Ringing, recording and recoveries at Sandwich Bay

Steffan Walton, Assistant Warden at Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory writes:

Life at a south-eastern Bird Observatory is full of surprises throughout the year. Late winter cold snaps on the continent can start the year off with a bang as wildfowl and thrushes burst into the recording area, whilst counts of almost 150 Woodcock in a morning have occurred in recent times. The spring sees thousands of northbound finches flying over, thermalling raptors, and Whimbrels passing through en masse, whilst typically scarce overshoots such as Kentish Plover, Temminck’s Stint, and Serin are reasonably regular. In 2016 an epic Lithuanian Blue Tit recovery set new records in the spring (see Demog Blog story), whilst both Long-billed Dowitcher and Common Crane treated the visiting young Next Generation Birders.



This is what a Lithuanian Blue Tit looks like - photo by Becky Johnson

Summers are typified by the (now increasingly rare in the UK) sound of the Turtle Dove, breeding waders, and of course, the Nest Record Scheme. Co-ordinated efforts to monitor, ring, and assess our breeding populations take priority whilst our recently started Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) projects on House Sparrow and Collared Dove are already bearing their first fruits. Bee-eater, Quail, and Honey Buzzard are all possible this time of year but highlights are just as likely to be non-avian being a truly fantastic site for Lepidoptera and Odonata records.

As the summer draws to an end things start to heat up. Autumn is traditionally our busiest time of the year avian-wise. Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory has a long history of ringing unusually large numbers of House Martin, Common Sandpiper, and Lesser Whitethroat during this time, as well as being one of the premier sites in the UK for Pallas’s Warbler. Just under 10,000 birds were eventually ringed in 2016, most of which were caught in autumn. In a typical year 7-8,000 birds may be ringed though a recent high of 11,000 occurred in 2015. Looking back at the most recent autumn, numbers such as 1,350 Blackcaps, 1,200 Chiffchaffs, 585 Robins, and 640 Blackbirds make impressive reading.

Tallies can vary from year to year as weather dictates what arrives and what carries on towards France. Meadow Pipits are usually ringed in excellent numbers, species such as Firecrest, Nightingale, Ring Ouzels, and Redstart frequently show well, as well as being one of the best sites to get to grips with continental Coal Tits. In recent year’s rarities such as Red-flanked Bluetail, Great Grey Shrike, Icterine Warbler, Wryneck, and of course, double-figures of Yellow-browed Warblers have found their way into our mist-nets.



Icterine Warbler - photo by SBBOT

The real highlights though come in the form of some very note-worthy foreign controls including a series of Robin recoveries all arriving in a fantastic three week period in October. One bird from Usquert, Netherlands moved 427 km in 16 days, another 545 km from Helgoland, Germany also in 16 days, but one record stood out from the others, the cream of the crop was an individual that was ringed at Kovda, Kandalakshskiy District, Murmansk Oblast, in RUSSIA! A movement of 2,460 km and believed to be the longest distance and furthest east Robin recovery in BTO history. Further interesting records included a good run of Common Redpolls (one being a Danish ringed bird, a movement of 814 km) as well as another Eastern Lesser Whitethroat (S.c.blythi) confirmed by DNA analysis (below).



Lesser Whitethroat - photo by SBBOT

If you would like to visit or ring, then stop by the Field Centre for more details. The home of Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory offers modern, comfortable, self-catering accommodation, allowing you to be on hand for early morning bird ringing, late night moth trapping, club events or just more time to explore the local area. We offer a self-contained flat, twin, family, and single rooms. All guests have use of shared shower facilities, kitchen, dining room and lounge. What’s more, you just might get a snapshot of all the additional behind the scenes crucial work ongoing at Bird Observatories across the UK. Be it the full digitisation of historic data for Birdtrack, Butterfly Monitoring Scheme Transects, the Kent Moth Group, RSPB Wildlife Explorers and Phoenix clubs, and more.

For more information see our website.

Russian and Polish Woodcock abound - not quite a normal week in the Ringing Unit

The BTO scheme gets quite a lot of records of foreign-ringed birds sent in and, every week, part of a Recovery Officer’s job is to send a batch of these records to ringing schemes around the world asking for the original ringing details. There are never very many of these records but are always eagerly anticipated by their finders, whether they be. members of public or BTO ringers.

This morning I was entering a ‘standard’ foreign batch of just eight birds, all ringed abroad and found in the UK. This consisted of two Black Headed Gulls, one from Belgium and the other from the Netherlands, a Snipe, also from the Netherlands, and a Blackbird from Germany. This is not too unusual but this batch also contained a large number of Woodcock, including three wearing Russian rings and one that had been ringed in Poland!

How unusual is this I hear you ask? Well out of 393 foreign-ringed Woodcock found in Britain and Ireland since the start of the Ringing Scheme, only 46 of these were ringed in Russia and there has only ever been one other report of a Polish-ringed Woodcock (which was found in Strathclyde in January 2002) in the UK!

This could be an exceptional cold weather movement or are other factors at play? This will have to be looked into but what we do know is that this batch of records is definitely something quite special.