Wandering Tits and Cetti's Warblers

This Autumn, the Tits have been on some local adventures, with Blue Tits making the sea crossing to three Pembrokeshire Islands, Skomer, Skokholm and Ramsey..... an unusual event !!

We have had a few Great Tit movements over the years, the furthest being c100km.
This Autumn we have controlled a juvenile ringed by the Pembs Ringing Group at Kilpaison Marsh in the south of the county, and bizarrely they have controlled a Blue Tit from ourselves on the Teifi.(53km)
To complete the season to date..the Pembs RG  have also had a juvenile Great Tit to Tenby (23km) and a juvenile from Rhandirmwyn mid Wales to Kilpaison Marsh (98km).

Cetti's Warblers were first recorded breeding in both the Ceredigion and Pembs sides of the Teifi Marshes in the early 1970's. - Unbelievably at the same time as the Reed Warbler started breeding in West Wales.

The Cetti's from Farlington Marsh.

Though ringing of Cetti's including a colour-ring project took place during the 1990s I am not aware of any  movements involving Teifi Marsh birds until recently.

We have ringed 152 Cetti's Warblers on the Teifi Marshes since 2008 and we have 2 controls, a bird from Llangorse Lake in Powys and a bird from Farlington Marsh in Hampshire.
We also have a  recovery of a Teifi Marsh bird in Northamptonshire and now our latest recovery from our new ringing site Goodwick Moor at Fishguard to the south of  the county, Kilpaison Marsh near Rhoscrowther.

With 39 new Cetti's Warblers ringed this year, 10 of which were ringed on Goodwick Moor by Karen we are looking forward to further movements as the population expands. Our current oldest bird was ringed in 2014 and has been recaptured each year since.

Pipits...worth the 7 year wait...!

We have been ringing Pipits on the Teifi estuary since since September 2010...
Totals to date...Rock 86, Meadow 34 and today we added Water Pipit.
As time passes the estuary is changing and their old feeding haunt of the Patch spit is disappearing.This morning Wendy, Chris and I went to the area currently favoured by the Pipits

This Water Pipit was feeding with the Rock and Meadow Pipits and was one of 8 Pipits caught along with 2 Meadow and 5 Rock Pipits.

We have only had same winter recaptures of Rock Pipits and we rarely see ringed birds during the breeding season. A great surprise this morning with recapture of 2657817..

Ringed 6th October 2010, one of 11 Rock Pipits ringed that morning by Wendy and I on only our 3rd ever session trapping Pipits.

We have no recaptures of Meadow Pipits from the Teifi. We have a recapture of 349 days at one of our upland Woodcock wintering study sites near Boncath, and a 3yr 350 day recapture at Mwnt, one of our migration monitoring sites.

Rich. D
(Rock Pipit photo Wendy)