House Sparrow RAS - April summary

April was a busy month with 57 colour ringed birds re-sighted and a further ten processed (4 new, 6 subsequent encounters). ‘Brown bib’ as I started to call him, is now P05 and poor old ‘Stumpy’ is still ‘Stumpy’ as he does not have the means to retain a colour ring on his left leg. N41, an adult female from 2018 or earlier, went missing around the beginning of March but turned up without its’ colour ring and so is now P10.

40 of the colour ringed birds were males (41 with 'Stumpy') and 26 were females.

16 of the re-sighted/ringed birds were known to be full adults and 25 of the birds were from 2020 nests. The remaining 26 were birds that could be from 2020 nests or any time earlier.

Much of the re-sighting work that I have done has been from a ‘comfy’ chair while having a morning cuppa. I have found that it is worth looking at different times of the day to record other individuals. I can pick out quite a few birds because certain feathers are worn, broken or simply white but when they do not even have a metal ring (let alone a colour ring), I can hear myself ‘tut’ out of mild frustration.

Although the April mornings were often chilly, the sunshine during the day was warm and I frequently watched the house sparrows flycatching over the lawn; what they lack in ability, they make up for in perseverance. During one spell at the bottom of the garden, I watched a party of at least 6 birds all flycatching in the adjacent field being grazed by cattle. These birds could be seen returning to their nests to feed chicks and then returning to the field.

I have also been looking at my nest boxes and some other breeding locations that I identified last year. Gradually I am starting to build a picture of how many pairs breed and if I am lucky even at this early stage, I can see which birds are breeding where. It is already becoming apparent that ‘parental responsibilities’ and ‘home ownership’ may not be as straightforward as I had previously considered. Colour ringing of a largely sedentary and social species presents an opportunity for more than just survival rates to be calculated.

Today, the 2^nd of May, started chilly and quite still and I managed to colour ring another 9 adult birds (7 new birds and 2 subsequent encounters of birds from 2020). 7 of the birds were females and all had some degree of brood patch; these birds help to address the imbalance of males to females seen in April.

My hopes of seeing some young fledge from my most advanced nest box this week have been dashed. The incumbent male (P01) busily went about his feeding duties then went missing sometime after the morning of the 25^th of April and after several sorties from a male Sparrowhawk. The female (N53) was last seen on the 27^th. Then, on the 28^th, three fresh dead chicks at FS stage were on the ground under the box and a single piece of dry grass was poking from the nest hole. Retreating from the vicinity, a new male and a new female were observed entering the box and perching nearby with the male calling frequently. P01 and N53 have still not shown up.

April news, Sedge Warbler...from Lough Neagh

Lough Neagh to the Teifi - finally

The Sedge Warbler migration season on the Teifi Marshes has started with the retrap of a bird ringed in Northern Ireland.

ACE5804  ringed as an adult Lough Neagh, Tyrone Northern Ireland 27/07/2019

                 Subsequent encounter    Teifi Marshes, Ceredigion 20/04/2021

         633 days 305 km SSE

This bird would would have covered a lot more distance than 305km having been to Africa at least three times.

Looking at the excellent blog of Causeway Coast Ringing Group, 

this Sedge Warbler was one of 167 ringed on 27th July 2019. It is always interesting to read about the sites and activities of other groups whose birds we encounter and particularly nice when the ringing session at which the shared bird was ringed is written about.

Return to Lough Neagh 2019

The first Sedge Warbler on the Teifi Marshes caught this spring was a returning bird ringed in 2017.

Early Reed Warbler singing for 3 days from the 1st but one not heard again or caught until the 22nd. A nice start to Reed Warbler RAS, this was a bird originally ringed in July 2018. In most years the first Reed Warblers we catch are returning site faithful adults. 

Once again this spring the Teifi Marshes are an important roost site for migrating White Wagtails. Up to 60 on some nights have been over the reed bed at dusk.

 

As of today we have ringed 46 White Wagtails this April. Often in the evenings on the Marsh we have large numbers of Hirundines feeding, eg on the 20th c500 Sand Martins. These adult birds - unlike birds in the late summer rarely get caught in the nets. In fact wthis year none ...so far.

Following the wipe out of the Marshes Cetti's Warblers in 2019 due to the Beast from the East, and apparently  no on site breeding since, great to have caught 4 new Cetti's this spring and to hear them day and night. Where are the six presumed passage Cetti's we ringed last autumn...?

Reed Bunting RAS.  The colour ringing is proving a great success, even the ad hoc feeding station in the car-park has already helped us to 24 sightings in April. 

Reed Bunting by Tommy Evans

The colour ringing of these birds is an on-going annual ringing and re sighting project now in the 7th year.

The above is a short summary of activities on the Teifi Marshes.

A post to follow with updates from other projects from other sites we study.

(Wendy J and Rich D)

Early Spring Movements....

The focus has been on garden ringing while travel restrictions were in place. 

Several of the Group have been ringing in gardens for many years so useful long term data is being collected. This Coal Tit with abnormal plumage was ringed in 2015 and has only been re-caught once since. The longevity record is over 9 years so a while to go yet for this one.

Siskins are one of the most frequently caught species in March. Over 200 ringed by the Group so far this month.

 

 

Some Siskins are starting to show signs of breeding while others are still migrating with a lot of fat, the heaviest weighing 16.6g

Many are site faithful both on migration and breeding. 
Richard  caught 2 Siskins, both ringed at the same time in January 2019 and caught together this year, 2 years later. One of them was also caught in April 2019 with a brood patch so breeding locally. Arfon had the same with 2 ringed together last February and caught side by side in the net this month.

Siskins also move between our gardens in Llechryd, Boncath, Ffarmers and Bancyffordd even though up to 46 km apart which was the movement of a female from Boncath to Fframers and back again. Siskins frequently move backwards and forwards between the closer gardens which although 6 km apart are joined by more or less continuous woodland. 

 

A first though was this local Lesser Redpoll movement, ringed in Llechryd in January when several were visiting the garden and caught this morning in Boncath.

 

We are waiting for details of 2 birds ringed elsewhere and caught in Wendy's garden this weekend, a Siskin and Coal Tit. The Coal Tit recovery is of particular interest....

Some recent news of other birds ringed elsewhere

Blue Tit

ARF3088 ringed in Sunnyhill Wood, Tregaron on 31/05/2020 as a pullus by Mid Wales RG

                Re-encountered  Llechryd, Ceredigion 06/03/2021  279 days 51 km WSW 

This was an interesting movement as Blue Tits do not often move far. The route was possibly down the River Teifi.

 - Of interest as we write a Blue Tit has appeared on Skokholm this morning !

Goldfinch
S872982  Ringed Funtley, Hampshire 03/12/2017 by Trevor Codlin

                Re-encountered Llechryd, Ceredigion 08/03/2021 1191 days 271 km WNW 

This too was interesting because the same movement of a Goldfinch had occurred previously. One ringed in Funtley in March 2016 was in Llechryd in April 2016, 29 days later.

 

The map shows some of the Goldfinch movements to and from Llechryd 

A Goldfinch caught today in Llechryd had been ringed at Mwnt in 2018 while whoosh netting Linnets for a RAS project. As always, March has proved to be an important month for recording Finch movement.

Colour ring recording plays a very important part in the BTO ringing scheme. We encourage photographers to help with this. We were grateful to Tommy Evans, one of our local photographers, for managing to get the code on a colour ringed Knot that was in the Teifi Estuary for a few weeks earlier in the year.

 

It had been ringed on the Dyfi Estuary at Ynyslas in September 2020 by Mid Wales RG, 130 days 64km.
Read "We're Knot flagging" on Mid Wales Ringers blog about the project and some of the resightings including one seen in Portugal.

This year sees two new colour ringing projects for the group.

Arfon has just started a Willow Tit RAS in the Tregaron area with the first birds colour ringed this weekend.

 

More on this from Arfon as the year progresses.

Andy's RAS on House Sparrows is showing how useful the numbered rings are in monitoring a species which are very net wary.  Just last week alone he recorded 23 males and 21 females visiting the feeders. 9 of the 44 were originally metal ringed from 2019 or earlier. 
 

Last month we held our AGM by Zoom. The usual agenda business was conducted successfully through this new way of meeting for the Group. After a difficult year, particularly for our trainees, we made the simple target for the year -   To get back to sites as a priority then the plans and ideas will flow for the year.

With Wales "stay at home" restriction now changed to "stay local" last week we can once again start to ring at a few sites beyond our gardens.

 

(Wendy James and Rich D)

Garden ringing - Danish too

During these times while travel is restricted, garden ringing has been of increased importance. All of the Group with C permits (non restricted)  ring on their own properties. We have had 2 RAS projects, a garden CES as well as sessions primarily used for training..

Alison  has written a short summary of her garden experiences since gaining her C permit.

 I achieved my C permit in late 2019, so 2020 was my first full year of ‘independent‘ ringing, and for obvious reasons, a significant amount has been garden - based.

 

Initially I wasn’t sure how garden- ringing would pan-out, whether it would be a relentless amount of Blue Tits and very little else. I was however, pleasantly surprised when by end of the year I had processed 730 birds of 25 species , 665 of which were new birds.

 

Species Name	S	N	Grand Total
Robin	8	15	23
Goldfinch	1	64	65
Great Tit	9	71	80
Starling	2	74	76
Blue Tit	13	138	151
Blackbird	3	8	11
Dunnock	14	13	27
Chaffinch	5	100	105
Coal Tit		7	7
Marsh Tit	1	1	2
Greenfinch	2	37	39
Nuthatch	3	4	7
Brambling		1	1
House Sparrow	3	112	115
Collared Dove		5	5
Song Thrush		2	2
Siskin		2	2
Treecreeper		1	1
Willow Warbler	1		1
Great Spotted Woodpecker		2	2
House Martin		1	1
Bullfinch		4	4
Rook		1	1
Blackcap		1	1
Wren		1	1
Grand Total	65	665	730

I caught birds that I had never seen use my garden before, such as Treecreeper, Blackcap and Willow Warbler ( a control from Andys’ site in Carmarthenshire) , and I ringed 3 new species - House Martin, Brambling and Rook.

 

 

Overall, I’ve enjoyed garden ringing and look forward to building on the knowledge and results I’ve obtained this year. The one drawback of having mist nets so visible through the window though is that you get to see ‘the one that got away’. Twice I’ve watched a Sparrowhawk bounce out of the net now.........

See link for details and updates on Andy's results with his House Sparrow RAS involving colour-ringing.

A few Starlings have been ringed in Wendy's garden so when one was caught with a ring she was expecting it to be one she had ringed. A big surprise though, it had a ring with the words ZOOL.MUSEUM DENMARK !!

 

 

The details have been submitted to the BTO and we await confirmation of news via social media that it was ringed in Skagen on the 25th July 2020. 

 Siskins numbers are increasing in several of our garden sites. As well as new birds there have been a good number of sight faithful returning birds. This one was ringed in Wendy's garden in January 2018 and seen each January since.

A couple of movements of birds from last year that we have just received from the BTO

Goldfinch   APE4200 

Ringed    Tickenham, North Somerset         19/02/2020      Gordano Valley Ringing Group

                Bancyffordd, Carmarthenshire    21/12/2020         306 days 124km WNW 

 

Sedge Warbler AEK0013 

Ringed   Teifi Marshes, Ceredigion          28/07/2020    

               St Phillippe de Grand Lieu, Loire Atlantique      15/08/2020         18 days 590km SSE

 

House Sparrow project update

With 2020 over, I accessed my House Sparrow data on Demon and found that I ringed 475 new birds during the year. 367 of these birds were identified as birds of the year and 70 were adults/breeders from 2019 or earlier. 38 of the birds were caught post autumn moult and so ageing could not be specific. In addition, a further 14 birds ringed between 2017 and 2019 were also reencountered however this figure is considered light as annual totals for the species in this period were relatively low (2017:28, 2018:124, 2019:49). The resulting number of individuals encountered during 2020 totalled 489.

In mid-October 2020, I began to fit colour rings to all birds. By the 31^st of December, 52 rings had been fitted and so the process of sighting and recording began. I contacted all the householders in the village to inform them of the ringing and was pleasantly surprised to be contacted by three interested parties. While looking for colour rings on days when I chose not to ring, I was quite surprised to see numerous individuals that did not have a metal ring fitted and so with a little more effort I might have got to the 500 figure!

The 52 birds colour ringed comprised of 30 new birds and 22 reencounters with 8 of these being individuals from previous years which is probably sufficient to show how difficult it can be to recatch the savvy House Sparrow.

I built several ‘potter’ type traps to avoid mist netting regularly, but these traps have proved completely unsuccessful in respect of House Sparrows. The garden is large enough to allow some randomly positioned nets now and again. As my hens are inside due to avian flu precautions, the robbing Sparrows are not lurking around the chicken hut at feeding time so no point in mist netting the bushes in that area now. Little depressions in the ground in my poly tunnel path tell me that birds are dust bathing so I will have a net up in there one day and possibly catch the culprits. It will not be long before amorous birds are hammering around the garden and catches will increase if I keep plenty of bag in the net.

I use modified circlip pliers to fit the mini darvic rings. Ideally, I would have fitted the rings so that they can be read from the bottom upwards when viewed from the outside. Immediately I found that the direction of coiling meant that I would have to fit the rings to read top downwards to minimise the opening of the ring while maintaining good visual aspect during fitting. This may be partly down to my technique, but you need to work in a safe and comfortable way. To date, I have broken one ring, the first ring, by trying to open it too far. I have found that dropping the rings into warm (not hot) water is enough to relieve the stress in the ring especially when the ambient temperature is low.

Perseverance and luck, may get me at least another 50 birds colour ringed prior to the appearance of any offspring in 2021. With the cold start to 2021, I have not done much ringing and only have two birds to report. Female NF10558 (not colour ringed) was found fresh dead next to my car on the 4^th of Jan with a mass of only 22.5g. The bird was ringed on the 23^rd of Feb. 2019 and never reencountered. The first colour ring of the year (N53) was fitted to a female first ringed on the 17^th of November 2018 and reencountered on the 14^th of July 2020. These low encounter rates already contrast to N41, colour ringed on the 6^th of December 2020. Originally ringed on the 28^th of September 2018, it was reencountered on the 9^th of July 2020 and has been sighted five times at two locations since being colour ringed.

Some thoughts for 2021

Plenty to look forward to in this coming year...

Although last year provided various challenges - as a group we ringed 72 species, only a few down on the very good total of 78 in the previous year.

72 species in 2020  .....78 species in 2019

The difference in the variety of species had no impact on numbers ringed as you can see from the species ringed in 2019 but not in 2020

....Yellowhammer, Yellow Wagtail, Yellow-browed Warbler, Leach's Petrel, Chough, Mallard, Oystercatcher, Water Rail and Wheatear.

The number of new birds ringed was very similar with....

 7342 new birds ringed in 2020  .. 7493 new birds ringed in 2019

The numbers of certain species reflect the effort at ringing sites due to movement restrictions as we focused more on "home locations"

Obvious examples ...Blackcaps down from 406 to 147,  Chiffchaff down from 426 to 169

Species ringed at  " home locations" show many increases, some of these increases are due to  special effort eg  House Sparrows up from 120 to 736 - helped by Andy's new colour-ring project (see below)

Moorhen - only 1 each in each year, an amazingly low number as they wander the rides on the Marsh  past our potter traps. 

 

Wagtails  - we caught Pied but we missed out totally on White Wagtails in 2020 - and Yellow Wagtail.

 Redwing with  213 in 2020, 85 in 2019 -  we can easily catch these migrant Thrushes at our home locations

Our lamping activities were affected, with only 56 Woodcock ringed  - 94 in 2019 and consequently less Golden Plover and Fieldfare.

 

 Movements of  birds reported to us in 2020

Details have been noted in blogs during the year and are listed on the Controls and Recoveries page

Highlights include....

A Blackbird to Sweden

The same Storm Petrel to Bardsey, Wooltack Point and Porth Iago

Goldfinch to N Ireland

Great Tit to Warrington

Woodcock to Russia and one of our own Woodcock ringed in 2017 caught in the adjacent field in Boncath.

 

House Sparrow colour ringing and RAS project

See Andy's previous post House Sparrows- colour ringing commences

Reed Bunting colour ringing and RAS project

This RAS project is now entering it's 8th year. During last year we only colour-ringed 45 birds (in 2019 146 birds, in 2018 110 birds)

A Reed Bunting ringed in 2012 as an adult was resighted in 2020, so now 8+ years old.

Arfon has just set up a Willow Tit RAS based around Tregaron - more from Arfon during the season.

 

New sites

An interesting new site in an upland plantation in the Preseli hills where we plan a migration monitoring study with particular emphasis on Warblers.

 Alison is setting up a site in a small woodland near Mynachlogddu managed by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales which will complement our other sites adding different habitat.

Garden CES 

A chance to take part in a new BTO garden ringing project was welcomed enthusiastically. Starting at a time when we were all having to stay at home, two sites were set up that individuals could run alone on their own land. Both were successful with a good number of birds caught. The site at Llechryd in South Ceredigion will be continued next year.

 

415 birds of 20 species in the 12 standard sessions.
 

Some final notes as we enter the 14th year of the Teifi RG

The Group AGM will be via ZOOM in late January / early February...agenda items to Wendy asap.

The WhatsApp messaging seems to be working well....?

If other Group members could write posts and updates on their ringing activities, it would be helpful to everyone. 

Wendy J and Rich D

The early winter

For 12 years we have been studying Woodcock, mainly on sheep pasture. These birds are always caught at night by lamping and a hand net, often other species are caught too like Fieldfare, Skylark and Golden Plover.

 

 

 On our second visit to a new site, an upland plantation near Crymych we caught a Woodcock at dawn in a mist net - our first Woodcock in a mist net!  This site is situated in the hilltop between and above two of our main study farms.

 An opportunity to look at the ageing features that we use at night - in daylight. This is an adult showing pale tips to the primary coverts and the more flat end to the primaries.

The plantation on Frenni Fawr is at a height of 274 metres. We will mainly be ringing here to study migrating species such as Willow Warblers. A few visits over winter will give us an idea of birds that use the area throughout the year or as winter visitors, maybe Thrushes and Owls.  As well as ringing, all birds recorded on visits are entered into Birdtrack.

Although the plantation is surrounded by sheep fields there is a small patch of interesting dwarf Oak woodland, nearly at the summit of Frenni Fawr. It is the highest semi-natural woodland in Pembrokeshire. This article describes the woodland and it seems little is known about it's history and why the trees are dwarf.

Frenni Fawr woodland

Being so close to our ringing site we hope to learn a bit more about it and what species of birds feed or breed there, if any.

Further up the Teifi valley Arfon Williams with the assistance of locals is starting a new RAS for the Willow Tit. This will also become our third colour-ringing project, the others being Reed Buntings and Starlings.

 More on this new Willow Tit RAS from Arfon as the project develops.