Keep It Going

A couple more ringing sessions left the scores ticking up. I missed yesterday’s mass coastal movement of redpolls because I needed a lie in after a run of early mornings, but I promised myself today would be different.

Will stayed at home on Saturday too, but unlike me he managed to ring birds in his garden in between the daily chores i.e. more finches and sparrows: 4 Chaffinch, 4 Goldfinch, 4 House Sparrow, 2 Tree Sparrow and 1 Great Tit plus recaptures of 6 Chaffinch and 4 House Sparrow. Looks like the Chaffinch and House Sparrow forgot there are nets up there sometimes.

Tree Sparrow
House Sparrow

Back on song this morning, Will and I met at Out Rawcliffe at 0600, and how these mornings get earlier and earlier now! Unlike yesterday’s coastal deluge of migrants, mainly redpolls, our inland experience this morning was more of a steady, slow dribble of birds coming from the south to eventually find the nets. We caught another 29 birds, 22 new and 7 retraps: 9 Lesser Redpoll, 5 Goldfinch, 3 Chaffinch, 2 Meadow Pipit, 2 Blue Tit and 1 Willow Warbler. Recaptures: 3 Chaffinch and 1 each of Goldfinch, Willow Warbler, Dunnock and Blue Tit. That’s three Blue Tits in one day and most unlike this site; so unusual in fact that I took a photograph.

Blue Tit
Chaffinch

Today’s Willow Warbler recapture AVC117 was previously caught here in 2008 and 2009, but not in 2010, suggesting that it may breed just off site, maybe in the next wood a hundred yards away, or perhaps further afield visiting our netting area periodically.

Willow Warbler
Willow Warbler
Lesser Redpoll

Apart from the steady trickle of 45+ Lesser Redpolls throughout the morning, our counts of other passerine birds were low with perhaps Linnet in second place with a minimum 25 and Meadow Pipit third with less than 20. Our tally of Swallows today was 4 migrants plus 2 birds on wires down at the farm. Otherwise, 4 Kestrel, 6 Buzzard and 1 Sparrowhawk represented the raptors whilst a count of 265 Curlew on nearby fields was a good number for April. Still no Whimbrel to report.

Kestrel
Swallow

I just took a look at the weather for the next week. It suggests a bit of a mixed bag, often the best sort of weather for depositing migrants, so a chance to keep the ringing totals ticking over, the observations up to date and more early starts.

Wind In The Willows

Will and I met at 0630 at Out Rawcliffe for yet another ringing session. It was a clear and cold morning, with at first a very light north westerly air flow.

We caught a reasonable total of 29 birds, but unlike recent ringing sessions, in addition to the 19 new birds we had more than our normal recapture rate with 9 new and 1 “control” bird. The 19 new birds: 10 Goldfinch, 7 Meadow Pipit, 1 Lesser Redpoll and 1 Linnet, a fine male. The 9 recaptures: 6 Goldfinch, 1 Chaffinch, 1 Willow Warbler and 1 Great Tit.

The control bird was a Great Tit with number TP78956, not ours; this bird bore a “B” ring, and as a second year bird was ringed elsewhere last year, but as a Great Tit is unlikely to have travelled far.

The morning was dominated by 2 species, Meadow Pipit and Goldfinch. Meadow Pipits arrived in a short rush soon after dawn, with approximately 110/130 arriving from the south east before quickly moving off north and west into the wind: we intercepted just the seven individuals above with at least another seven making the customary Houdini escape from mist nets before we could get hands on them. In addition to the 10 new Goldfinch, today’s 6 recaptures were all caught here last summer, but one of them ringed in 2008 then recaptured again in 2010; Thus our Goldfinch seem to display good site fidelity.

The male Willow Warbler we caught had lots of “previous”, with a site history going back to 2008 when first ringed as an adult in July 2008, then 3 recaptures in 2009 and 4 recaptures in 2010. That’s several journeys to Africa and back with quite amazing site fidelity for such a tiny waif.

The wind direction was not the best for visible migration today, and the clear skies meant little in the way of grounded birds. Best “others” were 5 Swallow, 3 Sand Martin, 2 Lesser Redpoll and the normal 4+ Buzzards, taking to the air in the warming sun soon after 10am.

It was soon after 10am that the increasing wind began to blow increasingly through the alder and willow plantation, forcing us to take down nets for a later day, hopefully soon.

Linnet
Linnet
Willow Warbler
Goldfinch

And There’s More

It was too windy for mist-netting again today, but warm enough for a Pilling walk looking for Wheatears.

It’s natural for non-birders to think that the Wheatears at Pilling are the same ones day after day, but new ones arrive fresh in from the south most days now on their way to Scotland and the Pennine uplands. I watched several of them this afternoon make their way from the sea wall and out onto the marsh, feeding as they went but all the time creeping further north and west, no doubt to head off again tonight on the next leg of their journey.

I also caught another two of today’s gang, a male and a female, both of the nominate race oenanthe with wing lengths of 99mm the male and 95mm the female. The second calendar year/juvenile male posed for a photograph but the female didn’t want to. It’s too early in the month to catch any of the Greenland race leucorhoa, but I hope to start catching them from mid-April onwards when wing measurements of 101mm upwards for males and 99mm and above for females indicate birds with much further to travel, Iceland or maybe Greenland itself.

Wheatear – male, second calendar year
Wheatear – male, second calendar year
Wheatear – male, second calendar year
I was talking to a birder yesterday who had yet to see a Wheatear this year. Don't worry there's lots more to come!

Wheatear

When I started out at Lane Ends round about lunchtime there were a couple of unexpected corvid sightings; firstly a group of 5 noisy Ravens flying out on the marsh but heading west, and then in the plantation, an unseasonal Jay squawking through the trees.

Jay

Whilst the Wheatears head quickly north the Pink-footed Geese don’t seem in any hurry to get to Iceland and I logged 1200 of them out on the marsh. The numbers of Redshank continued building today with a count of 270, and they too will head off to Iceland pretty soon. Otherwise counts were much like most of this week with 2 Linnet, 6 Teal, 4 Meadow Pipit, 6 Swallow, 2 Sand Martin, 2 Little Egret and 9 Wheatears.

At home I turned my attention to getting a few pictures of Greenfinches, a species that is also a spring migrants and nesting in the garden once again.

Greenfinch

What a great weather forecast for the next few days, it’s sure to bring more migrant birds. I can’t wait.

More Spring

It was another cool and breezy morning but I went to Pilling armed with spring traps and mealworms. There was a little gang of 7 Wheatears this morning, more or less together in the usual spots, so I set about trying to catch a few. Just like Saturday, I caught two birds, but this time a male and a female, both juvenile, second calendar year birds.

Wheatear – male, second calendar year
Wheatear – female, second calendar year
Wheatear – female, second calendar year

I didn’t see much else along the sea wall, just the expected handful of Linnets, 2 Little Egret, 2 Kestrel, 55 Redshank and at Lane Ends itself, 3 Willow Warbler plus pairs of Tufted Duck and Little Grebe.

I left Pilling and made my way to Out Rawcliffe to perform a quick top up of the bird feeders. When the winds subside Will and I hope to get out ringing and catch up with more Lesser Redpolls, so we decided to maintain the nyger feeders a little longer for both Redpoll and Goldfinch still coming through the site. I topped up the feeders that swayed from branches in the stiff breeze whilst counting 10 Goldfinch, 4 Lesser Redpoll and a couple of ground feeding Chaffinch. In the plantation were at least 5 singing Willow Warblers and a single Chiffchaff, and as I drove off site, 3 Buzzards and the Little Owl sheltering from the threatening showers and the ever present wind of recent days.

Lesser Redpoll
Little Owl

Back at home the sun broke through, the wind dropped and the recently arrived House Martins circled above. I first saw them two days ago surveying their annual nest site at the big house on the corner- April 4th was a good early sighting for me, just a day behind Swallow on 3rd April.

House Martin

Who’s A Twitcher?

Throughout the winter I read Internet blogs and bird watching sites where the whole of the UK seemed to be Waxwing paradise. Too busy with other things, too tight to spend my meagre income on petrol money, or some might say holding vainglorious thoughts of moral superiority, I resisted the temptation to dash off and see the hordes of bohemian wanderers.

Bohemian Waxwing

Finally my wait was over, patience rewarded when 15 turned up in Hambleton village on April 2nd, a couple of miles away from home alongside a route I travel almost daily. “Definitely not twitching then” I reasoned, exempting myself with the excuse that I had spent the afternoon catching Wheatears on a local patch. The car found its own way to Hambleton, “Waxwing and Wheatear, a good April double” I fantasised.

It was late in the sunny day as the Waxwings sat in tall trees alongside the busy road, intermittently launching themselves into a dark garden on the opposite side of the road, where a single Cotoneaster sat close to the front door of the property. It was the same species of Cotoneaster I planted in profusion in my garden 10 years ago, the trees the Blackbirds strip bare by September, leaving no berries for Waxwings. But in Hambleton in the shady seclusion of someone else’s front garden, their Cotoneaster had lots of still red, edible berries.

Bohemian Waxwing
Bohemian Waxwing
Bohemian Waxwing
Bohemian Waxwing

The evening was clear; I think the Waxwings continued north that night as I readied my ringing gear for another early start.

Hawks At A Distance

Princeton University Press kindly sent a copy of Hawks At A Distance for review by Another Bird Blog, knowing that despite the UK based nature of the blog, it has followers in the North American continent.

Hawks At A Distance is a field guide for the North American bird watching fraternity, a book compiled by one Jerry Liguori, a birder and premier division hawk watcher with many years of raptor experience. Since 1984 he has conducted spring and autumn raptor migration counts at watch points such as Cape May, Sandy Hook, Derby Hill, Braddock Bay, Whitefish Point, Dinosaur Ridge, and many others. Needless to say, this superficially modest list conceals the many, many hours of sitting and studying, squinting and staring through binoculars, telescopes and cameras, a labour of love that gave birth to this, his latest book of excellence.

Hawks At A Distance

For me and many others, identifying raptors in flight is the birding challenge, especially hawks and eagles that fly at great heights. Migratory ones are even more difficult to identify as the average birder rarely gets the opportunity to study them closely or for long enough to learn their characteristics. So a concise and portable field guide that makes this identification process easier is to be welcomed as a timely addition to any bird library.

This slim guide manages to illustrate 29 species in a variety of lighting situations and settings, contains 558 colour photographs and 896 black & white images showing distant raptors at different angles of flight with all of the subtle variations of age and sex. A really useful section entitled “Shapes” at the end of the book displays the silhouettes formed by the different species of raptors from a variety of angles and at different heights.

Shapes

From my UK perspective I was particularly interested in the species which in one case cross UK and US Atlantic boundaries – Northern Harrier, then others which occur on both sides of the pond in much the same form – Northern Goshawk, Rough-legged Buzzard/Hawk, Gyr Falcon, Peregrine and Merlin. Interesting and informative then that Liguori’ s photos and narrative both show and tell us how to distinguish the three races of Merlin that occur in North America, Taiga Merlin i.e. our UK columbarius, Prairie Merlin, richardsonnii, and Black Merlin, suckleyi.

Northern Harrier

I found 42 photographs (in addition to the single beautiful photo that precedes the section) devoted to Rough-legged Buzzard/Hawk alone, that problematic bird of Birdguides and Rare Bird Alert notoriety. If only the 42 photos of the changeable hawk could be included into a new European guide, where the same pictures would surely feature next to a set of photos showing the various guises of Common Buzzard. Perhaps herein lies your next book Mr Liguori?

Rough-legged Hawk/Buzzard – Buteo lagopus

If I have one reservation about this guide it is that most if not all of the photographs used have been taken in good light and against a blue sky. This may be the norm for raptor watching in North America or even parts of the Mediterranean, but in practice in the UK at least, much raptor watching is against an overcast, grey sky. Notwithstanding this purely personal quibble I heartily recommend this book to North American raptor enthusiasts, but also to anyone with a general interest in raptors, but especially for birders planning a birding trip to North America where it will sit happily in a pocket or rucksack next to a less specific field guide.

Having praised the book I also add the caveat that it is a book very much for a niche market, for the person who is happy to sit at a watch point aiming to identify hawks from a distance, in flight, with binoculars and/or a telescope. Anyone not falling into that category will have limited use for this book and may well prefer a generalist but ultimately less detailed field guide.

Hawks At A Distance is available from Princeton University Press at $19.95 in the US or £13.95 in the UK, see here

Caught In A Weather Window

The promised window of weather this morning allowed Will and I a trip to Out Rawcliffe for the usual 0630 start. The BBC forecast was fairly accurate with the less than 10mph breeze that let us put a few nets up with distant rain showers passing over the flat Fylde several miles to the west. We caught reasonably well but maybe the rain to the south and west kept migrants down: if nothing else ringers can always come up with theories as to why a catch of birds is less than desired but actually perfectly typical of the prevailing conditions, be it the weather or the birds of the day.

Our total: 17 new birds with 2 recaptures. New birds: 10 Meadow Pipit, 2 Lesser Redpoll, 2 Linnet, 1 Goldfinch, 1 Chiffchaff and 1 Willow Warbler.

Linnet
Linnet
Willow Warbler

Our two recaptures were a Willow Warbler first ringed on 3rd August 2010 and a Goldfinch first ringed 22nd May 2010, neither of them caught again until today.

There was just a small movement of Meadow Pipits this morning, with perhaps 80-100 birds heading north throughout our 4 hour session: now into April the numbers left to head north will diminish greatly. Other than Meadow Pipits, visible migration was negligible with 10-12 chattering Redpoll, the most noticeable species again.

We captured a large and pale Meadow Pipit this morning, insipid and almost whitish underneath with a greyer head than normal and also cold greyer tones to the upperparts. Although the weight was normal at 16.9 grams the wing length was quite striking at 88mm. Whilst the bird was still of the nominate race pratensis, we thought it likely to be of more Northern European and possibly Scandinavian origin than any of the other 50 Meadow Pipits we have handled this year.

Meadow Pipit
Meadow Pipit

Other birds this morning, 4 Buzzard, 1 Swallow, 2 Sand Martin, 1 Sparrowhawk and 3 Black-tailed Godwits heading north.