Brackenhurst, Sunday 30 December

The prolonged mild weather continued as Jim, Cliff, Tom & I met on a still, partially overcast morning. Birds were around, but fairly reluctant to come to bait or sound lures so we had a relaxing morning, brightened up with some festive refreshment.

Gangs of finches, buntings and thrushes teased us all morning and small flocks of tits and Goldcrests were in the hedgerows, but most steered clear of the nets. And with the exception of one round that produced a decent flock of Yellowhammers, we were catching birds in ones and twos.

We finished on 19 (12 new, 7 retrap) as follows: Blue Tit 1/1, Great Tit 4/3, Yellowhammer 7/1, Reed Bunting 0/2.

Other birds around included Kestrel and Sparrowhawk, Green Woodpecker, a single Woodcock flushed and 2 Golden Plover overhead. A number of birds were in song, presumably due to the mild weather.

Happy New Year to all!

Pete

Brackenhurst, Friday 23 November

Already passed in to history, but Kev, Lewis and I had a decent morning’s ringing at Brack a month ago. Weather was good and we had unusually high numbers of birds in the nets for that time of year.

Highlights included:
- Probably our highest ever November total for Yellowhammer (30 processed). Hard to say why as some years we only handle >10 before Xmas.
- House Sparrow – often get a few prior to the turn of the year, but nine is a lot. We're guessing they come from the farm two fields away.
- Chaffinch – most of the males had wings >90 mm wing length. So most likely wintering migrants from Scandinavia?

Species totals (new/retrap) 66/19, total 85: Blackbird 3/0, Redwing 1/0, House Sparrow 9/0, Blue Tit 5/2, Great Tit 1/2, Long-tailed Tit 7/2, Dunnock 2/4, Robin 0/1, Chaffinch 15/1, Yellowhammer 23/7.

Oldest retraps were Blue Tit (2014), Great Tit (2015) and Yellowhammer (2016).

Jim

Toton, Christmas Eve

A perfect day for mist-netting was forecast for today so I was thinking about a trip to the golf club to try for some Redwing but unfortunately nobody was available. So I decided to try in the garden, most of you will know that I do very little ringing in the garden but recently Sparrowhawks have been using the birds on our feeders as their own local takeaway, so I thought perhaps if I caught them they might think again before returning!

The forecast turned out to be correct with not a breath of wind so before light I opened the net – tried unsuccessfully with an mp3 lure to bring Redwing in – and caught a few of the expected garden birds. Then a Blue Tit went in the net and just as I was thinking of going to get it out a blur from the left streaked in heading straight for the Blue Tit, veered off at the last minute and sat on top of the net pole. After cursing and stopping in my tracks the bird took off dropped round the back of the net and headed for the Blue Tit again, this time it went into the net and after swiftly getting out to the net I extracted this little lady:

Thanks to Christine for taking the pictures.

Oh, and the Blue Tit, a retrap from last winter, thankfully escaped the close attention of the Sparrowhawk unscathed.......and so did my fingers.

Happy Christmas to all.

Kev

SNRG on tour... Long-eared Owls in Scotland

And it gets better! Later on Ewan caught two Long-eared Owls in the garden and used UV light to help age them - different ages of feathers reflecting the light in different ways.

Jim

SNRG on tour... Short-eared Owl in Scotland

I've not managed to ring much during last few weeks, but I did get out onto the Ythan estuary grasslands three weeks ago when up in Scotland. We were targeting Long and Short-eared Owls and although several LEOs checked out the net, we didn't catch any. However, we did manage a single SEO. We were using large mesh net with both owl and mouse calls to attract the birds. Barn Owls are regarded as by-catch. Thanks to Ewan and Logan Johnson for the pictures.

Jim

Sutton Bonington, Sunday 16 December

Alex, Duncan, Mick T, Gary and I held another session at the feeders on a still and sunny morning to start with but the cloud and breeze increased later. Fairly quiet but we did try again in the field with the two shelf nets and an mp3 playing and managed to get another Linnet and Meadow Pipit.

We ended with a catch of 33 including 15 retraps, made up of (new/retrap): Redwing 4/0, Blackbird 1/0, Robin 2/2, Meadow Pipit 1/0, Coal Tit 0/2, Blue Tit 1/8, Great Tit 1/0, Linnet 1/0, Chaffinch 2/0, Greenfinch 2/1, House Sparrow 2/0, Yellowhammer 1/2. The oldest retraps were two Robins from 2016.

Kev

 Coal Tits (male left, female right), K. Hemsley

BTO nestboxes Lennonised...

Nice to see the latest BTO nestbox recommendations for Tawnys is based on Jim's expert craftsmanship!

Sutton Bonington, Sunday 9 December

Alice, Maria, Mick T, Gary and I risked it with the forecast again today but luckily the early rain soon stopped and thankfully the breeze was not as strong as predicted either, on another mild December morning. Very quiet again with a first round catch of zero but it did pick up as the morning went on and Yellowhammers are now coming to the feeders. We tried a four shelf net against the bushes with a sound lure playing to try for a few more of the resident Linnet flock. A pity that just after we put it up it was lit up by the sun as the clouds cleared and we caught just one. 

 

We ended with a catch of 28 including 11 retraps, made up of (new/retrap): Redwing 1/0, Song Thrush 1/0, Robin 1/1, Blue Tit 2/6, Great Tit 0/3, Linnet 1/0, Chaffinch 2/1, Goldfinch 2/0, Greenfinch 2/0, House Sparrow 1/0, Yellowhammer 4/0. The oldest retrap was a Robin from 2016.

 

Kev

Recent Recoveries

An Attenborough Egyptian Goose, ringed in 2009, has had its ring read in the field at the reserve in November.

An old record has come in of a Kingfisher, ringed at Holme Pierrepont in 2008. It was seen over at Colwick park the next year, having part of its ring read in the field.

Two Blue Tits have recently been controlled at Mick Pearson's site near Bestwood, both originally ringed nearby by Birklands RG at Bestwood Country Park. One had been ringed in the nest in May 2017 and another was ringed as a first year bird in July.

A ring, found unattached to a bird, was found in Dunkirk in November. It had originally belonged to a Great Tit, ringed in Gary's garden in June.

A Goldfinch ringed in Jim's garden in January 2016 has been controlled by ringers at Thorpe Marsh in Doncaster in December this year. Another Goldfinch was controlled by Tom in his garden in Colwick in October, originally ringed at a site in Dunton, Bucks in November 2017.

Finally, some old 1980s records of Mute Swans seem to be pouring in, relating to birds having their rings read at Clumber Park, the majority of which were ringed by South Notts RG at Clumber throughout the 80s.

Tom

Sutton Bonington, Sunday 2 December

Alex, Duncan, Gary and I along with Alice from Nottingham University managed to get a netting session in this morning even though it looked very iffy as I left home in pouring rain. It had almost stopped by the time I got on site and other than a few brief drizzle showers it stayed dry for the rest of the morning, although the wind was a bit too strong. It was unusually quiet at the feeders, the number of birds no doubt affected by the unusually warm temperature for a December day – at one point a Yellowhammer even started to sing!

We tried again with a couple of two shelf nets in the adjacent field and managed to bring quite a few Meadow Pipits to the nets and a growing flock of Linnets but the billowing nets were really too obvious an we caught just 1 of each species. We ended with a catch of 17 including 5 retraps, made up of (new/retrap): Great Spotted Woodpecker 1/0, Redwing 1/0, Blackbird 1/0, Dunnock 0/1, Meadow Pipit 1/0, Blue Tit 3/2, Great Tit 0/2, Linnet 1/0, Greenfinch 3/0, House Sparrow 1/0, Reed Bunting 1/0. The oldest retrap was a Great Tit from 2017. Nice to get the first Greenfinch of the winter and yet another Great Spotted Woodpecker but other than that it was a very quiet day at the office.

Kev

The End of an Era?

As many of you will know, I have been running a Pied Flycatcher nest box study near Llananno in Wales for a number of years. It actually started in early 1993 when Gary, Mick T, a few other ex-members and I knocked together about 60 boxes and took them to Wales to find some suitable trees and receptive land owners. We doubled the number of boxes the following year and they have all been monitored each summer since (except 2001 because of foot & mouth disease). Each spring we also went on a maintenance visit to get the boxes ready for the coming season. Twenty-five years ago it was a challenge to put up all the boxes and carry sacks of boxes around on the maintenance visits. Since then it seems there has either been some tectonic plate activity that has pushed the hills steeper or as I head further into my 60s my mind is fitter than my body – I would like to think it is the former but I really know it is the latter! Also operating the site from about 130 miles away always held a few challenges, not least correctly timing the visit to ring the chicks, but it got increasingly difficult to get a team together for the ringing visits never mind the maintenance visits. Taking all into account I have decided to call it a day and have located a ringer who lives about 10 miles from the boxes to take over for the 2019 season and beyond.

I enjoyed running the project; I think I must have travelled well over 15,000 miles just going to the boxes but feel it was well worth it. The woods the boxes were in had virtually no trees with natural holes so to create this new active nesting area for a red-listed species gave a great deal of satisfaction. Unfortunately the efforts have not stopped the decline of the Pied Flycatcher as the graph of occupancy rates shows but I think we did our bit to help.

The graph show occupancy rates of the boxes in each year (except 2001). A box was considered ‘occupied’ by Pied Flycatchers if it had got to at least the egg stage, it does not mean the box successfully fledged chicks. We ringed over 5000 Pied Flycatchers but many went unringed if we got our visit timing out so I guess probably over 7000 birds fledged from the boxes during the time we were running the project.

Apart from the data submitted to the BTO, data was also used by the University of Wales and is now being used by Bob Harris who has been asked by the Welsh Ornithological Society to prepare a paper on the current status of the Pied Flycatcher in Wales.

I would like to thank all the people that have helped over the years in visiting and box making and I hope the new custodian will see the birds thrive.

Kev