Yellow eyes

We went back to Paxton Pits to do a bit more pruning around our net rides. While we were working in one area of the site, we set a couple of nets in a quieter part. We only caught 10 birds, but this young male Sparrowhawk (hatched last year) was one of them!

 

We also caught a few Long-tailed Tits, including a bird first ringed in autumn 2009, so it's now in at least its sixth calendar year (as a minimum). Not bad for a little bird that's been through some hard winters.

Where do birds come from?

Well, the obvious answer is 'eggs', of course. But after 18 months of bird ringing at home, I'm starting to get some interesting results - from birds I've ringed and which have then gone elsewhere ('controls'), or birds ringed elsewhere which I've then caught at a later date ('recoveries').

Before I went off to Canada, I managed to catch some warblers in a net over a ditch. Two of them were controls and another produced a recovery, which is pretty good going.

I caught a Chiffchaff which had been ringed as a young bird at Rye Meads the previous autumn, as well as the Whitethroat I mentioned in a previous post.

And I just heard about one of the Blackcaps I caught on 20 April. It had reached Rutland Water six days later, and they caught it again four days after that, by which time it had lost a couple of grams in weight so is probably breeding there. Fat is migration fuel, and there's no point carrying it around if you've arrived at your destination!

A couple of other birds have been less fortunate. A female Siskin ended up in the jaws of a cat in Sandy a few weeks later, while a Song Thrush lasted for another seven months before dying in unknown circumstances, also in Sandy.

Here's a map with the best bits so far.


View Bird movements in a larger map

Fluffy babies

It's that time of year again... the time for fluffy babies.

Juvenile Robin

This one's starting its post-juvenile moult, getting the orange breast feathers

Wren

Blue Tit

Coal Tit

Great Tit

Another Great Tit

The fluffiest of them all... baby Long-tailed Tit

My Canadian beach holiday

I spent the whole of May on the shores of Lake Erie, in Ontario, Canada

I was helping Bird Studies Canada with their Migration Monitoring Program at Long Point Bird Observatory

We caught some pretty nice stuff. Here's a male Prothonotary Warbler

Male Blackburnian Warbler

Male Cape May Warbler

Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird (didn't band them, but just handling them was AMAZING!)

Male Magnolia Warbler

Red-eyed Vireo

Male Eastern Bluebird

White-eyed Vireo

Yellow-breasted Chat

Brown Thrasher

Male Common Grackle

It wasn't just birds. These are Coyote tracks not far from our cabin

Gulls at the Tip of Long Point

Early mornings take their toll after a month, but they were worth it

We watched some spectacular weather passing us by, in the middle of the lake

Some of the facilities were a bit basic...

Here's my stuff drying on the line

A fantastic gourmet meal starring freshly-picked wild asparagus, the best I've ever tasted

Dawn at the Tip

My last evening was beautifully calm and I didn't want to leave :o(

Eventually they dragged me off in a boat and I was sent back to Blighty

To see a whole load of photos, have a look on Flickr.

photos taken with Apple iPhone

Long-distance Clara

Here's a bird with a little story to tell. This morning I caught a Whitethroat already wearing a ring (a 'control'). The number looked kind of familiar to me so I asked a few other local ringers if it was 'theirs'. It turned out to have been ringed near Tempsford in Bedfordshire, as a chick in the nest, back in June 2010!

When this information is crunched by the BTO, it'll say that the distance travelled between its nest and my place is only about 6km over slightly less than three years.

But in reality, it'll have made the journey from Bedfordshire to sub-Saharan Africa once in autumn 2010, then back the other way in spring 2011 and back again, probably the same in 2012 and has made it back again in 2013. So that's six journeys so far. Each time, it has to fatten up before leaving the UK, make its way through western Europe and through north Africa. For argument's sake, let's say it spends winter in the sahel in Senegal.

If it flew in a straight line directly there (which of course it won't have), that would be a journey of more than 2,700 miles each time. Multiplied by six, that's 16,200 miles! 26,000km!

The oldest known ringed Whitethroat was nearly seven years old, so this one has a way to go to beat that...

Another day, another Jay

Now seems to be a good time to catch Jays. I've had three so far this year, surpassing last year's total for the whole county!

North meets south

Some people reckon spring is at least three weeks late this year, and there are certainly some interesting combinations of birds around as spring migrants are slow to arrive, and winter visitors not keen to move back north.

This morning, the first bird out of my net was a female Brambling (below) - a garden ringing tick. And the second was a Chiffchaff control - that's when a bird has already been ringed by someone else! So it'll be interesting to see where it's been previously.

Jaydward strikes again

Looks pretty, sounds horrible.

Up close and personal with garden birds

With the tree seed (alder, birch etc) finally running out, Siskins are flooding into gardens. This male was a 'control' - a bird already ringed somewhere else when we caught it

Here's a female Siskin - less colourful but still beautiful. See how fine the bill is for getting those seeds

Another male, the first I caught in my garden

Here's another tree seed-munching finch, a Lesser Redpoll

and a female Goldfinch

Here's a Nuthatch, the third I've caught in the garden

I 'retrapped' her 15 days later. Here's a close-up of the claws that mean Nuthatches can climb down trees headfirst

I originally caught this Treecreeper on New Year's Day 2012, so it was good to see it's still going strong

A Goldcrest, Europe's smallest bird, weighs about 5g (the same as 5 paperclips)

And a male Great Spotted Woodpecker

Read more about bird ringing in the UK on the BTO website

She's got her eye on you

Female Great Spotted Woodpecker

photos taken with iPhone 4S

Jay meets Jedward

Look at my crest!

I caught a Jay in the garden this afternoon. They are gorgeous birds at any range, but when you're right up-close there's another dimension to them. As well as the dazzling azure blue of the coverts, there are tiny, hidden-away traces on the secondaries and the top of the tail.

Added to the constant, ear-splitting screeching and fierce biting and pecking, it's a feast for the senses. Just as well they don't smell nasty too.

photos taken with iPhone 4S