Back To The Linties

Linnets have hung around all winter at Gulf Lane but Friday morning and with a gentle breeze from the south east came the first opportunity for a month or more to catch a few. 

Earlier this week when I’d topped up the seed feed there’d been about 120 Linnets in the field, 8 or more Skylarks and 3 Stonechat dotted along the fence. 

I met Andy at 0700 and within ten minutes we had the usual configuration of nets ready for action. The Linnets appeared ravenous as they dived into the area of the food from the off. Well into March, the hungry month for birds, there’s not much of their natural food left so our seed mix is doing the job. 

We had a good catch of 23 Linnets but failed to catch a Skylark; despite two Skylarks being in the net, they both escaped before we laid a hand upon them. The Skylark is the Harrier Jump Jet of the bird world in being able to rise vertically from a standing start, even when partially enveloped by a mist net. 

Skylark

Our catch of 23 Linnets comprised 8 first winter females, 2 adult females, 8 first winter males and 5 adult males. This brought our running total of new Linnets ringed during the Winter of 2017/18 to 237 individuals.

For only the second time at this site and with almost 450 Linnets behind us in two winters, we had only our second recapture – S800285 was ringed here on 2/11/2017 and recaptured today, but not in the intervening period. 

A glance at the coffee stained field sheet from today shows a few large males with wing lengths of 83mm. This was  surpassed by the very last adult male caught at 0930 with a whopping measurement and double checked via Andy as 87mm. Almost certainly this male will be from the Scottish and slightly larger sub species of Linnet, Linaria cannabina autochthona. By the way, and for those who collect such trivia, the old Scottish name for a Linnet is “lintie”. 

Today's Field Sheet

Linnet

"Lintie"

And now to work for the next hour or so in transferring the data for those 23 birds into the new BTO online database DemOn. 

DemOn - BTO

I knew that 87mm was a big one. DemOn gave me a validation warning.

"Wing-length queried as outside normal range of species – max 86mm"

"Validation warnings occurred when submitting the record. Please check the warnings, and click continue to save the record anyway. Please enter a comment for any warnings that require one before continuing. To go back and edit the record, click 'Cancel' ". 

A ringer’s work is never done but back soon with more news, views and photos.

Linking today to World Bird Wednesday, Eileen's Blog and Anni's Blog.

Mostly Linnets

A disappointing session of ringing this morning with just three new Linnets caught. All the more frustrating to watch the usual 250+ Linnets fly all around the area and then feed mostly away from our couple of single panel nets. The problem now is one of low winter vegetation and nets without background becoming more visible to overflying Linnets. Andy and I are now resigned to remaining winter catches of single figures but view the entire project as very worthwhile. 

Flocking in their winter habitat of flat, weedy fields or maritime marsh makes Linnets very difficult to catch. As such the data on wintering Linnets is under-represented in the national database of Linnets where 89% of the species’ recoveries are from the months April to October. 

Richard the farmer has told us of his plans to reseed the same plot this spring and to start an additional new plot about half-a-mile away. Both plots should hold plenty of Linnets by late summer of 2017. In view of this and also of the suspicion that many Linnets that visit us in autumn and winter may be much more than local birds, we hope to add value to our project by colour ringing the ones we catch. Broadcasting the project to bird watchers and the public in other parts of the UK will hopefully generate a number of sightings of our Linnets. 

Linnet

Linnet

We didn’t catch any obviously “different” Linnets this morning, but I did a little more research on the idea that some of our locally wintering Linnet flocks may be from Scotland while hiding a few of the seemingly forgotten Scottish race of Linnet, Linaria cannabina autochthona. The Latin autochthona means endemic/original. 

David Callaghan 2011 - "The autochthona is not recognised by all authorities, as this longer-winged and more slender-billed form is likely to be the end of a continent-wide cline. With a population of up to 90,000 pairs, it is most abundant in eastern Scotland, though this positioning also opens it to potential intergradation.” (with cannabina from the south or cannabina from Scandinavia). 

Scottish Birds 2003 - "Bannerman (1953) does add "perhaps also Ireland", remarking that Irish resident birds are variable though "mostly dark and match those from Scotland". Nevertheless, no comparative analysis of this observation seems to have been undertaken."  The BOU Records Committee (BOU 1971) sees "the subspecies as 'poorly distinguished', however, no real determination of subspecies has so far been made regarding the recent colonisation of the Outer Hebrides (Murray 2000). Whilst the race appears to be largely sedentary, we still have much to learn about the overall distribution and movements of autochthona.” 

Add to the above that in recent years the Linnet has recolonised Shetland (from Scotland or Scandinavia) and the mystery deepens. 

I found two pictures on the Internet, specimens only. Note the earlier scientific name of Acanthis now Linaria.

Linaria cannabina cannabina

Linaria cannabina autochthona 

We took a drive down to view Richard’s plot at Sand Villa for 2017 - looks promising.  When Andy drove off to continue his Christmas and New Year chores I took a look at Braides Farm. 

Combined approximate counts from Braides and Sand Villa: 600 Starling, 190 Curlew, 900 Lapwing, 300 Golden Plover, 60 Redshank, 170 Pink-footed Geese, 140 Wigeon, 30 Teal, 12 Shoveler, 6 Little Egret. 

Back home I counted 15-20 Goldfinch in the garden with 6 Blackbirds and the now almost resident but single Fieldfare. That reminds me, I must go and top up the feeders and then hit the shops to find some cheap apples to chuck out.

Fieldfare

More soon from Another Bird Blog.

Linking today to Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.

Scottish Mist

Next Wednesday is the shortest day of our gloomy northern winter. I for one can’t wait for that extra few minutes tacked onto each morning and every evening; and with a bit of luck we’ll have a few frosty, clear mornings to lift the shutters of winter. 

In the meantime a 0815 start was required on Saturday to meet Andy at the set-aside plot for a chance of catching more Linnets. There’d been up to 250 Linnets both flying around and dropping into the weedy field during the week when I stopped to take a look. With a prediction of 3mph together heavy cloud the conditions appeared ideal. The forecast proved accurate enough except that the dank overnight air and lack of wind had created a morning fog. The fog hung around all morning, turning once or twice into a mist when without much success the hidden sun tried to break through. 

In the circumstances we were pleased enough to catch eleven new Linnets and push our project total over 150 since early October. 

Linnet

A couple of the male Linnets we caught were noticeably dark on the mantle & scapulars as well as being heavily streaked below. Both had wing lengths of 84mm, at the top end of the range for a male Linnet. As first winter birds retaining their juvenile wing we might reasonably expect the same birds to reach an adult measurement of 85/86mm by late summer of 2017. 

We considered that these individuals could be of the Scottish subspecies of Linnet, Linaria cannabina autochthona (Clancey 1946), as opposed to the Common Linnet Linaria cannabina cannabina of the British Isles and continental Europe. 

After a little search I found the below information in Scottish Birds 2003. 

“Although autochthona is believed to breed throughout most of Scotland, it grades into cannabina and no precise boundary can be drawn between the 2 races. There is only a solitary record of a Scottish bred Linnet = autochthona recorded away from Scotland. The bird, ringed as a chick near Sanquhar, Dumfries & Galloway on 18 June 1928 was recovered near Egremont, Cumbria, England on 8 November 1928.“ 

To that apparently single record we can add our own recent recovery of a chick ringed in Shetland on 14th June 2016 (presumably autochthona) recovered here at our Pilling site on 24th October 2016 and a distance of 674kms from Shetland.  This young male also measured up at 82mm.

Saturday was a terrible morning for photography in which to show how different these few males were, but needless to say we will be closely examining all Linnets in the coming weeks to try and ascertain if there are more Scottish Linnets wintering hereabouts. 

Birding in the gloom with visibility of around 50 yards meant our birding highlights were the immediacy of 250+ Linnet, 2 Little Egret, 2 Snipe, several Curlew , a few dozen Lapwings and a Sparrowhawk eyeing up the Linnets from on high. 

Sparrowhawk

I know the picture above is not the finest but this was the best I could do on such a foul, misty morning. Never mind, there’s always another day on Another Bird Blog, so comeback soon for more bird news and views.

Linking today to  Stewart's World Bird Wednesday.