Dipper boxes 100% occupied

-Well almost! This winter we extended our dipper box scheme on the Eastern Cleddau catchment from 9 to 20 and we have just completed the first round of nest checks. Amazingly there were signs of occupancy in all bar 1 box, but even this site had a dipper nest on an existing ledge under the bridge so we are still counting it. Not all were used by dippers, three had grey wagtail nests and another had an unlined wren's nest - which resembled a miniature dipper's. Only three of the bridges where the boxes were placed previously had any potential crevices or ledges for dippers to nest, which presumably explains the remarkably high take up.

A total of 17 dipper nestlings were ringed from four broods that were ready including a brood of five. All the complete clutches were of either four or five eggs.

A healthy brood of four dippers at perfect ringing age

At one of the sites two clutches each of four dipper eggs were found in either side of a single box. Neither clutch felt warm, so it wasn't clear what was going on. Maybe the next visit will provide the answer?

You don't need to bother taking a ladder if you take Paul

Grey wagtail sat tight on a clutch of five eggs

A cliff hanging diversion during the day produced these raven chicks which were off the weighing scales - over 1Kg each.

All in all, a very productive and entertaining day.

Paul, Karen, Mike, Theresa and Paddy.

Last woodcock of the winter?

While out last night on what will probably turn out to be the final lamping session of this winter, three woodcock were ringed out of five seen, together with a redwing and a meadow pipit. Numbers of woodcock in February were noticeably lower than in the same month in 2013 which had followed a snowy January, but catching conditions have been better so a personal total of 84 captures is not too dissimilar to the average of 99 over 5 previous winters. Other species have also been encountered in lower numbers than usual including redwing with just 4 ringed. Perhaps they prefer to roost in more sheltered sites than open fields during wet and windy conditions, or maybe there are fewer birds this far west than usual. The total for snipe (18) is the highest ever though this is more down to the cloudy, windy nights making them (slightly) easier to catch.

Poised and ready to fly to Russia, maybe the final woodcock to be ringed this winter

Hardly any redwings have been seen in the Pembs fields this winter and this was only the 4th to be ringed

 

Waders and owls

Eight members of the group made another trip to our main wader site at the weekend during a brief spell of calm conditions which resulted in a catch of 47 individuals. Not only is this the highest so far at this site but it was also the bulkiest with 21 curlews, 13 oystercatchers and 11 redshank, all of which are target species for our new colour-ringing project. Unfortunately this project is not yet underway as it is still awaiting approval to use the intended combinations, so no birds were fitted with rings, but at least it gives confidence that sufficient numbers of individuals will be caught to establish a viable project.

Adult curlew

Most of us are unfamiliar with seeing curlew in the hand at this time of year so there was a good deal of deliberation over how to correctly age them: the above bird was aged as adult based on the even age of the feathers, though some birds appeared ambiguous.

Three curlews and a teal being processed 

The adult oystercatchers (age code  = 10, or 4 years +) were startlingly bright

This adult male barn owl was first ringed by John as a nestling 12km away in 2013. It was quite a surprise to find it in a wader net.

This tawny owl was caught last week visiting a garden on the Pembs/Carms border

Waders and wrens

Pembrokeshire is an important county for wintering waders with a combination of coastal and estuarine tidal habitats together with abundant damp pasture inland. Its mild climate means that it sometimes attracts nationally important numbers of waders, especially when the weather is freezing to the east.  Many of the species involved are well monitored by volunteers participating in the BTO's WeBS scheme, but in order to understand the reasons behind any population changes it is vital to mark individuals to help measure longevity, adult/juv survival, site fidelity and many other useful things. 

The plan this year is to considerably expand the wader ringing effort by starting colour-ringing schemes for four common species that are known to be declining - oystercatcher, curlew, whimbrel and redshank. A colour-ringing scheme for whimbrel has already been initiated by Tony Cross and the Mid-Wales team  with good numbers being caught so far and some interesting movements recorded and hopefully by adding some ringing data from Pembs a lot more will be discovered about this spring migrant.

During a recent evening of netting waders with Paul, Mike and Theresa, 36 birds were caught, 32 of which were oystercatchers, including 4 retraps ringed at the same site during the past two years and 4 BTO controls from elsewhere. In addition, 3 redshank and a greenshank were ringed.

Oystercatchers are one of the few species for which the age code of "10" can be used, though this is only a "7" 

The difference in leg colour between adult (right) and 1stW redshank is still obvious at this time of year

  

greenshank are always a joy to see in the hand, this is the second so far this year

This kingfisher added a bit of sparkle at Paul's wader ringing site on the estuary

On a completely different note, it is not very often that ringing wrens would be worthy of a mention on a blog but during the past few nights there has been a steady trickle of them into my house! They must be getting in under the eaves and then deciding that it would be even warmer if they came and sat by the log burner, so by about 9o'clock  there might be 2 or 3 flitting about. They are quite difficult to catch by hand, seemingly able to vanish just as you are about to touch them. Altogether 15 individuals have so far been involved, with 8 of them being adult and probably male.

The barring on the wing of an adult wren is much finer than on 1stW

Monitoring winter woodcock and snipe

Positions of woodcock encountered during nocturnal ringing activities and plotted using hand-held gps

Over the past few years counts of woodcock and snipe have been made whilst out in the fields trying to catch and ring these species, and sometimes their positions plotted as shown above. On some (most!) nights the birds are very jumpy and many of the birds seen are not possible to get close to, so it can be consoling to redefine the purpose of the visit to making counts rather than ringing the birds!. Nevertheless, over 800 woodcock have now been ringed within Pembrokeshire since Dec 2008 (this total includes Teifi RG's birds from the north of the county) and these have generated some interesting recoveries, with at least 10 from abroad, mostly Russia, and perhaps 30 or more local movements. It is hoped to summarise these at some point in near future.

It seemed this year that there were fewer woodcock and snipe being encountered than usual and so all the counts made over the last few winters were compared with those made so far this winter and then divided by the area of fields covered to give a density/Ha. After removing biases that appear as a result of a tendency to choose visiting the most productive fields, the figures are;

 

Data collected from 80 different fields with a total of 400 visits are used to produce the figures above and it appears that counting birds per field at night, if done systematically on a wide enough scale, is a simple way of monitoring change of wintering numbers in these species which both have declining breeding populations in Britain and Ireland, and are not covered well by existing schemes such as WeBS.

The variations in numbers are not necessarily due to population decline as they may simply reflect distribution changes that are weather related, and the mild autumn may mean many birds have not traveled this far west and other areas may have more birds than usual. A cold snap may change that.

Plenty of other research can be done off the back of these counts, especially if bird positions are plotted with gps which is also a simple and accurate way of recording counts. It seems that field size, slope and use, are all important factors affecting density of feeding birds. 

Garden birds

Perhaps one of the more inaptly named birds is the garden warbler, as it has no association with the tamed vegetation normally found in a typical garden, instead preferring scrub and unkempt hedgerows. It is also a summer visitor, so when one was caught and ringed by Paul in his garden in the middle of Milford Haven yesterday it was quite a surprise! Paul also caught 2 blackcap during the same session, following on from 2 others in the previous week.

There are no (apparent) previous December records of garden warbler in Pembs but former winter records include 2 february birds one of which was ringed at Pembroke refinery in February 1992.

old crests

After reading that the mid-Wales ringing team were catching plenty of goldcrests, it was decided to make a late season visit to our upland conifer site at Ty Rhyg to see if the situation was the same in Pembrokeshire. Netting has been tried at this time of year in the past in 2009 and 2013 with very limited success, (catches of 0 and 1 respectively). Between 2:30 and 4:00pm 36 goldcrests were caught including an adult retrapped from 2013. The catch was almost entirely goldcrest but a reed bunting, a great spotted woodpecker and a snipe added to the variety.

1st Winter snipe - quite a few can be seen beside the tracks of the plantation

Thinking to try the same in my woodland 'garden', six acres of mainly oak and willow not far from Ty Rhyg where goldcrests can be heard daily, the result was less spectacular in terms of numbers; just 4 goldcrests were caught but it included retraps from 2011 and 2012. At 3 yrs and 4 months since being ringed as a juvenile the first of these is quite an old goldcrest, with the BTO longevity record being only 4 yrs, 2 months.

The tail of the three year old female goldcrest was surprisingly pointed

This 1st winter goldcrest has pointed tail feathers though one of the central
pair has been replaced with a blunter round-tipped feather more typical of those found on adults 

The following day, another netting attempt in the broad-leaf woodland failed to produce any goldcrests, but this was compensated for by a gorgeous 1st winter male firecrest, the only bird caught during the four-hour session and the first to be ringed at this site.

The firecrest

Busy morning

On Sunday the weather was good enough for a garden session and in just 4 hours just under 100 birds were handled.   This included 35 retraps and a control Greenfinch typically late in the morning (they never seem to be active early in the morning) and a good selection of species although too many Blue Tits!

The new birds included three with ticks - a Chaffinch and a Robin

and a cracking adult female Great Spotted Woodpecker

Great White Snipe or Snowcock?

     
The first two evenings of woodcock ringing got off to a good start this autumn with a golden plover, a meadow pipit and nine woodcock ringed including this leucistic individual. At first while at quite a distance away, it stood out so much in the lamp that it looked as if it was either a barn owl or a polythene bag, but its bobbing head reduced the options to barn owl. Then when a little closer it began running through the pasture looking very woodcock-like apart from the colour. It soon settled and was duly caught, and what an amazing bird! It was assumed that it must be a first year bird as a species such as woodcock which has evolved to be so cryptically-plumaged must have very poor survival prospects when adorned with such bright colours, but the bird was almost certainly an adult based on the wear of its longest primaries, the shape of the inner primary tips and the shape of the axillaries. At 372g it was obviously very healthy and a single completely typical secondary feather appeared to be retained suggesting that the bird may have had typical plumage before moulting and developed leucism as an adult.

Paddy and Paul

Garden stuff

A lovely calm morning which appeared very quiet but with just a few nets up we caught 36 new birds and 10 retraps this morning

The first six Goldcrests of the autumn and a nice selection of common birds in a variety of plumage states including a couple of Dunnocks near to completing their moult and a very scruffy female Greenfinch in the middle of its primary moult.

One bird we didn't ring is this Chaffinch with one of the biggest growths of
Papillomatosis we have seen.  Its been a commonly reported disease across the UK this autumn with a few places reporting very high incidences - its fairly uncommon here but we see a few each year.