Early winter visitors

On 19 October, Holly and I were ringing in my garden near Newark with the usual suspects being netted and processed, including tits, House Sparrows and Goldfinches. We also caught a Sparrowhawk and several Greenfinches (hooray). However, the highlight was this stunning first winter Brambling. It is the second earliest date that the group has ringed this species. 

We also tried netting for owls that evening near Bottesford, and although we were primarily targetting Barn Owls, we also caught an early first winter male Short-eared Owl. This is the fifth ringed at this site and the earliest by nearly four weeks. Here's hoping we have a good winter for these two charismatic bird species.

Jim

Vilamoura, Portugal - 22 Sept-2 Oct

Not South Notts - but an exotic sojourn for some of the group members and a chance to ring a few birds we don't normally handle.

Originally we were going to be a team of 12 but a strike by EasyJet cut that down to 10. The group members came from England and Scotland and we were also joined for the last few days by a ringer from Northern Ireland. We had a pretty good trip with bird numbers tailing off towards the end. A second team followed us and numbers picked up nicely after they had been there a few days.

Our team processed 1100 birds, 976 being new birds. Highlights were 2 Barn Owls, 1 European Nightjar, 8 Red-necked Nightjar, 1 Lesser Spotted Woodpecker (the first ever for the site), Azure-winged Magpie, Jay, plus many other typical species from Southern Europe.

Kev  

Azure-winged Magpie (KJH)

Barn Owl (Kate Moore)

Lesser Spotted Woodpcker (Claire Nuttall)

Long-tailed Tit (Claire Nuttall)

Red-necked Nightjar (Claire Nuttall)

European and Red-necked Nightjars (Claire Nuttall)

Serin (Claire Nuttall)

Woodchat Shrike (Iain Livingstone)

 

Recent Ringing Activity

Holme Pierrepont
20/09/26 - The last trip out before some of us headed south to go ringing in Portugal. Unexpectedly good catch today in good conditions. We finished with 70 birds, though warblers down to just 3 species with 43 Chiffchaffs, 11 Blackcaps and 2 Reed Warblers. The oldest of the few retraps was a Robin from 2023.

08/10/2023 - The last visit to the site for the year produced just 15 birds in good weather conditions. Warblers were down to just 6 Chiffchaffs and a single Blackcap.

Ramsdale Park Golf Club
11/10/26 - The first Autumn visit so we had mp3 sound lures playing Redwing, Redpoll and mixed warblers. Weather conditions were still, but sunny. Clearly the warblers had all departed but we did get the first 2 Redwings of the Autumn and 3 Lesser Redpolls. The rest of the catch of 25 was made up mostly of tits.

18/10/26 - Plenty of Redwing around today and a few Fieldfare. It was bright with a gusting northerly wind but thankfully the nets were sheltered from the wind on the south facing slope. We finished with 39 birds, 16 of them Redwing.

24/10/26 - Managed a trip out in the very small window between storms Austen and Boelo. Mostly overcast conditions with a light south-westerly breeze that slowly increased and rain started about 1100. The site was very quiet today, nowhere near as many winter thrushes around as last week. We ended with just 11 birds that included a Jay, a Bullfinch (uncommon here now) and 4 Redwing. One of the Redwing was a very dark morph probably caused by melanism, I have definitely not seen one like this before. 

Kev

Redpolls, Ramsdale (KJH)

Redwing, Ramsdale (KJH)

Jay, Ramsdale (KJH)

The  following few pictures show the unusually dark Redwing trapped at Ramsdale. We suspect an aberration such as melanism, but it's not impossible that racial variation or even hybridisation may be involved. Comments welcomed. All photos by KJH.