Visitors to the Garden

With poor weekend weather, I have been unable to get out to ring by myself for a while. However, I
have been watching the birds in my garden. On 2 April, one of the resident families of Blackbirds
brought the first of this year’s fledglings into the garden, making best use of the food we put out for
them. This week, while feeding one of the chicks, I was able to take enough photos of the ring on the
adult male’s leg to determine that I had ringed him in the garden 18 months ago.

Other records of people reading metal rings provides valuable extra data on top of our normal
ringing activities. Data like this submitted to the BTO helps us to track patterns in the bird activity of
individual birds. Members from our group have also read the metal rings on Woodpigeons and Black-
headed Gulls. It’s always worth checking to see if a bird has been ringed, because their movements
can be surprising!

Josh

 

2025 Report

The 2025 SNRG Report is now published and available. If you would like a copy, please email the address at the top of the 'Reports' page - see tab at the top.

 

Bird Feeding Advice

Yesterday saw the release of the latest advice on feeding birds by the RSPB which you can explore here. The accompanying slogan is 'Feed seasonally. Feed safely.' The RSPB advocate feeding only in the months November - April, leaving a gap in summer when natural food is more abundant to help break the cycle of disease reinfection. They also advise against the use of any flat-surface feeders (such as bird tables), as these are the worst for spreading disease. The RSPB highlights the effect that trichomonosis has had, particularly on Chaffinch and Greenfinch populations.

I am in no way disagreeing with their findings or their advice, but it's interesting that in the last couple of years my gut feeling was that I was catching, and seeing more of these two species, so I crunched our numbers.

As ever, I'm not a scientist, data reviewer or bird disease expert, and this small amount of data from a small area in South Nottinghamshire shouldn’t be viewed as anything other than interesting. It cannot be compared to the extensive research carried out by the RSPB and their partners. But looking at our data from 2010 to 2025 it can be seen from the graphs that my gut feeling was correct, and both species have shown a alight increase recently. 

However, the actual reasons for this is anyone’s guess. Perhaps it's due to a reduction in the effects of trichomonosis, but I can't rule out many other factors such as changes in our ringing efforts or ringing sites.

One thing the data has highlighted though is the alarming lack of subsequent encounters of these 2 species, particularly Greenfinch! It will be interesting to keep re-examining the data in the coming years and let's hope that the RSPB's strategy does help reverse the fortunes of the effected species. 

Mick P

 

blue = new birds, orange = subsequent encounters

 

 

 

Leucistic Goldfinch

I caught this interesting individual today. I aged it as a 5 (born last year) and I suspect it was a female based on wing and weight. It reminded me at first of Russian goldfinch skins I’ve seen in collections because they are paler, though the size of a Greenfinch, and still have lots of black. I also checked that this variant occurs in nature and wasn’t an escaped captive.

Holly

 

Attenborough Herons & Cormorants - Thursday 26 March

Kev, Emmeline, AJ and I had a great morning at a sunny ANR, completing the first check of the Grey Heron and Cormorant nests. 

We found 5 apparently occupied heron nests, though none held chicks large enough to ring. Interestingly, one new nest was found more to the west. Could this be the start of an expansion?

There were 45 apparently occupied Cormorant nests. Of the 7 nests we could check ,six had eggs and one had 3 chicks large enough to ring and colour ring. 

Many other people were enjoying the Attenborough sunshine and coffee and cake!

Mick P

 

Cormorant CVF

This bird was ringed and colour-ringed at Attenborough NR on 23 April 2015. Within a couple of months it had moved to Norfolk where it appears to have resided ever since. There have now been over 40 sightings from places such as Salthouse, Cley, Holt and Overy Marshes. The latest sighting comes from Blakeney Point where it was within a roost of 65 other birds. Thanks to Freya Platts and Edward Stubbings for informing us. 

Broomfield Winter CES Visit 8 - Sunday 8 February

Managed to find a small gap in the seemingly endless rain and completed the final winter CES session at Broomfield today, eleventh visit overall. We set all the usual nets, including the Redwing nets, despite not catching any last week. The catch was again quite low given the relatively calm and overcast conditions. We caught 28 birds throughout the morning. Of these, 12 were retraps, including the regular male Nuthatch and another new male. There were a few Redwing around and we managed to catch 5. A Tawny owl was heard calling again when we arrived on site and 3 Buzzards were soaring overhead at one point. 

Kev

Broomfield Winter CES Visit 7 - Sunday 1 February

This winter seems to have been more difficult than usual to pick the right day to go based on the weather forecasts, and this weekend proved to be no exception. Each of the five forecasts I checked varied on their rain prediction for Saturday morning, but all agreed it would be too breezy. Most suggested Sunday morning would be dry and calm - so we opted for Sunday to carry out our 7th Winter CES visit, and tenth visit overall. 

So it was frustrating to see on Saturday that all the forecasts had got it spectacularly wrong as conditions for mist-netting were good, and then to arrive on site on Sunday in the drizzle! We went ahead and set the feeder and Redwing nets as the drizzle was very light and intermittent but after an hour the rain got heavier, and we had to close the nets for a while. 

When it did stop, we opened the nets again and the rain held off for the rest of the session. The catch was quite low and somewhat surprising as the seed in the feeders had gone down more than usual. We caught 24 birds throughout the morning. Of these, 13 were retraps, including the male Nuthatch that we had originally ringed in the autumn. 

We did not catch any Redwing this week, the first time for some weeks that none were caught, and very few winter thrushes were seen. A Tawny owl was heard calling again when we arrived on site. 

Kev

 

Another Stonechat

I dodged the rain again this morning (30 Jan) and had another attempt at catching Stonechats.
I managed to spring trap one, this time a male. After I packed up I did see another two but couldn't tell if these were the two which are ringed. Several snipe were on site too.

Mick P

Subsequent Encounters

I was interested in item 9a on the agenda of the Ringing Committee meeting of April 25 - "BTO Expectations Regarding Generation and Submission of Ringing Data," particularly the requirement to submit retrap data, so I had a look at how we compare to what is expected by the BTO.

The BTO's analysis indicated that the average ratio of retraps to new birds for the vast majority of ringers falls within a similar range, averaging 22%. I guess this would very much depend on where and what species you are ringing. Their analysis focused on 10 common species of Blackbird, Wren, Dunnock, Robin, Long-tailed tit, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Chaffinch and Goldfinch, for 2018, 2019, 2023 and 2024.

To get an idea of how we compare, I analysed SNRG data submissions for 2025 for these 10 species and the results were - 2866 new birds ringed and 1264 subsequent encounters, = ratio of 44.1%.

The following chart shows how these are broken down per species. 

So, if my methods and calculations are correct, SNRGs new to retrap ratio of 44.1% for these 10 "common garden" birds for 2025 was double the average!

This seems surprising and prompted a bit more investigation. The total of 4,130 birds were ringed across 19 sites, 8 of which are garden sites or sites where supplementary seed is provided. It's no surprise that feeding sites and gardens attract more birds, could our use of these sites account for our high ratio?

Another thought, and one we discuss often, is, could the loss of and deterioration of our "natural" sites, resulting in a focus on feeding sites, affect this ratio? So I did similar searches for several earlier years, and it appears we have been a high retrap ratio Group since the mid 1990s, averaging 37.0% over the targeted years. See chart below for more detail. Communications from the BTO mandating the submission of retrap data, in 2001 and 2005 accounts for some of the increase. 

Mick P 

 

 

Stonechat

I got prepared to take advantage of the small weather window this morning and set a spring trap at Erewash Meadows targeting stonechat. I have seen them regularly in a particular area and where I could watch the trap, this proved to be successful with a young female being caught. Many thanks to Mel, of the Cromford Canal and Codnor Res. group for the photo.

Mick P

 

Broomfield - Saturday 17 January

This weekend we carried out our ninth visit. It was another additional visit and not part of the winter CES. The forecast was for rain but we went anyway and had no rain at all, but it was considerably milder than last weekend. This was probably the reason the catch was not as good. We caught 35 birds throughout the morning. Of these, 18 were retraps. Interestingly we did not catch any Robins after catching 11 in the cold conditions last weekend. We did catch a Great Spotted Woodpecker which is only the second individual we have had at the site. A Tawny Owl was heard calling again when we arrived on site and a Red Kite was spotted twice during the morning flying over.

Kev

Great Spotted Woodpecker (KJH)

 

Broomfield Winter CES Visit 6 - Saturday 10 January

This weekend we carried out our sixth visit for this season’s winter CES, or eighth visit including non-CES visits. A very cold start with snow cover and clear skies.The college was still closed and we had a little difficulty gaining access to the site because the barriers were unusually down, probably a precaution because of the very icy roads and car park. The feeder nets were very quiet all morning but a Redwing call playing at the sports field nets pulled on a surprising 39 Redwing. Unusually they caught all morning despite the nets being lit up by the full sun from dawn and even more obvious against the white snow. The weights of the Redwing ranged from 52.7g to 80.6g. A surprising number of Robins were also caught, 11, no doubt attracted to the bait in the cold conditions. We caught 71 birds in total throughout the morning, of these 19 were retraps. Other observations from the morning included Nuthatch and Tawny Owl calling, Raven and Buzzard.

Kev

 

Box maintenance in the Vale

A beautiful day with hard ground making access easier. I spent it clearing out boxes in the Vale of Belvoir, excavating vast old Jackdaw nests from boxes and getting covered in dust and pellets. Met a few old friends along the way and made a couple of new ones. Also put up a new Kestrel box.

Pete 

 

Orchard ringing - Monday 5 January

On Monday, Kev H and I attempted to catch Fieldfare at an orchard in Linby. There were possibly up to 100 present with many feeding on the windblown apples as we arrived.Rather disappointingly we only caught 1 Fieldfare, along with 1 Redwing, 2 Blackbirds, 2 Starlings, 2 Blue Tits and a Robin.

Mick P