Gaffe Time

Every picture tells a story. In this case it’s how I made the wrong decision to head out to the moss and put up a couple of nets. I had just caught a couple of Chaffinches when the heavens opened, not the scattered showers that Heather promised on BBC North West, but instead a couple of downpours which saturated both the nets and me. So I took the nets down, dried off a lot with the car heater and then drove out to Pilling for a spot of birding.

Rain On the Moss

A drive down Lambs Lane is rewarded by noise and spectacle of over 200 Whooper Swans at the junction of Fluke Hall Lane, 210 today plus the Black Swan from last winter. I don’t think the black one went back to Iceland with the Whoopers, but I haven’t seen it around during the summer and autumn until now. If the swans are spectacular then the Pink-footed Geese are doubly so at the moment with many birds out on the marsh; my count of 12000+ distant birds can be an approximation only, and my photograph a telephoto portion of the massed flight when a microlight aircraft came by.

Whooper Swan
Pink-footed Goose

At Lane Ends car park, Blackbirds were mobbing a Tawny Owl, while on the marsh a Merlin moved along the line of posts and then took a fly around to flush all the Lapwings, over 2000 of them. One of the best ways to find raptors is to watch corvids or just listen out for to their complaints when they come across a bird of prey. On my walk up to Pilling Water crows put me onto three raptors today, a Buzzard, a Sparrowhawk and then a Short-eared Owl. Apologies for the well cropped shots, as all the action was distant, but it illustrates the point.

Short-eared Owl
Sparrowhawk
Buzzard

Not many passerines about today, 5 Meadow Pipit, 3 Linnet, 15 Skylark and 2 Goldfinch. Herons obliged with 1 Grey Heron and 5 Little Egret while 250+ Woodpigeons are fattening up on Hi- Fly’s wildfowl bait.

Back at the car park a man with a telescope kindly pointed out the Merlin hovering over the embankment, whilst out on the marsh I watched a dashing little raptor that could only be a Kestrel.

Kestrel

Sunday Times

The end of British Summer Time and reversing the clocks on Saturday night meant meeting Will at 6am Sunday on Rawcliffe Moss, and not “an extra hour in bed”. Birds don’t stick to human timetables and we still needed to get the nets up in the dark. Nets were set before 0630 by which time we had either seen or heard at least 4 Tawny Owls, but no Barn Owl today.

Our varied catch was similar to recent times, with several thrushes at first light followed by a selection of finches interspersed with Reed Buntings until we packed up at 11am. We totalled 38 birds, 32 new and 6 recaptures. New: 12 Chaffinch, 11 Goldfinch, 4 Reed Bunting, 2 Fieldfare, 2 Blackbird and 1 Song Thrush. Recaptures meant 3 Goldfinch from recent days, 1 Robin and 2 resident Dunnocks; both were in the net together today and were first ringed in 2009, recaptured in 2010 and also earlier in 2011.

The adult Robin L141888 was ringed here in the autumn of 2010, but interestingly and despite many visits through spring summer and autumn since then we have no record of it in between times.

Fieldfare
Robin
Reed Bunting
Chaffinch

Thrush migration was almost non-existent this morning with just 20 Fieldfares and 10 Redwings heading south before 9am and then none, although we did see 6 Song Thrush in ones and twos, then later a party of 4 Mistle Thrush.

Chaffinches appeared somewhat down in number, but taking into account the twelve caught, the 100+ which headed noticeably south east throughout our 5 hours may be an undercount. Our Lesser Redpoll and Siskin count came to 18 and 2 respectively, with 10+ Reed Buntings throughout the morning.

Other birds seen: 15 Whooper Swan, 2 Buzzard, 9 Snipe, 6 Corn Bunting, 2 Yellowhammer, 1 Peregrine.

There were huge numbers of Pink-footed Geese flighting inland today, Sunday being a traditional day for the Over Wyre sportsmen, out in force on the coastal marshes and fields. To the nearest thousand we estimated at least 5000 birds heading south and east looking for fields to drop on out of harm’s way.

Pink-footed Goose

Early Owl But No Lottis

Out Rawcliffe 0645 - as usual Will and I had set nets before first light to await the thrushes, but we soon found something other than early Redwings.

The Tawny Owls have been calling to each other for a week or two, usually further away from our nets, but one got a surprise this morning when in the almost total darkness the bird’s flight path was interrupted by a 60ft net. There is an overlap of Tawny Owl measurements, and although from its plumage characteristics we could tell it was an adult, the weight and wing length meant it could be a male or a female. Whichever sex the bird was it proved pretty feisty with the talons, so we took a leg out of the bird bag for ringing before looking more closely at the bird itself.

Tawny Owl
Tawny Owl

We had a quite productive morning of ringing with 29 birds caught, 28 new and one recapture, a recent Goldfinch. New birds: 10 Chaffinch, 5 Reed Bunting, 4 Redwing, 4 Lesser Redpoll, 2 Goldfinch and one each of Tawny Owl, Dunnock and Great Tit.

Redwing

The early thrush movement was probably the quietest of the autumn so far, with seemingly no more than 50 Redwing, 12 Fieldfare, 5 Song Thrush and a couple only of Blackbirds on the move soon after dawn, then virtually none during the remainder of the morning. The Chaffinch passage was similarly down with our estimate of c80 only during four hours. The trapped Chaffinches included a couple of larger males, perhaps a sign that more northerly individuals are beginning to spread from the south and east of the UK.

We noted an increase in both Siskins and Lesser Redpolls this morning, with small parties and numerous calls of both species, at times intermixed or accompanying Goldfinches. Our estimate came to 40 Siskin and 35 Lesser Redpoll, but the Lesser Redpolls are more easily caught than the Siskins. We added 5 more Reed Buntings to our autumn total and estimated the species throughput this morning at 10 or 12 in addition to the 5 caught.

Lesser Redpoll

Apart from the endless flights inland of approximately 2000 Pink-footed Geese, this morning’s birding was quiet: 1 Kestrel, 1 Buzzard, 11 Snipe, 1 Corn Bunting, 12 Whooper Swans and an uncounted number of Grey Partridge calling invisibly before dawn. Thankfully a roving flock of 26 Long-tailed Tits did not find one of our mist nets.

Long-tailed Tit

KE, Recaptures And Fingers Crossed

An hour or two at Knott End (KE) this morning proved very rewarding for seeing a good selection of birds, but not for photography on the grey, overcast morning.

A walk up river and then near the jetty produced 9 Red-breasted Merganser, 15 Eider, 30+ Wigeon, 4 Grey Heron, 2 Little Egret, 6 Pied Wagtail, 1 Rock Pipit, 4 Cormorant and 1 Kestrel.

The incoming tide pushed waders and wildfowl to the shore, with 1900 Oystercatcher, 1400 Knot, 145 Redshank, 28 Turnstone, 140 Dunlin, 40+ Curlew and 35 Shelduck. A Peregrine dived once or twice at the assembled Knot before the tide ran in so quickly that I didn’t get to accurately count the many birds which flew either up river to the Wyre roost or along the sands to the Preesall/Pilling roost.

Turnstone
Rock Pipit
Shelduck

It rained later so I turned my attention to trying to answer a question from a blog reader from the US who asked about ringing recaptures.

I keyed WILWA into our Fylde Ringing Group IPMR database and came up with the example below to illustrate how full life histories are gleaned from multiple recaptures of the same individual, in this case a small migratory warbler, the Willow Warbler. British Willow Warblers spend the summer here before migrating to central Africa for the winter.

IN1795 was first captured as a juvenile (age code 3) in July 1990, almost certainly a bird whose parents bred within the ringing site. It spent its first and subsequent winter somewhere in Africa, returning to exactly the same UK location in years 1991, 1992, 1994, 1995, and 1997, when we recaptured and identified it as a breeding male (code 4M) in most years. The bird was almost certainly present during the summers of 1993 and 1996, the reason for the non-recapture being that it simply escaped us ringers that year. In 1997 it went off the radar and may have died from old age, an unknown cause, or possibly on migration south during the autumn of 1997, in its Africa winter, or even on the way back to the UK in the spring of 1998. Willow Warblers, indeed most small birds are not especially long lived, but in its 6+ years the recapture history of IN1795 provided lots of valuable data.

Age 3, First ringed - 14/07/1990 Inskip, Lancashire
Age 4, Recaptured - 20/04/1991 Inskip, Lancashire - 280 days
Age 4M, Recaptured - 18/05/1991 Inskip, Lancashire - 308 days
Age 4M, Recaptured - 14/05/1992 Inskip, Lancashire - 1 year 305 days
Age 4, Recaptured - 01/05/1994 Inskip, Lancashire - 3 years 291 days
Age 4, Recaptured - 14/04/1995 Inskip, Lancashire - 4 years 274 days
Age 4M, Recaptured - 06/05/1995 Inskip, Lancashire - 4 years 269 days
Age 4M, Recaptured - 03/05/1997 Inskip, Lancashire - 6 years 293 days

Willow Warbler
The forecast isn’t looking too bad for a ringing some new birds tomorrow, and maybe even a few more recaptures. Fingers crossed.

Another Morning Mix

This morning Will and I made it to the moss again with nets up in the dark and then time to spare before any thrush arrivals. Although there was no large scale appearance, we picked up a few more of the target species.

The first mixed flock of Redwings and Fieldfares arrived soon after 8am but between then and 0930 we saw less than 175 of both species, split 140/35 in favour of Fieldfares, with 6+ Song Thrush, a single Mistle Thrush and 4 Blackbirds only. The Chaffinch movement that started in late August continued through this morning with a total of 170+ heading south east into the 10mph light wind, the good number of birds not reflected in our catch of six. Reed Buntings continue to be obvious migrants through the site with 10+ over this morning in addition to the six caught, which pushes our autumn total for the species to 38 individuals.

Today’s total reached 24 birds, 21 new and 3 recaptures. New birds: 6 Chaffinch, 6 Reed Bunting, 2 Song Thrush, 2 Redwing, 1 Blackbird, 2 Goldfinch, 1 Wren and 1 Blackcap, the latter a first calendar year/juvenile female. Recaptures were 1 each of Robin, Goldfinch and Coal Tit.

Blackbird
Redwing
Reed Bunting
Song Thrush
Blackcap
Wren

Our birding was interesting, steady but unspectacular - in rough order of appearance dawn to 1130am: 1 Barn Owl, 2 Tawny Owl, 20+ Meadow Pipits and 2 Alba wagtails heading south, 5 Whooper Swan, 1 Raven, 19 Snipe, 1 Grey Heron and 1 Peregrine. During the morning there was a light overhead movement of small finches, mainly Siskin and Lesser Redpoll, less than 5 audible records of each call, but an additional and rare sighting here of 2 Bullfinch. Also uncommon here inland, 2 early morning overhead Greenfinch.

I hadn’t seen the Little Owls for weeks, but today one was back in the winter tree.

Little Owl

News And Twos

A quick run around the patch at Pilling this morning produced a few notables for a mini-posting of news.

Whooper Swans Cygnus cygnus are back from Iceland in some numbers with the now regular congregation building up on the Fluke Hall stubble fields to 115+ today, so densely packed, mobile and quite distant that it is difficult to obtain a precise count. The picture below shows one part of this morning’s flock.

Whooper Swan

The swans can be heard whooping it up from hundreds of yards away, even down in Pilling village half a mile from Fluke Hall, but there’s nothing quite like their calls to set you up with anticipation for a morning’s birding.

The North American counterpart of Whooper Swan is Cygnus buccinator, which goes by the very descriptive name of Trumpeter Swan, with a call quite different from the Whooper. Trumpeter Swans also have an all-black bill.

Trumpeter Swan

I managed a walk from Lane Ends to Pilling Water and bumped into a couple of twos, 2 Wheatear, 2 Buzzard and 2 Green Sandpipers, the latter disappearing as noisily as ever into the wildfowler’s pools. Now well into October Wheatears are getting a little late now, although I have seen them in November some years.

Wheatear

Other small stuff around: 26 Skylark, 2 Reed Bunting, 13 Meadow Pipit, 15 Snipe.

Meadow Pipit
The forecast for tomorrow looks slightly better, with more spaced-out isobars and chance of a ringing session – amazing!

A Different Circus

They say a change is as good as a rest so this afternoon I set off for Pilling Moss and a walk around a farm I wander over now and again. The spot has a few sheltered fields and woods and is a useful standby when everywhere else is a more than a bit breezy, as it was today.

This year I’ve seen plenty of Marsh Harriers, both spring and autumn, but one of the first birds I saw this afternoon was a Hen Harrier, Circus cyaneus, now probably the rarer of the two closely related harriers. Crows chased the harrier off towards Union Lane whereby it flew fast with the wind and I lost it against a background of trees.

Hen Harrier

The couple of hours turned into a raptor fest with 3 Kestrel, 1 Peregrine, 1 Merlin, 3 Buzzards and a Tawny Owl. I found the owl huddled up out of the wind in the densest part of an ivy covered tree, the greenery so impenetrable that I tried this way and that to get more than a half photo of the bird but couldn’t. So as they also say, “Here’s one I did earlier”.

Tawny Owl
Buzzard

There was lots of passerine food on offer for the raptors, 60+ Skylark, 70 Chaffinch, 130 Linnet, 5 Reed Bunting, 25 Goldfinch, 11 Pied Wagtail, 15 Snipe, 2 Great-spotted Woodpecker and 20+ Tree Sparrow. I almost forgot, 1 Fieldfare and 2 Song Thrush, but a number of Blackbirds.

Peregrines count Columbidae into their food category and there were plenty of those today with 32 Stock Dove and 80+ Woodpigeon. Other “bits and bobs” seen, 1 Grey Heron, 1 Raven and 260 Pink-footed Geese trying to hide in a barley stubble field.

Woodpigeon
Stock Dove
Pink-footed Goose