Late brood

Time is ticking

For many birds, this years nesting season has been hampered with wet weather and low temperatures. As a result, some have been recorded nesting later than they would normally.

On 2 October we received an email from Linda Adam in Devon, who still had a pair of Swallows feeding a brood of chicks! The nest records database shows that of the 45,000 Swallow nest records collected since 1939, only 16 have still had chicks in the nest in October. So this is indeed a very late brood!

Luckily a local ringer Nick Ward was on hand to inspect and ring these chicks, which have now fledged. They will have to gain weight and refine their flying skills quickly before heading south with the other Swallows that are now migrating to South Africa.

Northumbria Swallow roost

Richard Barnes writes:

Northumbria Ringing Group have attempted to catch Swallows at a roost in reedbeds at Birtley Sewage Works in Gateshead since 2006, and up to 2011 have caught almost 5500 birds.

This year, a combination of an easily netted roost site and suitable weather conditions have allowed 9 visits to be made to the roost, resulting in catches of between 205 to 637 birds, giving a total of almost 3500.

In 2010 a Swallow turned up in a mist net on the adjacent CES site bearing a South African ring,  having been ringed in Zambia on 23 Nov 2009. Only 25 Swallows have been caught in Britain or Ireland wearing a South African ring, and on 22 September 2012 we caught another one!

A selection of recoveries of Swallows that were ringed by Northumbria Ringing Group are mapped below (double click to zoom in) but not those recovered by Northumbria Ringing Group and ringed elsewhere.


View Swallow recoveries for Northumbria Ringing Group in a full screen map

Thanks to Linda Adam and Richard Barnes for letting us know and to John Harding for the photo.

Petrel in Peril

Storm Petrels are amazing little birds. Rarely seen on land during the day and spending the night in their burrows. For a bird which is similar in size to a Greenfinch this bird can make some impressive movements. One such Storm Petrel was ringed in Ona, Norway and controlled by another ringer three days later on the Isle of May (902km)! (Blue pins on map).


Little is known about the winter movements out at sea but they usually leave UK waters in September or October and by November they are around the West African coast. They then head further south to moult near South Africa before making the reverse journey, to get to their breeding grounds in April. We have relatively few recoveries showing this movement as if they die this is likely to be out at sea but 28 have been reported in South Africa so far.


View Storm petrel in a larger map

Finding a Storm Petrel inland is not very likely but one was found on 17 Jan at Shimuwini Bush Camp, Kruger National Park, South Africa! The reason for this was probably a tropical cyclone blowing this bird off course. Luckily this bird was ringed and from the ring number we were able to tell them that this bird had been ringed 172 days earlier on Mousa, Shetland (9,776km, although it was probably more like 13,000km considering it had to fly round West Africa). (Red pins).

Thanks to Mike Pennington for letting us know and Stuart Newson for the photo.

African Swallow Roost

What best to celebrate the turn of the Equionox than the recovery of a UK ringed swallow in South Africa! Andrew Pickels controlled this bird on the 30th of November in Umzumbe (in the area of Southern Kwazulu Natal), his ringing patch where he rings at a roost 2-3 times a week. This year the Umzumbe roost hosted an impressive 1-1.5 million swallows. Fittingly, the controlled swallow had been ringed by North Notts Ringing Group on the 16th of September in Retford - very close to where Andrew himself was born.

We believe that now all the UK's migrant birds have reached their furthest wintering destinations in the African continent. Of course, we are so pleased to hear that all five cuckoos tracked by BTO are alive in or close to the Congo Basin, and we also have news of other controlled birds in The Gambia (a blog post to come about this shortly - watch this space!)


To find out more about Umzumbe and about Andrew's ringing activities visit his own blog http://barbetbirding.blogspot.com/. Thanks to Andrew for controlling the bird and for sharing the story and his photographs with us. Merry Christmas everybody and thank you for reading!

Swallow marathon and recorder movements

Ringing never ceases to surprise you. In a recent batch of recoveries reported via www.ring.ac two reports caught my eye:

A Swallow, ring number P768667, ringed as a juvenile in August 2002 at Icklesham, Sussex, was found on 23 April 2010 ( 7 years 4 months later) in Pulborough, Sussex freshly dead under a nest in the barn where it has probably been nesting every year since it first took to the wing back in 2002.


As we know Swallows from UK winter in South Africa so this bird has flown around 64,000km in its lifetime, pretty impressive!

A young American from Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, USA, took a backpacking trip recently which included stopping in Dublin, Eire. Whilst walking in the Park in Dublin City she happened to spot a Robin and managed to read part of the metal ring and record the colour rings on its other leg, she also took some photos. We managed to trace the bird, ring V091085, and it was ringed as a juvenile in November 2006 in Dublin City. So whilst this bird has lead a fairly sedentary life so far, the finder has certainly travelled some distance to record one of the BTO's ringed birds!!

Posted on behalf of Bridget Griffin, Ringing Data Manager and photo by Edmund Fellowes

South African Swallows...

...well actually perhaps 'our' Swallows in South Africa, but that's semantics!

We were contacted recently by ringers in Soutn Africa who have been ringing a large Swallow roost in the Durbanville area of the Cape (red marker on the map below). At last count they'd caught around 1500 birds and had 5 controls - four British and one Spanish. We'll keep the blog updated as and when they get more controls, but so far:


View South African Swallows in a larger map

Thanks to Lee Silks for keeping us up to date with the roost catches.