Ian's Little Owl nest box success

It has been good to find the Little Owls have been using the nest boxes which I erected last winter around Cropwell Butler as well as the boxes at Clifton Grove which Rob Hoare has kindly granted me permission to monitor with him.

I was pleased to find an already ringed female with chicks, she appears to not be a South Notts ringed bird so I look forward to finding out more about her shortly.

It was also good to know that some of these rather smelly chicks had very full bellies regardless of the cool and wet weather we have had recently.

Ian

 

Clifton Grove and Barton under threat again!

The Clifton Grove and Brandshill area of the Trent Valley is one of the county's great wildlife hotspots, and once again it appears to be under threat. The Council are planning extensive sand and gravel extraction across a large area of a site which hosts a numbers of resident red-listed bird species that are of high conservation concern: Grey Partridge, Lesser-spotted Woodpecker, Skylark, Song Thrush, Marsh Tit, Starling, Linnet, Reed Bunting and the Corn Bunting.

It is also a key stop-off point for migrants such as Ring Ouzel, Wheatear, Short-eared Owl, Hobby and Whinchat and a large cast of migrant waders.

There are also a host of Little Owl nest boxes which myself and Rob monitor yearly, which also fall into this zone.

Please voice your concerns wherever possible. The Clifton Pastures area has been very badly effected by the tram and A453 developments as of late and now the proposed activity at Barton looks set to bring further upset.

Check out Rob Hoare's fantastic Clifton Grove Birds website for further information:

http://www.cliftongrovebirds.co.uk/gravel.html

Ian

Recent Recoveries

A Cormorant which was colour-ringed as a chick at Attenborough Nature Reserve in April 2013 was re-sighted at Cossington, Leicestershire in March 2014. Another Cormorant which was also colour-ringed as a chick at Attenborough Nature Reserve in April 2013 was re-sighted at Lound, Retford in July 2013.

A Sparrowhawk which was ringed as a chick at Clifton in 2009 was recovered after hitting a window in Market Rasen, Lincolnshire in March 2014.

A Great Tit ringed as a chick at Cotham, Nottinghamshire in May 2009 and a Great Tit ringed as a chick at Hawton in June 2012 were both controlled at Elston, Nottinghamshire during January 2014.

Two Lesser Redpoll which were ringed at Bestwood in September 2011 were both controlled at Warsop in February 2014.

Ian

Attenborough CES Visit 3, Sunday 25 May

The Met Office are as accurate with their forecasts as I am picking the lottery numbers, which led to Nabegh, Sue, Duncan, Gary and I spending the first half hour of this CES session standing in the pouring rain with the nets still in their bags. It did stop which allowed us to put up the nets, then started, then stopped etc. which had us on the starting blocks to run and furl until about 09:00 when the cloud started to break up. It was worth our perseverance as we had the best catch of the season so far and a little variety with a new Kingfisher, Great Spotted Woodpecker and Magpie.

The totals were 29 new and 14 retrap, made up as follows (new/retrap): Song Thrush 0/1, Blackcap 4/3, Great Tit 6/2, Blue Tit 0/1, Chiffchaff 0/1, Bullfinch 1/0, Robin 1/1, Dunnock 2/1, Garden Warbler 1/1, Reed Warbler 1/1, Long-tailed Tit 10/1, Blackbird 0/1, Great Spotted Woodpecker 1/0, Kingfisher 1/0, Magpie 1/0.

The oldest retraps were the 2007 Reed Warbler that we'd also caught last week and another Garden Warbler from 2010. Lastly we ringed a few broods of tit pulli in the nest boxes.

Kev

 Kingfisher (Sue Lakeman)

Attenborough CES Visit 2, Sunday 18 May

Alex, Duncan, Gary, Sue and I carried out the second CES visit of the year at Attenborough on Sunday. The weather was still and sunny throughout. The catch was better than Visit 1 as we caught the first few juvenile birds of the year and seemingly more migrant warblers had arrived.

The totals for the day were 27 new and 9 retraps made up as follows (new/retrap): Song Thrush 1/0, Blackcap 5/2, Great Tit 2/1, Blue Tit 4/0, Chiffchaff 3/0, Willow Warbler 0/1, Bullfinch 0/1, Robin 4/1, Dunnock 1/1, Garden Warbler 1/1, Reed Warbler 0/1, Long-tailed Tit 2/0, Reed Bunting 2/0, Chaffinch 2/0. The oldest retraps were a Reed Warbler from 2007 and a Garden Warbler from 2010.

Kev

Chaffinch (Sue Lakeman)

Bonus Tawny Owls

A bonus of some early box checking (thanks Don!) has been a few extra Tawny Owls in Barn Owl boxes. This brood was near Long Clawson tonight.

Pete

Attenborough CES Visit 1, Sunday 4 May

Alex, Duncan, Gary, Nick and I carried out the first CES visit of the year at Attenborough on Sunday. The weather conditions were close to perfect and the first bird in the net was a Cetti’s Warbler, so all looked well for a good catch. Unfortunately the birds did not share our optimism and catches were slow throughout the morning. We did get a pair off Great Spotted Woodpeckers which were interesting in that both male and female had a large engorged stage 3 brood patch. Both sexes of this species do incubate but I have never seen such an advanced brood patch on a male before although the majority of the Woodpeckers we do catch are normally caught outside of the breeding season.

The totals for the day were 18 new and 5 retraps made up as follows: Song Thrush 0/1, Blackbird 1/1, Great Spotted Woodpecker 2/0, Blackcap 2/0, Great Tit 2/0, Cetti’s Warbler 1/0, Chiffchaff 1/0, Wren 2/0, Treecreeper 1/0, Bullfinch 2/2, Robin 2/0, Dunnock 1/1, Garden Warbler 1/0.



Kev

 Great Spotted Woodpeckers: female on the left (practising its pecking on Alex's hand - the blood is Alex's not the bird's) and male with the red nape on the right, blinking. (G. Goddard)

 A slightly blurry picture of the male's brood patch. (N. Humphreys)

Starlings

When we first moved into our house in Harby, Starlings inhabited the void between our bedroom ceiling boards and the roof tiles and regularly woke us at feck o'clock in the morning. At one point their enthusiastic home-making actually punctured a hole in the ceiling which began leaking odorous nesting material and such like. Being house-proud and versatile in the DIY department, I fixed the hole with a small piece of gaffer tape and started pondering eviction methods.

Reluctant to use any sort of force, I commissioned a nestbox from my dad and placed it on the wall beside the hole in the roof. It's taken a couple of years, but the roof has now been abandoned and the box occupied. I ringed the first brood of four last night.

It's good to have them here still, despite the barrage of dung covering the car and the paving in front of the house. With populations declining across the country, Harby still seems to host a large population, all of which appear to be feeding young right now.

Pete

Recent Recoveries

A Barn Owl ringed as a chick near Rolleston in June 2011 was found dead in March 2014 near North Muskham.

A Starling ringed as a 5 in Hucknall in May 2013 was found dead nearby in March 2014.

A Reed Bunting ringed in Dec 2009 in Hucknall was found 2km away having hit a window in March 2014.

A Goldfinch ringed as an adult in Hucknall in July 2012 also met its fate against a window nearby in April 2014.

Pete

Owl box checking

With great help from Emma, Gary, Ian and Pete, I've virtually finished checking the south-east Notts Tawny Owl nest boxes and I've also had a look to see how some of the Barn Owls are doing. Tawnies have used 12 of the 40 or so boxes checked. A tad disappointing, but all look to be doing well and broods of four (1) and three (3) ringed so far. Also, good to retrap adult females that were first ringed as breeders in their boxes in 2006, 2007 and 2011. Five broods of Tawnies still to ring, so not looking too bad at the moment.

Barn Owls have been reported as going down to lay much earlier this year, and we checked several sites on the way round the Tawnies. Where breeding, they have complete clutches of 5-7 eggs, and two sites (one a box and one in an ash tree) c500m apart are just hatching. Near Southwell we retrapped a male Barn Owl that had been ringed as a chick by Newark in 2007 and not seen again til now.

All monitoring of Barn Owls is done under a BTO issued Schedule 1 licence to disturb.

Jim

 

(All pics by G. Goddard)

Tawny Owl box-checking, Sunday 27 April

Made the decision on Friday to check the majority of my boxes on Sunday as the forecast for Saturday was grim. Saturday turned out to be fine (so much for the forecast again!) but did not waste the day as I nipped down to Attenborough to check a couple of boxes there (both empty) and cut out the net rides ready for the start of the CES next weekend.

Alex joined me on Sunday morning and we set off round the boxes hoping for a better result than last year, which was 1 failed box and 1 that managed to fledge a single chick. It did not start well and after the first 6 boxes all we had was a failed Tawny and a Jackdaws with 5 eggs. The next box was much better as it contained 4 healthy looking chicks all at FS stage. The last two boxes of the morning were also occupied by Tawny’s one with 3 chicks, too small to ring but we did ring the brooding female and one one incubating at least 2 eggs that we obviously left alone.

A Kestrel also flew from one of the Kestrel boxes we had to pass, so that bodes well for later on. I have two boxes left to check and hopefully another to ring that I was informed was incubating eggs a couple of weeks ago, that’s on an island in the middle of the Trent. So if all the currently active boxes survive I will end with 4 broods at least ringed, much better than last year.

Kev

 

Groppers at Langar

Only this week I was telling Pete about my site at Langar and how much it is changing from season to season. It'll be interesting to see how the bird populations change as this young open plantation gradually sees more scrub taking hold and aquatic vegetation spreading from the nearby flooded fishponds (perhaps fewer Whitethroat over time and an increase in Blackcap?)

After five years of watching the site, this morning I heard three reeling Grasshopper Warblers in the scrub for the first time. And guess what the first bird into my net was?

Ian

More Tawny Owl box-checking

Ian and I spent today checking my allocation of Tawny Owl boxes. It was a very pleasant and mild day with lots of migrants including my first Lesser Whitethroats and Garden Warblers of the year and as it started getting hot we clocked up six species of butterfly.

We found two broods of Tawny Owls, which was two more than last year. Perhaps not as many as I would have liked, but we can't be too fussy. One brood was just big enough to ring, the other slightly too small. We managed to catch and ring the adult females in both boxes as well - interestingly, both older birds and both unringed.

The wing of one of the adult female Tawny Owls, showing three generations of primaries.

However, perhaps the most encouraging thing about today's broods was the amount of prey cached in each box. The first contained 5 voles and the second at least 12 items, seemingly a mixture of mice and voles (see below).

Of all the other boxes that we checked 5 were empty, 2 damaged, 3 had Jackdaw clutches and 2 had Stock Doves. So all in all, a reasonable start to the season, though it would be nice if the Barn Owls could do a little better.

Pete

Jackdaw eggs

Holme Pierrepont, Saturday 19 April

Having looked at the weather forecast for Easter I decided Saturday would be the best day for a ringing session at HPP. The morning started still with light cloud but the breeze increased as the morning went on. Alex, Gary, Nabegh and I made up the team, Duncan having dropped out due to illness, get well soon Duncan.

The acros were back and singing and Whitethroat was evident as well. Overhead the pair of Buzzards were around all morning again, joined later by another bird.

Another decent spring morning with a catch of 38 birds, totals new/retrap were: Song Thrush 1/0, Reed Bunting 3/2, Blackcap 2/1, Great Tit 2/0, Cetti’s Warbler 0/1, Willow Warbler 1/2, Chiffchaff 2/3, Wren 2/1, Bullfinch 4/1, Robin 2/1, Long-tailed Tit 2/1, Whitethroat 1/0, Reed Warbler 1/1, Sedge Warbler 0/1.

It was nice to get some returning warblers. The oldest was a Reed Warbler from 2010 and there was also a Sedge Warbler and Willow Warbler from 2013.

Kev

Tawny Owls so far...

Ruth and I checked 24 boxes on Friday and the results were as follows:

Tawnys: 1 female on 2 chicks + addled egg; 1 sat tight; 1 with abandoned single egg

Stock Dove: 2 with small chicks; 3 with warm eggs; 1 with single cracked egg

Jackdaw: 3 with cold incomplete clutches; 3 nests at N2/3

Squirrel: 5

Empty: 4

Disappointing, but still 30-40 boxes to check, mainly north of the river. Nothing ringed, but the retrap female at Hawton was ringed as 8F in 2007 in front of BBC cameras and only caught in 2011 since then. It must be at least 10 years old.

Jim

 Tawny Owl (RW)