Chiffs are first...but news of a Dunlin to Spain

A short session on marsh on Sunday morning produced two new Chiffchaff - a start to Spring...

At night we are still lamping our hillside study sites. Our target species, the Woodcock, become very difficult though the numbers are good. We see up to 15 or more in a night and catch one. Now the Woodcock are migrating they are often in groups making the catching of an individual difficult.

We are still catching Redwing and Fieldfare whilst lamping and Meadow Pipits are now moving and being caught too.

Siskins - another control this week..to go with controls of Greenfinch and Goldfinch.
We now have our second Siskin that has been controlled by Charlie Sargeant 39km ESE in Carmarthenshire. One of these has been recaptured back at our original ringing site.
Several of our Goldfinches are recaptures from previous Spring passages.

Dunlin BT48695 becomes our second Dunlin control....The first was from the Teifi to Newport !!
This Dunlin was controlled in southern Spain.....

Parque Natural Marismas del Odiel is the second most significant wetland reserve in Andulucia. A third of Europe's Spoonbill population lives there.
Dunlin BT48695 was a juvenile when ringed at Newport on 27th August 2014. The adults leave the breeding grounds earlier thus we catch the young in August on their passage south, most likely on route to North or North-west Africa. When controlled a year later, the 14th August 2015, the bird was likely to be returning from spending it's first summer near the wintering ground. In their first summer Dunlin generally do not return to their breeding grounds. This Dunlin would be of a race breeding to the west of their range and not a UK wintering bird from the East.

Spring is nearly here....

Just to update the year so far....
On Saturday 27th February Wendy and I opened a net on the marsh to get the season started..
Two retrap Wrens the reward...Hmm
A couple of lamping sessions this week, Fieldfare, Snipe, Meadow Pipit and a couple of new Woodcock ringed - some jumpy tail flashing Woodcock too.

Garden ringing is our main activity during the variable weather winter season with Siskins a priority, and breeding season RAS for the species. January and February has produced 73 new Siskin, 19 retraps and one control.

This regular ringing produces some nice local movements such as  D678636.
Ringed in Boncath 18th February 2014, controlled in St. Dogmaels the following day the 19th.
Retrapped in Boncath 24th February 2016. (2 years later)
An interesting bird for us, as not caught during the breeding season. Perhaps just a winterer or passage....

This Rook in a 6m net was a surprise, and a new bird for the group. I never imagined looking at emarginations on Rooks !!

Marsh Tits are still garden birds for Wendy and I though not numerous.

 This distinctive Blackbird appeared in Karen's Potter trap.

Dai out-did us all with a month long experience in New Zealand. Here a colour-ringed Shore Plover, one of New Zealand's endemics.

A Wheatear just along the coast near Aberystwyth yesterday - time for spring traps at our coastal migration headland at Mwnt.....

Scottish Siskin to Wales...

A Siskin caught in my garden on the 6th January was ringed on 12th October 2015 in Killearn, Stirling. 441km, 86 days. This is the furthest movement north as the map showing our other Siskin controls and recoveries demonstrates.

Credit to the BTO for such quick news about recoveries now.
Siskins leave us in June/July and don't start reappear until January so we are adding to the picture of where they go.

Looking back at last year, our blog at the same time was also about Siskins.
Siskins.. wandering residents, breeders and RAS

An update from that blog about RAS - enough adults were retrapped in Richard's garden during the breeding season to make a viable RAS.

Once again in early January we are starting to see an increase in Siskins on the feeders and on the rare occasions that the weather is OK to open a net we are starting to catch more including some from previous years.

Other birds caught this month include an increasing number of Goldfinch, a couple of Lesser Redpolls and a bird not often caught in my garden, a Treecreeper (and yes, that is a photo in January taken on the 13th with daffodils already out!)

Our lamping has slowed down while the moon is bright but this month we have ringed Woodcock, Skylark and Fieldfare. Very few Golden Plover have been seen - on fields where we would normally see around 50 we have been struggling to find one or two. Maybe this cold weather will cause some movement to us.

Have a look back at our year of ringing with 2015 totals and 2015 recoveries and controls now added on the right side of the blog.

Frank....the final Woodcock

Or Frankie....our final Woodcock of 2015.

Not our busiest pre-Christmas Woodcock ringing, hopefully with the predicted change in the weather we may find a few more...
Frank was only the third Woodcock to be captured in this field at our Blaeneifed site. It is usually our best field for Golden Plover but none there tonight.

(photos and map by Wendy)

We have been asked to collect dislodged feathers as we process to be used to support biometrics to confirm sexing. A study in Denmark has shown a bias towards females wintering in their study area.
Is this related to different sexes wintering in different areas or are more males shot on the breeding grounds producing a sex bias between adults across the wintering range ? Due to the breeding strategy of the females, does having less males actually affect breeding success......?
Woodcock in the winter....something exciting to do in the dark...!!
Happy New Year...

Woodcock in Haute-Saone, France

Woodcock EY33804 ....Was shot by hunters in Bassin de Champagney, Haute-Saone, on 20th December 2015. The most southerly Woodcock that we have had recovered.

Where was the likely breeding area for EY22804......?

Ringed as a second calendar year bird on 2nd Jan 2014 at our Boncath site in the Preseli Hills, North Pembs. Why didn't it return to West Wales ?
Numbers of wintering Woodcock are low at present, in fact none seen on four of our best fields at our Crymych site tonight - though under the moonlight.

The BTO Birdtrack graph suggests that fewer Woodcock have arrived in Britain from the continent.
If the mild wet winter continues presumably the Woodcock will not reach us in any number....?

We will certainly be out looking !

One Woodcock....four seasons later

Woodcock EX94433...was ringed as a juvenile at 2300 on 27th December 2011 at our Crymych site.

At 2200.. EX94433 was the fourth Woodcock captured last night.
The first adult of the evening, and had been ringed 380m away in the adjacent field. This bird has not been caught since, and is one of c80 Woodcock ringed on this site in the past five winters.

You will have seen from previous posts that we use a geolocater in the field to enable us to record the exact ringing location. The red line indicates the distance between ringing (red) and recapture (yellow). The green line is our path last night.
We also carry IPMR (Integrated Population Monitoring Reporter) in the field, all 31,449 ringing records as an Excel spreadsheet...

Having access to ringing data in the field cemented our enthusiasm. We knew that EX....birds were "history", and we soon discovered that EX94433 was our best recapture, almost four years on !!

It was one of 9 Woodcock caught that night which we wrote about in "Blown away by 9/9!"

Four new Woodcock last night, one adult, three juvenile and the one recapture. One Meadow Pipit was also ringed. Crymych is one of our four main winter Woodcock survey sites on sheep pasture in North Pembrokeshire. It is our second highest at 170m and so far this winter is where we have seen the most Woodcock.

Garden by day and fields at night..

The windy weather continues, greatly limiting the opportunity to open mist nets. A brief respite allowed a session with our trainee, Ryan.

This was his first experience of garden ringing so two new species for him but common in the garden; Greenfinch and Great Spotted Woodpecker. A Blackcap caught was the second this week, the first was carrying a lot of fat and weighed a massive 22.3 g!

This was a new Great Spotted Woodpecker, the 21st in my garden since 2008. We also caught a retrap ringed 3 years ago and not seen since.
On Sunday there was an even shorter gap in the weather but it gave a chance for Mark, the Assistant Warden on Bardsey, to ring with us before his return the island. A Nuthatch was a new species in the hand for him - not many of those on Bardsey!

The windy weather does mean it is good for lamping. We have walked many miles in the last week but few birds caught in the continuing mild weather. Golden Plover numbers are increasing slowly at one of our sites.

We mostly catch young birds

 so it was good to compare with an adult

Woodcock numbers in our usually good fields are very low. Owen in Mid Wales has already caught over 100 but we have only caught four.

Many fields are still ungrazed with very lush and long wet grass and others have what seems to be a lot more sheep than usual. Hopefully numbers will increase soon.
This picture illustrates how good the fields can be with birds previously ringed or retrapped shown. During last nights walk shown of 3.5km we only saw 2 Woodcock.

Unusually, no Fieldfare were seen and just a couple of Skylark, one of which we caught.