A ringing demonstration... without much ringing

As part of the RSPB's big wildlife weekender at Creswell Crags this past weekend, Sorby Breck ringing group was asked whether we would be able to do a ringing demonstration over both days. As we were the closest people to the site and had already ringed there before, it was entrusted to us to provide the public with a snap shot of the bird ringing experience. Thanks to Eleanor's hard work, the BTO had sent us enough promotional material to recruit a small nation. The groups nest recording had meant we had enough old nests to use in a "Guess the Nest" quiz, whilst Mary's feather collection provided a brilliant "Match the Feather to the Bird" quiz.

It was a good job we had so much other stuff going on because the birds were not playing ball. As many of you may know, feeding station ringing is generally a no no in the summer, whilst ringing into the afternoon often doesn't turn out much results either. Extreme heat isn't something that's great for bird activity either and, you guessed it, we just so happened to fall on the two hottest days of the year so far. Add those to negatives together and you get a total of 12 birds for the Saturday (many of them ringed before the actual event opened at 11am) and only 4 birds for the Sunday... Including one retrap from the day before. The species we caught were Blue Tit, Great Tit, Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler, Nuthatch, Chaffinch with our efforts to bag a Moorhen flawed despite having one run into the bottom shelf of the net only to free itself and escape. It has to be remembered though that every bird caught is fascinating to those members of the public who are interested as it is unlikely that they've seen wild birds so close, and it was great to talk to them about what we do and give them information about the birds.

It's rock art of an Ibis... only upside down

The staff at Creswell Crags and the RSPB were fantastic all weekend and continuously offered us water and snacks. The Crags staff also let those interested go on the two cave tours that they run to see Ice Age rock art or to explore a cave and learn about the Ice Age people. Free cave tours wasn't something I expected to be given when I signed up as a bird ringer, but I enjoyed both greatly! Stick a top class cafe in the mixer and you've got a brilliant site and altogether brilliant weekend.

Perfect end to the weekend

Buzzard ringing, my first Swift, twitching a Melodious Warbler and Turtle Dove

 So in the three weeks since returning from my field trip, a lot has happened.

Any chance of post Malham blues were quickly eradicated by having Buzzard ringing on the agenda two days later. However I decided to go down to the wood a day earlier to check up on the literature defying Blackbird who had not only laid six eggs but had also built a nest one foot off the ground and in barely any cover.
Unfortunately it was as feared, an empty nest far before it should be. The culprit could be anything from a Stoat or Weasel, Jay or even someone's dog but hopefully now she's learned her lesson and will choose to have a second brood elsewhere.

But back to the Buzzards whose nests in the wood have been ringed for a few years now and the number of nests seems to be rising with each year. The chances of us having any Buzzards to ring at all would be greatly reduced if it wasn't for the help of Mary Marsden, who spends a vast amount of time in the wood and finds the majority of the nests.
With 3 found this year, we met early Sunday morning (is there any other time for bird ringing?) with a climber, who'd gratefully agreed to go up and get the chicks, and set off into the wood.

Fledging will be no mean feat from down there!

The first nest had two large chicks in followed by two nests with a single chick in each all of which seemed in great condition. We usually ring Buzzards a couple of weeks earlier in the year, but with the late spring we made the right call to push it back. Evidence of the springs late showing was found in the nest boxes that we checked along the way to each nest, as well as this natural Great Tit nest I found in a tree hole. The way this season has unfolded has been so extraordinary that we still had Blue Tit chicks in one of the nest boxes on the 1st of July!





The following weekend it would have been sensible for me to take a miss on bird ringing on Sunday morning. After all I had just completed a 41 mile, 16 hour charity walk the day before and had feet so blistered they resembled the air cushion of a hovercraft.

An evolutionary masterpiece

However the need to pick up my health and safety pass for Severn Trent sites and the lure of sewage works ringing was enough to rouse me from bed for a half hour stint of sitting in a chair and having birds brought to me. I could really get into that kind of ringing, being doted on hand and foot, getting up at half 8 and still ringing some top birds!

I got Swift and House Martin (2 new species) in that half an hour, as well as adult Swallow which I had only ever previously ringed as chicks. After proclaiming my affections for the humble Willow Warbler in my last post, I'd now like to turn my attentions to the Swift. As my joint favourite bird (alongside the flamboyant Golden Pheasant), the Swift is a bird of remarkable facts and statistics. It eats, sleeps, mates, drinks and bathes all whilst in the air and the first flight a young Swift will ever make can last 2-3 years, whilst traveling to Africa and back every year. They have tiny feet with all four toes pointing forward to grip onto hard, sheer surfaces. And man do they grip.

As though the needle sharp claws and vice like grip isn't bad enough, they also come in a buy two get one free deal with flat flies, a parasitic fly that live off the blood of the bird. If these flies are flat then I'd hate to see the bigger ones, these guys are huge. I was told stories of how ringers have found them in various body locations later in the day when getting ready for bed or having a shower but luckily, after a thorough search, I declared myself a flat fly free zone at the days end.

Lesser in name only

 The nature ladled three weeks rolled on the following day with the annual Nightjar walk with the Clumber Park bird group. The weather was cold and windy, with the Nightjars not being the only things having second thoughts about being out. We eventually saw one, briefly, as well as a number of Woodcock but a return journey will be made now the weather has picked up to try and get the spectacle that I've seen in the past.

Whilst at the Nightjar walk I was told about a Melodious Warbler that was being twitched about half an hour from where I lived. Come the following Saturday, me and my Grandad were heading off to find this Mediterranean castaway. It was pointed out to us as soon as we got there, singing from within a conifer plantation. It has a fantastic song, which is a good job as after two minutes in disappeared within the conifers and didn't show again in the 45 minutes we were there.

Determined to try and get a picture of the bird having seen photo's of it belting out its song from the tops of the pines, I decided to return the following Monday. I went out ringing on the Sunday without much luck. We totaled 15 birds that morning with the help of a Swallow nest with 5 chicks but the poor summer looks set to continue. The disappointment was put on hold by my second ever Lesser Whitethroat which managed to brighten up the mood somewhat.

There's a Turtle Dove there... honest.

Come 8 o'clock Monday morning I was setting off back to the Melodious Warbler site at Tiln in order to try and catch it singing in the open. Unfortunately for me what followed was 30 seconds of song and an hour of staring at a conifer plantation with a group of stoney faced birdwatchers.

Having left by 10, I visited Lound gravel pits, which is managed as a nature reserve by the local wildlife group. It's always a good place to pick up a good tally of birds with its range of wetland, open ground and woodland habitats and I managed to see 40 species in a couple of hours. The main reason I had gone was to see Turtle Dove, as it's the only reliable breeding site I know of in any proximity to me, and I'm happy to report that I clocked a stunning male singing from a dead tree. Unfortunately I had left the proper camera in the car so only had my phone camera to try and take the picture. With self explanatory results.

And so we come to the end of this three week catch up session. Hopefully I'll be updating more frequently now so as not to give you another novel to read in three weeks time.

Until next time!

Ecological Nirvana

Now that's what I call a field trip.

After a woeful excuse of a field trip to Scarborough that involved sitting indoors in a lab for the majority of the week this week away has finally put field trips back into the good books.

We went to Malham Tarn and stayed at the field centre there (once used by Darwin himself) which is situated by the side of the Tarn (a big lake) and surrounded by an island of mixed woodland in the middle of open hills and limestone cliffs. The walk up to the field centre from the village of Malham set the tone for the whole week by providing incredible wildlife and stunning scenery. The pair of Peregrines that nest on Malham Cove were both seen and whilst we could hear the chicks begging for food, finding them on the cliff face was impossible. A male Redstart showed up to steal the show whilst waiting for the Peregrines to make their appearance, followed by multiple sightings of Wheatear on fields above the Cove.

The field centre itself is a beautiful old building crawling with nature with Pipistrelle bats roosting under the eves, Jackdaws nesting in the masonry and a Spotted Flycatcher feeding on the lawn in front of the house. We hadn't just gone up there to admire the wildlife however. This was a module for my degree and we were being assessed on how we carried out a project. Me and another fella were mapping out and comparing the territories of Willow Warblers in two different habitats, those being the woodland and the fen. The fen was a located at the western edge of the woodland and bordered the Tarn and held some absolute treasures.

The evening that we arrived we were told to explore the area to get a feel for the place before we began our study the following day. The first thing that was noticed was the cacophony of Willow Warbler song. It felt like you were drowning in the cascading liquid song of these marvelous little birds. I feel now would be a right time to declare my love for the Willow Warbler (although I may have already done this before). To me its not the first Swallow or Chiffchaff that tells me that spring is here, but that beautiful flowing song of the Willow Warbler which never fails to put a smile on my face the first time I hear it. Although saying that, by the end of the week I'd spent so long listening to Willow Warblers that I was beginning to hear them when going to sleep at night. Which was worrying.

Top left; Sundew. Bottom left; Bog Bean. Right; Globeflower.

Down in the fen was a family of Redstarts that were one of the two we got to know quite well over the week, as well as an astonishing amount of plant life. There were Sundews (a carnivorous plant that catches its prey using a sticky secretion on its surface that form in drops), Globeflowers (which are specially evolved so they never actually open but are specially pollinated by one fly which is small enough to squeeze through the petals) and an absolute sea of Bog Bean (which I was told by my tutor is very rare and that he'd never seen anything like this).

Our work mapping the Willow Warbler territories involved doing three walks through the woodland and fen per day for 5 days. These were to be done at 6am, 1pm and 7pm. The obvious downside of this was the alarm going off at half 5 in morning but the upshot was the amount of wildlife we saw by walking through the habitats so often. We saw countless sightings of Roe Deer in the mornings and evenings, including at least two different stags and a female with two kids (Yes, Roe Deer youngsters are called kids apparently). We saw countless Spotted Flycatchers, saw a male Pied Flycatcher using a nest box and found the drumming post of a Great Spotted Woodpecker. About the only thing we didn't see were the mythical otters that were rumored to be living on the Tarn... A tantalizing footprint was as far as we got, despite the nights spent in the hide.

As spring was late it meant that breeding was still in full flow when it came to the bird life. As Willow Warblers generally make their nests in the centre of their territories then locating one would therefore represent the holy grail when it came to mapping our territories. Challenge accepted. I knew they nested on the ground and were well hidden after seeing them on Springwatch a few times. I'd never found a Willow Warbler nest before but it only took one day before I located the first one on the fen after watching the adults going in to feed. On closer inspection, the chicks were quite old so when it came to taking a picture I didn't get too close so they didn't "explode" from the nest (premature fledging to disperse themselves as an anti-predator defense).

Wren chicks smiling for the camera...

The next nest found wasn't a Willow Warblers but a Wrens and was on a rock face that I was sure there would be one. Honestly you couldn't have designed a more perfect Wren nesting site than the rock face that they were using. Being a classic Wren however, the nest was impossible to find and was only given away when she flew out as we walked by one afternoon. After a quick picture we left and watched her return to the nest (always the best part of nest finding, and something I make sure to do on all the nests I find).

Tiny Willow Warbler chicks under the rock

We were then back on Willow Warbler nest finding duty and encountered one of the most incredibly well hidden nests I have ever seen. To put it into context, four twenty year old University students couldn't find the nest even after watching the adults drop to the ground with food on multiple occasions. We searched the immediate area in which the adult had landed, including under a huge rock that we felt sure the nest would be hidden under. After giving up for the day it wasn't till the next day that I decided to have another crack and watched the adult return again. This time I positioned myself at a different angle and saw it land on the floor and jump about half a metre to the rock. Once it had flew away I went to inspect under the rock more thoroughly and sure enough, tucked deep under the rock was a beautifully well hidden nest that we had missed the day earlier. What made it more remarkable was that this rock was walked on nearly everyday by people that had laid out small mammal traps in the woods yet the birds didn't seem to mind.

Willow Warbler eggs

The nest tally rose by three more after that with the finding of a nest of blackbird eggs and two more Willow Warbler nests, one with about ready to fledge chicks and one with eggs. There's just something about nest finding that never ceases to make it fun.

The project went perfectly and we presented it to the rest of the class with no problems. There was a bird ringer present (a lovely guy by the name of Chris Wright) who rang a few birds over the week, most notably Spotted Flycatcher and Redstart. I ventured over to the other side of the flying world to catch some bats one night (although I was more happy with seeing Little Owl and Curlew on the drive to the roost) and I've now borrowed a bat detector from the University for the summer to try and find out a bit more about them. Moths are also another animal high on my agenda of new things to learn about after trying to identify some that had been caught in moth traps overnight. Their colours, shapes and imaginative names sold me on them immediately and I'm keen to learn more.

But apart from that, that's about it really.

Either a Pipistrelle or Daubenton's... I'm going Daubenton's

Spotted Flycatcher being ringed

It's been too long...

Far too long.

The whole month of May has passed since I last updated my blog and whilst I'd like to tell you its because I've been enjoying the late spring to the max.... It's not. Instead I've been sat inside my room writing coursework and revising for exams for the entire month. Unfortunately the blog took the brunt of the my sacrifice.
But I'm back and about to deliver a trilogy of ornithological updates.

University is over for another year (apart from which I've just come back from) and after coming home I've instantly gone about satisfying my nature cravings starting off with a morning of ringing.

Home of the Cave Dweller...

We were trying at a new site two weeks ago but a place I know well from visiting many times. We were at Creswell Crags, a site renowned for its archaeological significance for Ice Age man. The various caves around the lake and visitor centre were once inhabited by lions, hyenas and Ice Age man and boasts the worlds most northerly evidence of cave art.
Nowadays its a great place for wildlife. Jackdaws and Kestrels nest in the cliff faces whilst a Mute Swan usually nests on the lake. Its a top place, one that I've posted about before in my "Snow Joke" post, and it made a perfect back drop for a spot of Sunday morning ringing... Especially when the centre only opens at 7 so it meant a lay in!

We caught about 15 birds including Great Tits, Blue Tits, Robin's a couple of Marsh Tit's and a nice female Nuthatch. We finally managed to add a "net over a river" to our arsenal of ringing locations and hope in the winter that we might be lucky enough to catch a Kingfisher.

Wren's nest

We were ringing in front of 3 caves that once were the home to hyena packs, evidenced by the bones found within. However in recent years its been home to a family of creatures a lot less ferocious than a pack of hyenas... Wrens.This year was no different and it didn't take long before a Wren burst from the cave and I soon located it's nest. The Wren's latin name is Troglodytes troglodytes, meaning; "cave dweller", and it's nice to see it living up to its name!

This nest was coincidentally found just minutes after I'd been talking to Dean (another trainee and a top guy) about signing up to be a nest recorder for the BTO. He's been one for a couple of years whilst Eleanor (my trainer) records all the nest boxes in the local wood and I'll soon be joining in after having sent off for a registration form the same day.

Speaking of nests... after a quiet, but still rather successful, morning basking in the glorious weather at the Crags, we decided to head over to the wood to ring a couple of nest boxes. They're all a lot later this year due to the spring but the hope is they'll still be successful with a run of good weather. Conditions last year meant that not many young were hatched successful and added to that was the senseless destruction of nest boxes containing eggs and chicks by people coming into the wood. Luckily there has so far been no repeat and early signs are good. On the way to the first nest box we stopped by one that had been partly chewed by a squirrel earlier in the year and so had one corner opened up. In the box was a nest made earlier in the year that contained two eggs that none of us were able to identify. If anyone has any ideas then I'd love to know!

6 eggs!

8 Nuthatch chicks!

After that eggcellant mystery (don't pretend like you haven't missed my high brow puns), we moved onto a nest box that had been used by a female Nuthatch for a few years and always had a big brood. However even we were surprised when we opened the top of the box to reveal 8 baby Nuthatches! Ringing these were my first pulli (baby birds) of the year and it was nice to get back into the swing of things. On the way out of the wood we stopped off to check out a Blackbird nest we'd been told about that was about a foot off the floor and contained 6 eggs. Sure enough after a bit of searching we found it, all 6 eggs included! It's incredibly vulnerable though and I don't hold out much hope for a successful fledging I'm afraid.

But before I get too comfy I'm off to the Yorkshire Nature Reserve Malham Tarn for a University field trip and I've got a feeling I'm in for a top week...