swallows that some made it to Florida and one bird was detected going through Panama. This weekend will be our final session of the spring and we will dismantle our nets, to start up again in late August when fall migration will be underway. In the meantime there is lots of work top be done with our two Barn Swallow colonies, where we expect the first hatchlings any day now.

Rhodesia said...

Excellent photos, interesting that you have caught a sand martin from Paris. Well travelled bird :-) Have a good week Diane

Lowcarb team member said...

Great to see your photographs here, I especially liked seeing the colony.

All the best Jan

betty-NZ said...

How awesome to be able to see these gorgeous birds!

Angie said...

Fascinating about the ring history on a couple of your Sand Martins. I look forward to hearing more about their travels.

Stuart Price said...

There was a colony of Sand Martins on the south side of the Ribble in the late 90's, I wonder if it's still there?

eileeninmd said...

Hello PHil, the Sand Martin colony nesting area is neat to see. They are pretty birds. I have always loved the Oystercatcher. Great collection of photos. Thank you so much for linking up and sharing your post. Happy Saturday, enjoy your day and weekend!

Betty J. Crow said...

Interesting information on the sand martins. Nice shot of the oystercatcher, too.

A Colorful World said...

Such interesting sand martens! And the oystercatcher shot is cute too.

Mary Howell Cromer said...

Love, Love, Love those Sand Martins...along with Swallows, Swifts and the like, such beautifully structured birds and they eat insects...that makes me very happy. It's only May ending and I have had over 20 insect bites to date, some very bad ones. Beautiful birds and so happy their numbers stay up~

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