Hawfinch on the move

We get very few reports of ringed Hawfinch, probably due to their secretive nature, but we have just received reports that show they do indeed make some long distance movements.

At Stromness on Orkney, Ian Morrison and Kitty Halcrow were watching a Hawfinch at a bird table and saw that it was ringed! Amazingly they managed to read the ring number '8244367'. The address on the ring was too small to read but after some detective work found that this bird had been ringed in Oye, Kvinesdal, Norway on 8th July 2003 as a juvenile female!


The Forestry Commission have been operating several Hawfinch feeding stations in the Forest of Dean, where Jerry Lewis has been colour ringing since 2003. In that time he has ringed over 250, and although its still a bit early in the "Hawfinch catching season" he caught 11 birds on 24th March, including his first capture of a bird from Norway!

Previously, there have only been 2 foreign ringed Hawfinch found in UK, one
in Shetland from Germany and one on Fair Isle from Norway.

Many thanks to Jerry Lewis and Alan Leitch for letting us know about these amazing Hawfinch movements.

Living the high life

Lee Barber at the BTO took a phone call from a Heathrow Airport Hotel saying they had a Robin in their coffee shop and could anyone assist in removing it? He then phoned me as I am a ringer and very familiar with this area.

I arranged to visit the hotel with the owners, who had already completed the paperwork. The ‘coffee shop’ turned out to be a ‘tropical atrium’ five storeys high, with swimming pool and plantings of palms, bananas and other trees up to 15m high – and a temperature of 18^oC!

The bird was singing lustly whilst mist net and spring traps were set and after nearly three hours it was captured in a spring trap, ringed and released outside into a decidedly chilly 4^oC. The bird had been there for several months since roof work had been done but had recently been disturbing functions with its singing as well as being percieved as a health hazard. The exercise resulted in a generous donation to the Bird Atlas appeal - and copious coffee and pastries were supplied.

Posted on behalf of Dave Harris with use of his photos.

Say it with flowers!

Despite the cold winter and recent wet weather, birds are still making good progress with their nests and romance is obviously in the air. Nest recorder Frank Mawby recently watched a male Starling carrying a purple crocus flower to its nest. While we can’t rule out the possibility that he had forgotten an important anniversary, previous studies have suggested that Starlings are adept at using herbal remedies to combat parasite infestations in the nest, often incorporating vegetation in the lining.

Long-tailed Tits seem to have been less affected by the cold winter than many of us feared - here at The Nunnery most have now built their beautiful lichen and spider web nests and are in the process of lining them with feathers. ‘Our’ Song Thrushes and Blackbirds are just starting to lay, but the first reports of chicks are starting to arrive and many Robins are now busy feeding their broods.



With so much happening, it’s a great time to be out looking for nests. If you’ve found one, get in touch with us at nrs@bto.org and we’ll send you a Nest Record Scheme Starter Pack so that you can monitor it, or you can go on-line to take part in Nest Box Challenge www.bto.org/nbc.

Goldfinches on the move

Spring is in the air in Norfolk and you do wonder if birds are on the move... On Wednesday morning I caught a ringed Goldfinch (L117545) in my garden just outside Norwich which was originally ringed at on 31 January at Iken, near Woodbridge, on the Suffolk coast. Presumably this bird had wintered in Suffolk, or further south, and was moving north when I recaught it.

Only a few kilometres down the road, Stuart Newson from the BTO has had a Scottish ringed Goldfinch is his garden all winter. This was originally ringed as a juvenile bird at Nether Falla (Borders) in August 2009, so would have moved south for the winter. There is generally this southward shift of Goldfinches in the winter, and Goldfinch is the classic 'partial migrant'.


Interestingly, the map above shows all foreign movements of Goldfinches from Britain and Ireland, but hides the real picture. So whilst there have been 542 recoveries of English-ringed Goldinches abroad (mostly to Spain (263) and France(176)), only two Scottish-ringed birds have moved abroad (to Belgium and Portugal)!

Our first foreign Quail movement

We recently reported on the first foreign-ringed Quail in the UK (taken by a Peregrine - more details in this post), and now we have our first foreign movement from the UK.


XE97619 was one of three birds ringed in June 2009 near Matlock in Derbyshire (two of these are pictured above). The summer was a great year for Quail, and this particular site had 8 or 9 calling males, with three birds caught using a tape-lure (under licence of course) and triangle of nets! It was sadly shot at Aliud, Spain, on 18 August 2009, presumably on southward migration (birds will generally winter around the Mediterranean and even into North Africa).


View BTO Quail in Spain in a larger map

Thanks to Steve Moores for the photo and info on these birds.

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We have just got some extra information on movements around Europe, and Lyndon Kearsley has kindly produced the map below of Quail movements to/from Belgium.


View KwartelHervangsten in a larger map