It's Those Finches Again

I looked at some of the recent migration counts of Chaffinch and Brambling from Falsterbo Bird Observatory, Sweden, where to simplify the vast counts of two species that often travel together, the totals are lumped together -19th September 20,000 Chaffinch/Brambling, 20th September 24,000, 21st September 25,000, a count of 52,000 on 22nd September, and a huge 85,000 today. In recent days local observers and vis mig enthusiasts closer to home in both the Pennines and the Lancaster area have also picked up on the fact that Chaffinches are moving both on an earlier date but also in large numbers for the time of year, something first noted on Another Bird Blog on September 8th.

With for instance over 11 million pairs of Chaffinch in Sweden, and up to 20 million pairs in Finland we can be pretty sure that some of the Chaffinch we have caught in recent weeks are part of the huge movement of Chaffinches through Falsterbo. But it is only in the deeper months of the year, particularly during cold weather on the continent, that we tend to catch the longer winged birds of central and Eastern Europe that are more certainly separable from the current normal sized birds. In fact this autumn we have yet to catch a Chaffinch with a wing length bigger than 90mm and it is a little early for us to catch a Brambling, a species which gradually replaces Chaffinch in the northern parts of their combined range.

Brambling

Will and I hoped to explore this phenomenon a little more today so we arrived at Rawcliffe Moss in time to alter our net configuration with the intention of catching even more migrating Chaffinch. It’s important to say that our ringing site isn’t a baited feeding site, just a 7 or 8 year old plantation set alongside a track across the moss. We took a chance on the marginal weather forecast, and it wasn’t the best morning for diurnal migration with too much heavy cloud, spits of rain and a threat of heavy showers, but we set to with 4 x 18metre nets. Unfortunately we were rained off at 0930 by a heavy shower and black clouds but not before we managed to catch 29 new birds and once again, no retraps.

Our total, 18 Chaffinch, 6 males and 12 females, 4 Meadow Pipit, 3 Reed Bunting, 1 Blue Tit, 1 Wren and 4 Coal Tit. That is our first significant catch of Coal Tits this autumn and it will be interesting to see the numbers we catch in the next month or two of this irruptive species.

Chaffinch
Chaffinch – Adult female
Chaffinch – Adult Tail
Coal Tit
Meadow Pipit
Meadow Pipit
Meadow Pipit

The birding was fairly slow this morning, again a result of the less than ideal conditions. Two Tawny Owls calling from the nearby woods vied with calling Grey Partridges to be first in our notebooks, while both female and a male Sparrowhawks hunted through the plantation but failed to find our nets.

Visible migration of our target species Chaffinch and Meadow Pipit was difficult to estimate with birds seemingly adapting to the rapidly shifting cloud and rain formations as they arrived and left to all directions, but we counted approximately 150 Chaffinch and 80 Meadow Pipits. Other “vis mig” came in the form of 275 Swallow, 25 House Martin, 3 Grey Wagtail, 4 alba wagtail, 4 Siskin, 1 Redpoll, 20 Snipe, 60 Golden Plover and 40 Skylark, but 60 Goldfinch, 15 Linnet and 3 Jays were local birds of the immediate area.

Grey Wagtail
Siskin

A Corker

My prediction of yesterday that today’s planned ringing might see a recurrence of Chaffinches and Meadow Pipits turned out to be fairly accurate. But I didn’t quite envisage what a true corker of a morning it would turn into with both an excellent, busy ringing session but also a good birding morning packed with variety and interest.

Our first birds of the morning turned out to be owls, with Will hearing the resident Tawny Owl at first light and myself seeing a Little Owl fly from a roadside fence as I approached the Out Rawcliffe farm.

We set our usual quota of nets with the first round timed at 0715 and the last midday. That’s an awful lot of walking when each tour of the nets probably equates to about a half mile trek through rough, long grass. And to think I postponed a gentle swim this morning in favour of a ringing session!

We caught 84 birds, 83 new and 1 recapture as follows; 60 Chaffinch, 14 Meadow Pipit, 2 Goldfinch - both juveniles, 2 Robin, 1 Treecreeper, 1 Dunnock, 1 Jay, 1 Reed Bunting and 1 Blue Tit. The recapture was a Dunnock. The Jay, although a bonny bird, turned out to be an argumentative sort, worth donning a set of gloves to avoid a painful nip or two.

Reed Bunting
Goldfinch - Juvenile
Jay
Jay

We pushed our total of Chaffinch ringed here in the last 30 day period to 151 individuals, without a single recapture. Clearly, large numbers of Chaffinch have passed this way recently with the autumn migration starting a little early but yet to peak in mid to late October. Their migration became particularly obvious this morning when we estimated the visible passage as about 90 to 100 birds per hour = approximately 600 birds, with the proportion of those birds caught by us at about 10% of all those visibly heading south in small groups. Of the 60 birds caught 51 were juvenile birds of the year, 13 males and 38 females with the 9 remaining adults split 6/3 in favour of males.

Interestingly the Latin or scientific name for Chaffinch is Fringilla coelebs, which means “bachelor finch”. It received this name about the year 1750 from Linnaeus, the Swedish zoologist who saw that autumn flocks of Chaffinches were often composed of either males or females but that as the winter progressed the small numbers of Chaffinches that remained during the Swedish winter were male birds.

Adult Male Chaffinch

After ringing many thousands of Chaffinch over several years we find that ageing them is reasonably easy by a combination of general features, tail shape and the colour of tertial feathers. A glance at the tertial feathers will show whether they are markedly edged bright chestnut in an adult or display more diffuse and paler, even straw or yellowish edges in a younger bird. Females are less obvious than the male shown below, with a duller chestnut colour but the principle still applies. In the picture below the male Chaffinch has both types of tertials and in the second picture below, the tail of a young bird of this year shows how juvenile feathers can wear by September.

Tertial Feathers - Chaffinch
Tail Feathers, September - Juvenile Chaffinch

Other migration and bird movements were very noticeable this morning with approximately 150 Meadow Pipit heading into the warm southerly wind, 3 Grey Wagtail, 10 “alba” wagtails, 1 Siskin, 5 Corn Bunting, 60+ Goldfinch, 15 Linnet and 45 Skylark. Waders noted were 26 Snipe and 3 Curlew with a single Grey Heron. By 1130 am the continuous movement of Swallows, House Martins and Sand Martins from dawn had built to such an extent that approximately 2000 hirundines, mainly Swallows fed low over the immediate fields and many were still in the area when we left at 1230.

Raptors put in appearances in the form of 1 Sparrowhawk, 3 Buzzard, 2 Kestrel and 1 large Peregrine almost overhead that later came back over us again before diving in pursuit of something behind the birch wood, and whilst I had the wrong lens on for a decent picture, we got some corking views of it.

Peregrine

Bits ’N Pieces

I just sneaked an hour or two this morning for a quick visit to Pilling. In the short time available I had a reasonable selection of birds with some evidence of passerine migration, and at long last a decent coastal movement of Meadow Pipits. I started with 2 Kestrels perched together on a roadside telegraph pole near Fluke Hall, where I saw them recently doing just the same thing, so I think they are siblings of a late brood as they sit within inches of each other. Here at the gateway to the wildfowler’s fields I found a small group of 8 Skylarks and 2 Meadow Pipits. Swallows are disappearing fast now but there were a dozen or so here, but up at Lane Ends I noticed a genuine movement of more than 40 Swallows heading determinedly west into the warm but stiff breeze. I checked the pools for phalaropes but all I found was a pair of Tufted Duck and a Little Grebe.

Tufted Duck

I walked from Lane Ends towards Pilling Water where more Meadow Pipits were obvious with a couple of dozen both behind the sea wall and along the sandy shore. In addition others were arriving from a northerly direction and Heysham as yet others followed the wall from the Cockerham route. In all I counted about 120 individuals, with 8 or 9 Skylarks and a couple of “albas”. In addition I reckoned there were 7 Wheatears, one or two hanging about in the obvious spots, and all I had to do was sit down and wait for one to stand on a favoured stone for a while; but generally all the small birds were very mobile this morning with a definite autumn buzz about proceedings. There were a good number of Pink-footed Geese flighting on and off the marsh, and whilst I didn’t have the numbers of the weekend I still counted 600 birds.

Pink-footed Goose
Wheatear
Meadow Pipit

Out on the marsh a Peregrine beat up the flock 400 Teal several times over, but while I was there failed to catch one and didn’t transfer its attention to trying to seize something different. They do say Teal is one of the better wildfowl to eat and whilst it’s not on my eating list, maybe the Peregrine knows a thing or two about the best species of duck to eat. As I crossed the stile I disturbed 2 Spotted Redshank from the pool that I didn’t locate on my initial but brief scan of the water, whereupon they flew along the outflow and joined up with 30 or so common Redshank.

6 Little Egrets and 2 Snipe completed the picture, but my little outing ended too soon. The wind has dropped so it looks like a ringing session is on for tomorrow; with luck there will be more pipits and a continuation of the Chaffinch theme.

Snipe

It’s A Hard Life

Will and I met at Our Rawcliffe for our first ringing session since September 8th. The intervening period had seen poor weather synopses with periods of rain and wind, the twin enemies that frustrated our eagerness to continue the good results we obtained through the summer and early autumn. It was a hesitant start at 0630 under threatening rain clouds, but both the weather and our mood improved enough to say that by 1100 when we packed up, we had enjoyed a brilliant morning full of birds.

In total we caught 51 birds of 8 species, 48 new birds, 2 recaptures and 1 bird previously ringed elsewhere, a “control” in ringer’s terminology.

New birds: 21 Chaffinch, 18 Meadow Pipit, 4 Long-tailed Tit, 1 Goldfinch, 1 Chiffchaff, 1 Robin, 1 Lesser Whitethroat and 1 Dunnock. We recaptured a Chiffchaff and a Dunnock from previous visits, and the control bird was a Long-tailed Tit; Ring number 6O9704 anyone?

Meadow Pipit
Meadow Pipit
Lesser Whitethroat
Dunnock
Chiffchaff

Capturing a number of Meadow Pipits for the first time since last autumn allowed us to “get our eye in” again with separating adult and juvenile autumn Meadow Pipits. In general adults have all tertials, greater coverts and median coverts of the same age with the pattern of the greater and median coverts having a rather evenly broad olive-toned buff tip with only a slight “tooth” and well defined and indented buff margin to the greater coverts. In contrast, first year birds have a pronounced “tooth” on the median coverts and rather pale buff tips to these, and the outer webs of the greater coverts are edged paler and more whitish. So in general the wing of an adult appears darker and more evenly olive toned whereas a juvenile wing looks more variable by virtue of most of its buff and pale tipped coverts or the contrast between its juvenile coverts and any newer, replaced “adult” type coverts. What we also have to bear in mind when ageing Meadow Pipits is that early broods may have been out of the nest from mid or late May, four months ago, whereas birds from later in the season may have plumage characteristics dating from several weeks ago only.

Meadow Pipit - Adult
Meadow Pipit - Juvenile

After a series of mornings in August and early September whereby we reported little or no visible migration, in contrast the difference today was quite striking, perhaps helped by the very light south easterly wind that blew from 0630 until about 10am when it swung round to the predicted north westerly direction. There were noticeable, mainly south or south westerly movements of 200+ Meadow Pipit, 250 Swallow, 20 House Martin and 50+ Skylarks which arrived from a true north or even north easterly direction

Other birds seen this morning included 190 Pink-footed Goose over in various directions, Sparrowhawk, Kestrel, several Goldfinch, 1 Jay and 1 Grey Wagtail. As on the last few occasions, the movement of Chaffinch was not especially marked or obvious, but as we caught 21 we can only assume this was small percentage of those moving through the site for the four hours we remained there.

We were so busy with ringing, listening and watching that we barely had time to sit down, have a coffee or eat our second breakfasts whilst our luxurious chairs remained mostly redundant this morning. It’s a hard life being a birder.

Redundant

Iceland Delivers

The weather of the past week or so brought in a wind-blown juvenile Red-necked Phalarope to Lytham St Annes today, which wasn’t a complete surprise or without precedent, although it’s a good few years that I saw both a Grey Phalarope and a Red-necked Phalarope together on Fairhaven Lake in similar circumstances. Wherever I went today I looked in suitable locations for a phalarope but didn’t find another, especially a Red-necked Phalarope in breeding plumage.

Red-necked Phalarope

When I got to Lane Ends I was surprised by the overnight arrival of huge numbers of Pink-footed Geese. So ringers weren’t the only ones waiting for the winds to subside, and as the low pressure moved across to Scandinavia it allowed the geese a nice window of opportunity to head south from Iceland. Initially I counted what I thought to be about 700 birds out on the marsh, and then two microlight aircraft came by, one seemingly buzzing the geese and panicking them into the air twice, as the other craft landed heavily out on the sands. The only beneficiary of this was me being able to get a more accurate count of 1200 birds, a large increase on the parties of 8 and 40 I had seen earlier in the week.

Pink-footed Geese
Bird Scarer

The goose frighteners also put to flight 9 Little Egrets that had been feeding in the ditches and out towards the tideline; in addition they alarmed 3 similarly hidden Greenshank that then flew off to find somewhere quieter. The disturbance also caused a couple of parties of Teal to fly back towards the wildfowler’s pools, just 30 in total.

Teal

I turned my attention to passerine hunting, but could find low numbers only, less than 10 each of Linnet, Goldfinch and 2 Skylark, with 12 Meadow Pipit, the latter species yet to appear in anything like the numbers it should by mid-September. There were 6 Wheatears about so I tried my luck, weighing up where the birds fed and how they might react to my movements and the traps themselves. I had one success, an adult female, but had my second trap not broke a vital part at a crucial time I would almost certainly have bagged another as when I approached the trap, two other Wheatears were closely watching the already caught bird.

The bird turned out to have a wing length of 96mm, just outside the range of any “Greenland” types and was almost certainly of Icelandic origin, given the time of year and the incidence of geese and phalaropes.

Wheatear - Adult Female
Wheatear - Adult Female

There was nothing much else about so I wound my way to Cockersands and a check on the set aside with a view to ringing some finches soon. Zero, not a bird, such is the life of a ringer, but checking what birds are up to is the name of the game. I did see the local Kestrel, maybe that explains it. On my way back I found a single Ruff on a private field, and on a private pool of its own so left it in peace.

Year Ticking

I got out early to try and catch up with Leach’s Petrels at Knott End where the early morning dropping tide might harbour a few stragglers coming out of the bay after the overnight storm.

The light was poor and the rain threatened but I got a Leach’s for my non-existent year list as one followed the tideline towards the jetty then crossed the river to Fleetwood. I got a second year tick in the form of a Bonxie, a Great Skua, that steamed across the water much faster than the petrel did, but luckily the petrel journeyed a few minutes before the Bonxie, otherwise there may have been a meal in the offing for the bigger bird. It seems that the word Bonxie comes from the Norse Bunksi, meaning an untidy old woman. I found this great web site for fans of this super aggressive animal.

Great Skua - Bonxie

With the atrocious forecast of more wind and rain that looked every bit like coming to a wild and wet fruition, I decided that it is possible to have too much of a good thing but also that discretion was the better part of valour, so headed north to spend some time at Leighton before my appointment in Kendal. What’s more there was a chance for my incredible third year tick in the shape of Black Tern as three juvenile birds had been there yesterday. Leighton Moss looked bleak as the rain, the wind and dark clouds hurled in from the west without any respite. I set my camera to ISO800 and it stayed there until I left about 2pm.

Black Tern

I had time to walk the public footpath of the causeway where 3 Black Terns moved between the areas of open water but they didn’t come close and often disappeared from view at the far end of the reserve or melted into the grey of continuous heavy showers. As the showers came and went the hirundines did the same with at one point hundreds of House Martins, hundreds of Sand Martins and dozens of Swallows feeding over the open water. Roosting on the reserve were hundreds of Redshank, dozens of Black-tailed Godwit and at least 10 Greenshank, but impossible to count with much certainty as they were distant, bunched tight and huddled down against the wind and driving rain.

I also got a few photographs of common or garden stuff but it wasn’t the best morning for a camera.

Shoveler
Cormorant
Snipe
Snipe
Red Deer

That’s enough year ticks for a year, next I need to do some serious birding and ringing.

Whistle In The Wind

I was thankful to get out at all after a poor weekend’s weather, a lost day yesterday then more wind and rain before lunch today. There were Leach’s Petrel off the coast today, at Cleveleys and Cockersands, but I didn’t see any from Pilling where the tide was too low, the edge of the tide beyond the green marsh. I did see a few bits and pieces even though I read the tide table wrong and arrived at Pilling far too early. It wasn’t a problem when the sun came out for a while and although it was very windy, I was reasonably comfortable tucked down a hollow in the sea wall. Much better anyway than standing in a raging wind at Starr Gate or Cleveleys looking for petrels and having grockles say “ Are there many ships today?”

Leach’s Petrel

I wasn’t totally surprised when 8 Pink-footed Geese appeared from the north, flying quickly south over the wall and inland, bang on cue as harbingers of winter I suppose on September 14th. I was making a count of the Curlew when a single Whimbrel appeared, whistling as it flew overhead in the same direction as the pinkies. The Whimbrel often known as the “Seven Whistler”, is often associated with a Celtic superstition of the 'seven-whistlers', supposedly a group of six birds looking for a seventh - hearing the call augured death or other disaster. I hope it was just a coincidence that soon after the bright yellow Air Ambulance helicopter flew across the bay towards Cockersands.

Whimbrel

The Curlew numbered their usual 700+ and Lapwing 130, but the smaller waders were too far out, keeping low in the wind and hidden by the green marsh. I did note 2 fairly close Greenshank, 2 Snipe and a single overflying Golden Plover. The wildfowl were more easily counted, with 4 Wigeon, 2 Greylag, 45 Pintail, 180 Shelduck, 3 Great-crested Grebe and 500+ Teal, some of which made their way to the wildfowler’s pools for an easy meal. The Kingfisher appeared from behind me once more, then shot out along the channel towards the tide, and I didn’t see it again, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t cross the bay to distant Heysham.

Teal

There were a few Linnets about today, less than 10 but I did note 8 new in Wheatears, and as is often the case with Wheatears, they arrive in windy conditions from the west or North West sector.

Wheatear

It looks to be more wind tomorrow with Leach’s on the cards and maybe a few North American passerines in Scilly and Ireland. In fact if Ireland didn’t get in our way, they might well landfall at Lane Ends.

Wednesday’s Chart