A tail of two Marsh Tits

This morning, the circumstances were finally right to get some more ringing done in the garden.

Conditions were not ideal - it's a bit windy today - but the weather has conspired against, well, everybody lately, and we seized the chance (tomorrow's supposed to be even worse).

Each time, we seem to have one species which outnumbers all others. It was Greenfinches last time (51 Greenfinches, 8 other birds), Blue Tits in February and January. And so it was again today: we caught 29 new Blue Tits and three 'retraps' that we'd ringed before!

Now, my fingers hurt from a thousand tiny perforations inflicted by the 'cute' little fellows. Most people think "Awww! A Blue Tit! How lovely!" It's just not true...

Next up were Great Tits, with 15 new birds, two retraps and one which seems to be a control. That's a bird ringed by somebody else, somewhere else. It's not likely to have come very far, but it'll be interesting to get the details in the near future.

It was also good to catch two Marsh Tits. I'd seen one unringed bird in the garden, furiously cacheing sunflower seeds; we caught one unringed bird and retrapped one of the three we caught back in January. Photos below.

Almost forgot to mention that the first Marsh Tit (and about four Blue Tits) was caught while we were still putting our net up - we were holding the other end of it!

Interesting that we did not catch any finches, though as I look out of the window now, there are a few Chaffinches and Greenfinches around.

So, the totals were:

• Blue Tit, 29 new, 3 retraps
• Great Tit, 15 new, 2 retraps, 1 control
  
• Coal Tit, 5
• Blackbird, 2
• Marsh Tit, 1 new, 1 retrap
  
• Wren, 1
• Dunnock, 1

which makes 61 birds, our second highest total ever.

A total of 327 birds have been ringed here in seven sessions since November 2007.

Scruffy tail of juvenile Marsh Tit (hatched this year)


Neater, broader tail of adult Marsh Tit
photos taken with Canon EOS 30D

Jackdaws rule the roost

The birdfeeder seems to be depleted fairly quickly these days. There are a few Chaffinches and Greenfinches around, but I think the main culprits are probably the Jackdaws (pictured) and a couple of Magpies. The Jackdaws are quite bold but the Magpies flee as soon as they spot me...

photo taken with iPhone 3GS + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Fly Agaric

photo taken with Apple iPhone 3GS

A lunchtime walk

I took the less hilly route


Sun's gone in again...






Fairy satellite dish, pointing south










photos taken with iPhone 3GS

Phone + telescope + double glazing

Lots of Chaffinches around the garden at the moment, it seems.

photos taken with iPhone 3GS + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Autumn

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D

Leaves 'n' stuff

Here's a brief digest of my wildlife experiences over the past couple of weeks...

• Enjoying beautiful Japanese maple leaves still on a tree at The Lodge
• Saw a Stoat climbing about 30 feet up a big pine tree right outside my office window. It seemed totally at home and scampered up as happily as any squirrel. I suppose this must happen more often during the bird breeding season, but it was new for me...
• Also in Stoat News, I saw my first garden Stoat, trying very hard to catch birds
  
• Acquired a dead Long-tailed Tit (which had flown into a car and broken its neck), now in residence in my freezer. I wonder how much it would cost to get it stuffed?
• Celebrated six years of ringing at Beeston last weekend by catching the first Redwing for the site! That was after about 30,000 Redwings were counted over Sandy in one day. Sadly I missed all that
  
• Watching squirrels carrying sweet chestnut cases - covered in big spines! - around. They must really like the contents to put up with the spikiness...
  
• Tawny Owls quite vocal at the moment - sounds like there's a female in our big ash tree. Wonder if she roosts in the hole used by Jackdaws in spring?
• One of the Great Tits we ringed in the garden in August has been found dead, just down the road, after crashing into a window, while one of 'our' Greenfinches has been caught three miles away, by Del who rings here!
  
• Awaiting the annual invasion of Harlequin ladybirds trying to get into our house...
  

photo taken with Canon EOS 30D

Cornwall 2009

The Brisons and Cape Cornwall, as seen from Nanquidno


Sennen Cove, home for the week

St Ives, and pumpkins in one of its greengrocers




Curlew at the Hayle Estuary - taken with the iPhone through my scope, Not too bad,,,

Hoverfly

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Mist clearing

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Green Woodpecker feeding

video taken with iPhone + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Copper, red, yellow

Small Copper


Common Darter



Starting to get cabin fever, so it was a relief to get out with the cameras this lunchtime. What a lovely day.

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM or Canon Powershot A640

What's that white thing flying over?

Sometimes you just have to be lucky. Like this evening. We were standing chatting to Mark while flocks of Black-headed Gulls passed overhead to their roost at Paxton or Grafham. All of a sudden, I caught sight of another white bird, flying the other way: a Little Egret!

If I hadn't got a lift home, if I hadn't popped in for a chat at Mark's and if we hadn't been standing outside the house... we'd never have seen it and it would never have made it onto the garden list.

Number 94!

Bay of Biscay

As I write this, I am floating. Not because I am ecstatically happy - though I did have a very good long weekend - but because my body thinks it is still on a boat.

I've finally been on the Pride of Bilbao from Portsmouth to... you guessed it, Bilbao. We didn't go for the bingo, the boozing or the cabaret, but to look for whales, dolphins and seabirds. Our gang spent most of its time on the helicopter deck near the top of the boat and we weren't disappointed.

Even though it was quite a quiet trip by recent standards (no Orcas!) we saw Minke, Pilot and Sperm Whales, Harbour Porpoises, Common, Striped and Bottle-nosed Dolphins. Seabird-wise, Sabine's Gulls, Kittiwakes, Great and Cory's Shearwaters, Storm-petrels, Great and Arctic Skuas battled the waves and wind to fly past.

I didn't get any good photos, but you can see some from a recent crossing on Weedon's World of Nature.

Migration never ceases to amaze me. As we headed out into the Bay of Biscay, we were joined by a procession of Robins, a Redstart, Blackcap, Willow Warbler, Chiffchaff, White and Yellow Wagtail, Meadow Pipits, Swallows and a Song Thrush. I hope they managed to find somewhere on the ship to roost overnight and left when we arrived in Spain on Saturday morning...

As we rounded the Brittany coast on the way home, what I am sure was a Jack Snipe shot past the obs lounge at high speed before disappearing from view. Apparently it'd be a first for the boat, but our views were just too brief to clinch identification.

Apart from still having my sea legs, and missing the Guggenheim museum on a quick visit to Bilbao itself, the only downer is that my feet really, really hurt by the end of the trip. Next time I'm taking something to sit on...

The wonders of technology

Now that Flickr have released an iPhone app, I've been able to the use the phone for the entire photographic process.

I took the above photo with my iPhone held to my Leica scope (through the double glazing). Still on the phone, I cropped the photo using Pixelpipe - dead easy - and then uploaded the photo to my Flickr account, adding a title and tags along the way. The last bit was a little slow, but that was because of the bad signal in the building where I was. Isn't technology wonderful...

photo taken with Apple iPhone 3GS + Leica Apo Televid 77 with 20x eyepiece

Holy grail

What I found while walking at lunchtime: a Jay's feather

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

Stand well back

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Small Tortoiseshell

Small Tortoiseshell
photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Wordless Wednesday

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Summer's still here

photos taken with Canon Powershot A640

International Vulture Awareness Day

As you must have heard, today, 5 September 2009, is International Vulture Awareness Day.

Here are my experiences of vultures. My first encounter was with some friendly (or hungry?) Griffon Vultures in a French zoo. We walked through their enclosure and they flew over to perch on the handrail by the path. I wasn't scared but more impressed by their huge wingspans.

My next vultures were real, wild ones: Palm-nut Vultures in The Gambia. They get their name from their preference for Oil Palm nuts over meat. Odd birds.

I saw more wild, free vultures on a trip to Spain in 2005: Griffons again. We drove towards Tarifa, wending our way through hills, lakes and wind turbines. All the time, a stream of Griffons passed overhead on their barn-door wings. And at Punta de Paloma, we looked up and there were dozens of vultures circling around with even more swifts.

On another visit to Spain this year, we had the vulture experience again. While we sipped coffee and ate ice-creams at the mirador, Griffons appeared over the hills and Sparrowhawks, Booted Eagles, harriers and other birds of prey arrived from Africa, across the Strait of Gibraltar, in front of us.

In the mountains above the coast, we watched Griffons cruising at low level and landing at their cliffside nest. One bird brooded a chick, looking out across the Atlantic and over the hills while Bee-eaters made landfall and Spanish Festoon butterflies skittered past.

Unfortunately, things aren't very rosy for vultures in other places. Some vulture species in Asia are teetering on the brink of extinction, thanks to being poisoned by the veterinary drug Diclofenac which is used to treat cattle. BirdLife International and others are doing sterling work to breed them in captivity until Diclofenac is eliminated from the vultures' environment, and a Slender-billed Vulture chick has been reared in one of the giant Indian aviaries this year, but their future is far from secure...

photo taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM

Red September

Common Darter


Small Copper on Helenium

photos taken with Canon EOS 30D, EF 300mm f/4L IS USM