Typical March

Not much happened yesterday at The Lodge. A bit quiet, with most of the winter visitors having left and the summer warblers not yet arrived.

The roost produced a couple of Chaffinches with long wings - males of 90mm or above - which may be continental birds. Interestingly these were the birds with the highest fat score of 40 -50 on the ESF scale, which is high for a site in our geographical position. So these birds may well have been getting into condition for the journey back to the breeding grounds.

One of the retrap Great Tits caught was originally ringed at the site in December 2006, and caught each winter since, but always before Christmas. This is the first time that it has been caught in the spring. Sometimes you think that the more you ring then the more questions you ask.

In total we caught 20 birds of which only 5 were retraps. Here are the totals:-

Blackbird 2
Song Thrush 1
Great Tit 0 (2)
Dunnock 1
Chaffinch 7 (1)
Long Tailed Tit 2 (1)
Goldcrest 1 (1)
Wren 1

.... as I was saying and Bruce Almighty

Today Chris and I decided to have half a day ringing at our Blackbrook site, where the Tree Sparrow colony is situated. The weather was cold with the sun breaking out later in the afternoon. Steve and Mandy had told us that Yellowhammers were coming into the Partridge feeders. and before long we had a couple in the nets.

Male Yellowhammer

Like the Chaffinches in the previous blog, Yellowhammers obtain the breeding plumage by the action of abrasion of the feathers. The brown tips gradually wear away to reveal the bright yellow of the feather.

Female Yellowhammer

Like a lot of birds the female of the species is duller, this helps camouflage them while breeding.

We also caught a first year (age code 5) male Great Spotted Woodpecker, which was unusually incredibly quiet, but with cracking markings.

Great Spotted Woodpecker

When Mandy returned from feeding the Pheasants, she let Bruce the Springer Spaniel (and father of two of my dogs) out of the farmhouse. He promptly decided to wee in Chris's ringing box, not a bit was spilt outside the box. We just have to teach him to put the lid down afterwards and he will be a real "Renaissance Man". Hence he's called "Bruce Almighty".

We ended up with a total of 45 new birds (no retraps):-

Great Spotted Woodpecker 1
Yellowhammer 6
Tree Sparrow 6
Blue Tit 13
Great Tit 3
Dunnock 6
Robin 2
Blackbird 4
Chaffinch 3
Greenfinch 1

Worth the wait

We started at our usual Saturday afternoon ringing site on Charnwood Forest at about 1.30pm. The feeders hadn't been filled as our seed supply had run out and in any case we would be moving from this site for the summer in a couple of weeks and didn't want to leave seed in the ringing lab for the mice to eat over the summer.

So no feeders no birds. I thought I would take some photos while we waited for the roost to develop. This is the old Stable Block and our ringing lab is the door and window below the upstairs window.

The Old Stable Block, Charnwood Lodge

I say ringing lab with tongue in cheek, what else do we call it? It's not a hut - far too grand!

At this time of year there are a lot of semi-wild Snowdrops around the site. These will be followed by an equally impressive display of primroses and finally the woodland floor will be covered with bluebells.

Snowdrops

Finally, after nearly four hours and only four birds, a Blue Tit, Dunnock, Long Tailed Tit and a retrap Great Tit, but plenty of tea and walnut cake, the Chaffinches started to fly over and come into the roost. Here is a photo of the start of the main roost ride between stands of Rhododendron.

Roost net ride.

Chris went round for the first batch of Chaffinches from the roost only to bring back two Brambling as well. A male and a female, both first years (age 5).

Male Brambling

You can see from this photo one of the strategies some male finches and buntings use to aquire breeding plumage. Instead of having to go through the trauma of a moult , the new head feathers when moulted in late summer and early autumn have brown/grey tips to them. As the feathers abraid during the winter the tips wear and the underlying colour shows through, Black on Brambling and Reed Bunting, Yellow on Yellowhammer and Blue on Chaffinches. Of course the females are subject to the same degree of moult, but the underlying are colours are not so contrasting.

Female Brambling

So, in the end, it turned out quite a good session with a total of 30 birds ringed, (of 10 species), with 16 new Chaffinches, the 2 Bramblings, 3 Blackbirds (one female had the startings of a brood patch - code 1) and a Song Thrush.

So it was worth the wait.

.........and then it rained !!!!

Another afternoon at the Lodge to ring around the feeders and finish off with the Chaffinch roost at dusk. The feeders brought in the usual tits, with a pair of Great Tits that were ringed as pulli from the same brood in 2009. So at least 2 of the brood of 8 chicks have survived the winter so far.

We also caught two new adult (6) Treecreepers, one of which is shown below. Ageing Treecreepers has always been tricky, when I started ringing in the '70s all treecreepers after they had undergone the moult were aged as 2 (fully grown, hatching year unknown). Not until relatively recently has it been discovered that the size of the spot at the end of the 3rd primary covert can indicate the age of the bird. A small spot, as in the photo, would be an adult. A larger tear drop shaped spot would indicate a first year bird (3 or 5).

Adult treecreeper showing small spot on 3rd pc.

The weather was showery most of the afternoon until dusk when the heavens opened. Luckily we had just finished getting the last birds from the roost and quickly furled the nets while we processed the remaining birds in the ringing lab. In the end we caught 48 birds of which 30 were new birds. The roost produced 16 new and 3 retrap chaffinches together with a song thrush and a couple of blackbirds. Four of the male chaffinches had long wings of 90mm and above. I have heard it said that birds with wings over 90mm can be assumed to be wintering birds from the continent, although I have not read any papers on this.

We finally went home wet and cold and Chris kindly offered to put the nets in her airing cupboard to dry out for next weeks excursion.

Yesterday

We were able to get a session in Roost ringing yesterday afternoon, the first since 23rd Jan and was very successful with 58 birds caught. 30 new birds included 19 Chaffinch, a Nuthatch and a Goldcrest. The Chaffinch were carrying good amounts of fat and weighed between 19g and 24g.
Among the retraps we had 2 Coal Tit and a Great Tit that were all first ringed in 2004.

Nice Jay at the Lodge

A pretty good roost session at Charnwood Lodge with 35 new birds including 2 Brambling, 1 Redwing and 25 Chaffinch. We don't catch Jays very often but they really are quite stunning. One of the ageing features is to compare the lovely black on blue 'barcodes', adults basically look 'regular' (like this one) first year birds look as if they've been shuffled.
It was also encouraging to catch some Goldcrests and find that despite the recent extreme weather their weights were 'normal'.

The worst may be over?

Further to the Fieldfare catches, it's good to know that the average weights of Chris's birds was close to 100 grams (although the sample size was small). Compare that with Portland where birds evidently forced out by cold weather averaged 96.3g on the 7th January and 92.4g on the 8th. BWP indicates that exhausted, moribund and birds killed by cold weather weigh in the 50's to low 60's so if the worst is over, birds that have managed to hold their own should now survive.

I was pleasantly surprised earlier today to hear and then see two Goldcrest in a small ivy clad clump who were there before the snow and I feared had succumbed but must have been able to feed and get some protection from excessive heat loss.