Blown Away

The morning proved mostly frustrating. I’d met up with Andy again at Oakenclough on a forecast of an 8 mph easterly wind that would drop during the morning until by 3pm it would be no more than 5 mph. Another Fake Forecast from the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation! 

From a very cool and steady 10 mph the wind actually increased to something like a bitterly cold 20 mph. For a while we sat in the car with the heater at full blast and the heated seats switched to “on” just to keep warm as the nets produced nothing. I tell a lie, a single Lesser Redpoll was all we had to show for our labours and the 0630 start. We’ll save our efforts for another day soon. 

There came recompense in the form of yet more news of the Lesser Redpolls we ring here at Oakenclough . A juvenile male number S800767 ringed here during autumn migration time on 26 September 2017 was later recaptured by other ringers.  The redpoll, by now an adult male, was caught again on 25 March 2019 at a garden centre near Kingswinford, West Midlands.  Almost certainly it was migrating north, the likely destination Scotland, our Oakenclough site a stop-over.   

S800767 probably spent the winters of both 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 many miles south of the West Midlands, perhaps near the south coast of England, or in a region of France or Belgium.  

Lesser Redpoll

Lesser Redpoll - Kingswinford to Oakenclough

Because we finished early this morning I took a detour home via Garstang, Cockerham and then Pilling. 

Although pretty bare vegetation wise the now enhanced Condor Green was stuffed full of Oystercatchers and to a lesser extent Redshanks, both looking for territory in which to breed. I counted 58 Oystercatchers, 18 Redshanks and 2 Avocets, many already paired up, and from the Oystercatchers more than a few “piping parties”. 

There have been a number of Avocets passing through here recently but as far as I have seen none yet on territory – not a bad thing for a bird whose eye-catching looks belie an aggressive nature. 

Avocet 

There were still 8 Teal, 2 pairs of Tufted Duck, 3 pairs of Shelduck, 10 Greylag and a pair of Canada Goose. 

At our ringing site for Sand Martins at Cockerham I counted 60+ martins around last year's holes but it is far too early to disturb them; best for now to let the birds settle in and repair/excavate their new homes for 2019.

Sand Martin colony    

At Braides Farm - a lone Wheatear, 40+ Golden Plover in the grassy field and the pair of Pied Wagtails around the buildings where a Starling examined a nesting cavity. 

Wheatear 

Pied Wagtail 

Starling 

At Lane Ends Pilling I noted 4 Little Egret, the resident Little Grebes, a party of 5 Wheatears close together on the marsh. In the trees, song from 2 Chiffchaff and a single Willow Warbler. 

At Damside a pair of Kestrels is in residence, and seen from the gateway, another Wheatear along the fence line that heads to the marsh.

The weather next week suggests more moderate to strong easterlies, not the best wind direction to help returning migrants or one that might help our ringing.  But as ever our focus will be on the weather forecasts to find those windows of opportunity for birds, birders and ringers alike.

Linking this post to World Bird Wednesday and Anni's Texas Birding.

Recent Recoveries

There’s no birding or ringing for a day or two thanks to continuing poor weather so I’m posting information about a couple of recent ringing records. One is a Sand Martin at Cockerham quarry, the other a Linnet from our Linnet project at Gulf Lane, Pilling/Cockerham Marsh. 

Linnet 

We ringed Linnet number S800115 as a juvenile male on 10 August 2017- Biometrics: Wing: 81.0 mm. Weight: 17.8 g. Time: 10:00:00 hrs 

Our Linnet was recaptured on 04 May2018 at Walney Island Bird Observatory, Cumbria. Although the distance between the two points is negligible, the date of both the original ringing and the recapture are much more interesting. The month of August points to a juvenile dispersal, maybe from Cumbria but with a possibility that the bird’s place of birth was further north. The timing of its return on a northward track during May is within the peak of period of Linnet spring migration and when S800115 may have headed back to or near to its place of birth. 

I'm afraid that such recoveries often provide a few answers but inevitably throw up new questions. At least the bird is still in circulation and presents a small chance that should it be captured for a third time, more information on its travels may become known. This latest recovery fits into two previous recoveries and north/south movements to or from Gulf  Lane.

Linnet from Shetland 

Linnet to Lochinver

Linnet to Walney Bird Observatory

Duration: 267 days Distance: 23 km Direction: 300deg (WNW) Finder: Walney Bird Observatory, 9095 

Sand Martin 

On 23rd May 2018 we caught a French ringed Sand Martin at Cockerham Quarry.

Paris ringed Sand Martin

Sand Martin (Riparia riparia) - Ring no: 7193238 Ringing details- Age: 4 (adult) Ringing date: 10 August 2015 Site name: Hiers-Brouage, Charente-Maritime, France Ringer: Paris, -11

Sand Martin

Hiers-Brouage to Cockerham

Ring number 7193238 was recaptured at Cockerham on 23 May 2018. Duration: 1017 days Distance: 910 km Direction: 352deg (N)

Smart Moves

The plan was to meet Andy at the Sand Martin colony at 0630. 

I set off at 0600 as an HGV accident on the M6 near Garstang on Thursday resulted in closure of the motorway overnight, gridlock on the alternative A6 and local congestion on the A588. One accident and the whole of the North West ground to a halt. Luckily, no one was hurt and I heard that one side of the motorway was opened early morning. 

Following our last visit to the colony on 3rd July 2018 I paid a few visits but looked from the road above so as to not directly trouble the nesting birds. The visits were mostly inconclusive but I suspected that after the first broods of June and early July many birds had already left as numbers seemed not to exceed one hundred birds. 

Getting up close this morning showed the numbers present to be about 180 and possibly more as suggested by the catch of 72 Sand Martins. 

Out of that overall total, 52 were new birds and 20 recaptures from this and previous years. The 72 comprised 29 juveniles and 43 adults; it was quite illuminating to find that on this our third visit, we are still catching new adults amongst the expected juveniles. 

Sand Martin 

Sand Martins are members of the swallow tribe, and one of the few British birds that nest in sometimes tight colonies; it’s a type of sociable living afforded to them by their preference for nesting in sandy or gravelly banks. 

But Sand Martins are subject to the whims of nature when they return to a colony each year. The riverine bank or quarry face may erode or disappear completely during the birds’ six-month winter absence. In March and April the early returnees have first choice of existing holes that are in good shape when all they have to do is tidy up last year’s nest and add a few new feathers to protect the eggs from the cold sand and gravel of the tunnel. 

New members of the colony may have to compete to find a suitable excavation, but if they can’t they have to set to and make a home. A Sand Martin has claws adapted for clinging, the beak short, rigid and pointed, the two a useful combination for excavation tasks. They grasp the perpendicular surface of their chosen spot with their claws and steady themselves by means of their tail and then make a small hole with their bills. They gradually enlarge the hole by moving round and round, edging off the sand with the side of their bills. Their progress is slow at first but after they have made room to stand on the excavation they intensify the work and push out the sand and gravel with their feet. Both sexes take their turn at the labour until the hole is three to four inches in diameter and up to three whole feet in depth. 

Sand Martin 

The building work is so expert and practised that the terminal nesting chamber of up to five or six inches is situated above the level of the entrance so that no rain water lodges where the eggs and chicks will be. 

The picture below shows how the holes become worn, damaged and eroded throughout the season but if you look closely (click the pic), there are Sand Martins at hole entrances. 

Sand Martin colony 

Processing 72 birds for age, sex and biometrics kept us rather busy but we managed to see 2 Grey Heron, 6 Linnet, 2 Pied Wagtail and 2 Oystercatcher. 

Pied Wagtail 

Grey Heron 

Take a look soon for more birding, ringing and photos in Another Bird Blog.

Linking today with Anni's Blog  and Eileen's Saturday.

Another Bag Of Smarties

Tuesday morning 0630. I met up with Andy at Cockerham quarry where we hoped to catch up with Sand Martins (Smarties). It had been too long since the last visit but an unavoidable break in our plans - Last time.

On that occasion we caught 63 new Sand Martins, all of them adults, late May being too early for any young martins to be around. We did slightly better this morning by way of 67 Sand Martins, 57 of them new to us plus 8 recaptures from earlier this year and 2 from 2017. 

Of the 57 new, 40 proved to be adults, split 50/50 male/female together with 17 fresh juveniles. The colony seemed to be well on with their second brood, some females in the throes of egg laying. 

Sand Martin - juvenile 

Sand Martin - adult 

We’d finished our work by 9 o'clock so I went up to Glasson and Conder for a quick check. Fresh arrivals at Conder Green were a party of 4 Avocets, more Little Egrets than of late (6) and also 2 Greenshank. There are still 180+ Redshank. The four Avocets spent ten or fifteen minutes making a lot of noise before they flew off west, leaving the summering singleton but territorial Avocet behind. 

Little Egret

A single pair of Common Terns continues to feed young, 2 chicks on the pontoon, one on the island.  

Meanwhile I up at Glasson Dock I found the pair of terns, the ones that bred successfully very close by. 

Common Tern 

Common Tern 

Common Tern 

That all for today folks. Don’t forget,  tomorrow’s post will see a review of Unnatural Selection.

Linking today with World Bird Wednesday. 

Result!

A Linnet 

Readers who follow this blog may have read about the Linnet project at Pilling/Cockerham. Over two winters we have caught and ringed over 500 Linnets hoping to find out more about Linnets that spend the winter on local farmland and coastal marshes of The Fylde of North Lancashire. 

We have suspected that many originate from Scotland with previous evidence of a summer nestling from Shetland recaptured at our one ringing site in winter. Now comes news of another Linnet and its connection to Scotland. 

We ringed Linnet S348682 as a juvenile/first year female on 2 December 2016. In the both the following weeks nor the next winter did we recapture her. Fast forward to 27 April 2018 when S348682 was recaptured by another ringer at Clachtoll, Lochinver, Highland, Scotland, a distance of 496km and an elapsed time of 511 days from the ringing date. By now the ringer had aged and sexed the Linnet as an adult female with the spring date suggestive of a possible breeding locality. 

Linnet - Cockerham to Lochinver

Linnet

Clachtoll is a coastal fishing and crofting village, situated on the Bay of Clachtoll, on the north western edge of Scotland. Almost certainly the Linnet had returned in April 2018 to the actual locality in which it was born or somewhere close.

Results like this motivate us to continue with the Linnet project for 2018/19. Such returns make all those cold morning starts and freezing fingers worthwhile. 

A Sand Martin 

Readers may recall that just last week on 23 May Andy and I suspected we caught a rather old Sand Martin. The martin bore a ring beginning with the letter “D”. So I punched in D350512 into Demography Online and hey presto, a few days later came a result. 

Sand Martin D350512 was ringed as a juvenile at Icklesham, East Sussex on 2 September 2103, four and half years, or to be exact, 1724 days prior to our recapture at the Cockerham nesting colony. Here we were able to sex it as a male. 

Sand Martin  

Sand Martin - Sussex to Lancashire

The comparatively short journey between Sussex and Lancashire is dwarfed by the yearly journeys of Sand Martins. D30512 has already flown several times between Africa and England and vice versa.

I make it ten journeys of about 2,500 miles each time, by road or as the crow flies. You do the maths.

Lancashire to Sahel

Millions of Sand Martins spend the Northern winter in the belt of hot and dry land immediately south of the Sahara known as the Sahel. Here they depend on areas of water in river flood plains and when rainfall is high, more martins survive. But in times of drought the Sand Martin population drops quickly. 

In the late 1960s, numbers in the British Isles fell by around 70% as a result of drought in the Sahel. Recent wetter winters have allowed numbers to recover but the species is very dependent upon climate and its effect, both here and in Africa.

An aside. Are other bloggers having problems with comments not appearing in their designated email accounts? It seems it's a Google problem but I wish they would fix it soon.

So apologies in advance if I am a little tardy with replies. I am having to go into the blog comments via Google + rather than read them in the everyday email account.        

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

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. 

Must Do Better

At the end of December the BTO encourage bird ringers to renew their ringing permit by submitting returns and confirming they are fit to continue ringing for the coming year. Fit in mind and body for now, but it gets more difficult each year, especially those 4am summer starts or scrambling up and down a quarry face to catch Sand Martins. 

So now my permit for 2018 just arrived hot from the Canon Pixma. This rather exclusive piece of paper will reside in the glove box of the car for the inevitable, often puzzled but mostly interested, occasionally irate questions from onlookers. 

Bird Ringing Permit

“Why are you trudging through that muddy field in the middle of a cold, grey January morning picking up wild birds from that funny looking net? Are you harming them? Are you catching them to eat ?” Then try explaining how the vital scientific work is also rewarding enjoyment,  see the look on their face as you show the rings, pliers, scales and other equipment, and then watch their reaction as the tiny Linnet they hadn’t spotted in your hand is released to fly away. 

Yes, each UK bird ringer must have a licence to capture and ring birds. They pay yearly for the privilege of being involved in the national ringing scheme, as well as buying their own equipment and the rings they use; unless of course they are fortunate in having sponsorship or a rich benefactor. A busy day of ringing 100 small birds costs about £25 for the “A” sized rings that passerines take. Donations readily accepted or just send a sort code. I’ll do the rest. 

A check of my personal ringing data on our Fylde Ringing Group database showed I processed 516 birds during 2017. An average of ten a week for a year is pretty pathetic by past performance of almost 25,000 birds since 1985 thanks to last year’s foul weather of summer, autumn, and early winter. But there’s a reasonable mix of species in that 516 and as it’s raining and snowing today, chance to recall a few of the highlights, guess where we went wrong and surmise how to be a ringing superstar in 2018. 

During 2017 Oakenclough near Garstang proved the most productive of sites and where ringing with pal Andy I processed 268 birds. Most encountered species was Goldfinch at 57 and Lesser Redpoll at 47 followed by 22 Redwings ringed during October and early November. 

Redwing

Redpoll

Goldfinch

In amongst the dross of tits and wrens that ringers choose to forget were singles of Sparrowhawk and Redstart; and always welcome, a couple of Tree Pipits, all worthy of bold lettering as is the custom of bird blogs in identifying the more exciting species. 

Tree Pipit

Redstart

Sparrowhawk

For the moment we have given up on Oakenclough, a very finch orientated but also weather dependent site where autumn migration hardly took place when many northern finches chose to fly over Yorkshire, Humberside and SE England on their way to the Continent rather than chance the series of storms that hit the West Coast. With luck there will be a strong movement back north in a few weeks’ time when we can return for Redpolls and maybe even Siskins. 

The weather also limited our visits to the Cockerham Sand Martin colony at the aforesaid quarry. Two visits only during the summer months resulted in my poor number of 33 Sand Martins, just half the full total shared with Andy. Normally we would hope to get in four or maybe five visits to measure breeding success but it wasn’t to be. 

Sand Martin

A few summer visits to Marton Mere realised 28 new birds including a small number of Reed Warblers and a couple of the recent colonist and now proved breeding Cetti’s Warblers. 

Cetti's Warbler

Regular readers will be familiar with, probably even bored by the blog’s continual mention of Project Linnet. Suffice to say that it is a very worthwhile project, so much so that during the year we had guest appearances from other ringers keen to get their hands on Red-listed Linnets. There was the added bonus last year of a single Stonechat to add to the Linnets and a handful of Goldfinches.

Stonechat

Of 70 birds ringed in my garden on lazy days, 51 were Goldfinches and just 3 House Sparrows. There are no prizes for guessing the most common bird in this part of Lancashire and probably the whole of the UK. How times change. 

Goldfinch

Here’s hoping for better ringing weather in 2018.

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

More Smarties

A catch of Sand Martins was the major objective for today. I’d been to the colony in the week and noted lots of martins around with upwards of 450 flying around at any one time. I was due to meet Andy at the quarry at 0630 but first I spent 45 minutes at Conder Green. 

A pair of Oystercatchers had hung around the near island all spring and summer without much luck. They probably lost the first brood of eggs/young to predators but today, quite late in the season, their perseverance paid off when they appeared with a single newly fledged chick of one or two days old. 

Oystercatcher

Two Kingfishers flew past at their usual breakneck speed but within ten minutes or so one of them (or perhaps a third?) appeared on the parapet of the outflow. The Kingfisher spent five minutes doing not a lot before it flew across to the far side of the water and out of sight.

Kingfishers eat their prey whole, which means that there are bits they can't digest, so they regurgitate any left over parts as a pellet. Not the prettiest sight, but an interesting part of their behaviour, partly captured in the pictures below, minus the pellet. 

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

Kingfisher

I counted 5 Common Tern, 4 Little Grebe, 6 Common Sandpiper, 22 Lapwing, 20 Redshank, 15 Oystercatcher, 2 Tufted Duck, 1 Grey Heron, 1 Little Egret and 1 Reed Bunting. 

A few Swifts and hirundines fed over the pool and hedgerow - 14 Sand Martin, 6 Swallow and 8 Swift. 

At the quarry we caught 48 Sand Martins – 12 adults and 36 juveniles out of the approximately 450 martins around. The ratio of 1/3 adults/juveniles suggest a pretty good breeding season so far. A few of the juveniles were very fresh from the nest, others from first broods with less obviously sandy-edged body and flight feathers. 

Sand Martin

I tried to get some photos of the martins on the nearby wires but the morning sun was directly into the camera, so mixed results and far from perfect pictures. 

 Sand Martin

Sand Martin

Sand Martin

Sand Martin

Sand Martin

We stopped off at Gulf Lane and a look in the set-aside field and found 12 Tree Sparrow, 4 Linnet, 1 Reed Bunting, 1 Skylark and 1 Kestrel. 

Kestrel

 

A very productive morning. Birding, ringing and even a few pictures!

Linking today to Anni's Birding and Eileen's Saturday Blog.