DemOn in DM out

Dorian Moss is retiring from the BTO as Ringing Database Officer today.


It is best to smile when you are at work!

He joined the team in May 2008, particularly so as to draw up the specifications for the new ringing database, and was one of the team bringing this to fruition in 2014. He has been one of the five staff managing ringing data and recoveries for the past 8 years. From 2008 to 2014 he had the main responsibility for final checks on recoveries and moving them to the permanent database and sending them out to ringers and finders. Then in June 2014 the new database went live, and Dorian started to concentrate on managing the vast resource of ringing data input by our volunteer John Bonell.

Dorian in his favourite habitat, the ringing schedules store at The Nunnery

Since we have been using the new database, Dorian has taken a special interest in checking out new ringing sites, making sure that the grid references and coordinates are correct by checking on maps and Google Earth. Ringers may well have received enquiries from him when things didn’t look correct.

We wish him well in his retirement and look forward to seeing him out collecting valuable ringing data in due course, now he has all this time on his hands. However he is a glutton for punishment, and he has agreed to take over the (unpaid) role of EURING Databank Manager from Chris du Feu in 2017. So he will keep his brain working and we will still have contact with him.

Nunnery nesting in 2014: off the mark!

We’re fast approaching the time of year where I grab my trusty nesting stick, Carl Barimore reaches for his mirror on a pole and Mike Toms straps on his endoscope as we head down to The Nunnery reserve to start looking for nests to monitor. We generally begin searching in late February, when the Long-tailed Tits begin to pair up and hang suspiciously around likely nesting sites (here typically gorse or bramble) and the first grebes, Mute Swan and Coot start gathering material. However, we’re always on the lookout for opportunities before that, and one was provided on the 15^th January by our colleague, Neil Calbrade, who spotted a sitting Collared Dove in the Nunnery garden, the nest wedged between the branches of a  yew about 3m off the ground. This morning was the first chance I had to check it and the bird flew on my approach to reveal a single white egg; the ‘standard’ clutch size is two, but clutch sizes of early attempts made by multi-brooded species are often smaller (single-brooded species show the opposite pattern).

The typical view of a Collared Dove nest is the underside of a twiggy platform, several metres off the ground in a tree or shrub. It is almost always possible to see the adult sitting from the ground. Photo by  B Besley

It may be tempting to blame the unseasonably warm weather for this apparently early attempt, but Collared Dove is actually the only species in the BTO Nest Record Scheme (NRS) dataset that has been recorded as breeding in every month of the year (Fig 1), although if as many recorders focused on Mallard, it may well reveal the same pattern.

Number of NRS Collared Dove records for which an accurate laying date can be calculated by month in which first egg was laid

That said, fewer than 30 January attempts are logged in the NRS database, dating back to the mid-1960s, and this is the fifth nesting Collared Dove nest we’ve been informed of in the past fortnight (the third in Thetford alone), which suggests they may have made an early start.  It is impossible to compare years without first collecting the data, however; analyses are orders of magnitude more powerful than anecdote when it comes to influencing Government policy on climate change, so it is vital your records are submitted to a national nest-recording scheme.

So, why not make 2014 the year that you register with the Nest Record Scheme and get involved in nest recording – it’s great fun, you’ll learn a huge amount about the birds around you and, vitally, it provides information to support conservation efforts that can’t be gathered any other way.

Information about any species, no matter how common, in any habitat, be it your garden or a remote island, are of value as long as you can see inside to count the eggs and chicks. Looking in nests is perfectly legal as long as you don’t handle the contents, although a licence is need to monitor nests of Schedule 1 species and be sure to follow the NRS Code of Conduct

We’ll be monitoring the progress of our Collared Dove and about 400 other nests across The Nunnery over the course of this season, from Wrens to Mute Swans; we’ll keep you posted on our progress and we look forward to hearing about yours.

Dave Leech, Head of the Nest Record Scheme

http://www.bto.org/sites/default/files/u15/downloads/publications/legislation_and_good_practice.pdf