Wales, Sunday 5 June

A disappointing visit in many ways. Luckily the weather forecast was wrong and we enjoyed generally dry weather with only a few spots of rain. During my short visit a week earlier I found 4 active Pied Flycatcher nests in the 9 I checked, this ratio was unfortunately not representative for all the boxes. We ended the box checking with only 124 pulli and 8 adult (3 of them retraps) Pied Flycatchers and 6 pulli and 1 adult Redstart. The reports of an early season were correct for a few birds with a couple of boxes that we believed had already fledged part of their broods but quite a few boxes still had chicks too small to ring and some still on eggs. The Wood Warbler that was singing a week ago in a regularly used territory had gone so we had no joy there but a bonus was two Buzzard nests with chicks. Chris did the honours of climbing and we ringed a brood of one and a brood of two, Libby now has a new favourite bird.

Kev

Cuckoo tracking

This is definitely worth a look...

http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking

Little Owl control

We ring maybe 10-15 Little Owl chicks every year, and as a result get next to no recoveries. The last one I can remember is a chick at Scarrington that moved 30 metres from it's nest hole and drowned in a horse-trough (it's not just Barn Owls suffer this fate).

In 2008 we ringed two of a brood of three Little Owls in a walnut tree at Shelton. As this had a narrow nest hole entrance, it meant going back with Louise Gentle to use her slender arms to extract the chicks. Just recently, Mick Pearson was checking another natural nest site at Woodborough (one I'd removed debris from to encourage the Little Owls to use again) and controlled one of the Shelton chicks on its own three small chicks. That's a movement of 15 km, which is pretty good in Little Owl terms.

Jim

PS Success at last! One of the Little Owl nest boxes (of the Bob Sheppard design) that Duncan & I put up in Lincs in Feb/March had an adult & single chick in it last week. That's the first time I've managed to get Little Owls into a purpose designed nest box!

East Lincs owling, 31 May - 3 June

Just for interest and a bit of comparison, a bit of feedback from what we found this week in east Lincs (from my blurred memory):

• Barn Owls - 34 breeding pairs found and 1 other that might do soon. Processed 31 females (4 got the better of us).  13 of the females were unringed, which seems quite high, suggesting lower winter survival than usual with bias to the higher ground.  Also processed 7 males (3 new/4 old).  One male had an old break in it's right tarsus.  We wondered about ringing it, but as it dug it's claw several millimetres in to Mike's finger we reckoned the foot was working well enough!  Also, at least 3 controls in there, but Adrian will need to sort out which are retraps/controls.
• Kestrels - 2 broods of 4 ringed.  c3 to go back to.
• Tawny Owls - Final brood of 2 ringed at Welton Woods.
• Stock Dove - Mainly on presumably second clutches, bar the 4 ringed.
• Little Owl - The highlight for me!  As one of the boxes Duncan & I put up late winter was used.  An adult & 3 chicks ringed at 2 sites.

Jim

High speed Great Snipe migration

This is pretty incredible, follow the link...


Great snipe is the fastest migratory bird ever discovered