Come Nest With Us at Birdfair

Now that ex-hurricane Bertha has dropped a few inches of rain across the Midlands, it must be time for the annual extravaganza that is Rutland Birdfair! This year the BTO stand (in Marquee 3) will be busy celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Nest Record Scheme, with expert nest recorders available on the stand all weekend to answer all your nesting questions and impart a few top tips on nest-finding. There will also be a mystery nest challenge for anyone brave enough to give it a go, so why not drop in and say hi if you're passing.

The skeleton of the BTO stand yesterday...

...and the finished product...

...complete with mystery nests to identify

If you time it right, there will also be a Nest Record Scheme 75th birthday cake cut at 11am on Friday, a Breeding Bird Survey 20th birthday cake cut at 11am on Sunday and BTO President Chris Packham will be signing copies of his new book '100 Things That Caught My Eye' on the stand at 4pm on Friday and 2pm on Saturday.

Also come and say hi to more of the Demog Blog team on the ringing demonstration. This year we'll be back behind Marquee 7 by the Red Entrance, so why not come and say hello!

Overseas Goatsucker in Sussex

Recently we heard of a ring that had been found in a barn, we coded this as 'ring only found' as there was no bird attached to it. When adding the details to the ringing database, it was a nice surprise to see that the ring had once been on the leg of a Nightjar. But, even more interestingly was that this ring had been put on this Nightjar at Jews Gate, the ringing site of the Gibraltar Ringing Group, in the overseas territory of Gibraltar in October 2012.

It would would have been much nicer to receive news that this bird was still alive, but still we thought this was good enough to be mentioned, as the bird must have travelled from its wintering grounds, probably in southern Africa, to the UK at least once.

Nightjar - John Bowers

So this latest Nightjar is the first documented movement between the overseas territory of Gibraltar and the UK, and the second between the Iberian peninsula and the UK.

Found in the online ringing reports...

During the period 1909-2013, a grand total of 6,453 Nightjars have been ringed by ringers in the UK & Ireland, however only 222 of them have been recovered in that period. According to the ringing database, recoveries documenting the movements of Nightjars between the UK and other countries are not very many, 16 in total. Not susprisingly, movements between the UK and France are at the top of this category (11 birds), but there are other five movements between the UK and other countries worth mentioning: Algeria, Morocco, Spain and The Netherlands, which are shown in the map below (ringing and finding sites are paired up by the colour of the pin).



This latest report comes to confirm what our colleagues here at the BTO have revealed with the Nightjar Tracking Project. They were able to map the movements of a bird in a year-long trip across at least 16 countries with the use of a geolocator. They estimated that this bird travelled as far as the Democratic republic of Congo in a 19,000km round trip!

Is it all over?

Mark Lawrence writes:

We have now reached that part of the season. After the long haul of some incredibly dedicated field work, the time has come when some nest recorders start to wind down. The dawn chorus is now a shadow of its former self and with each passing day there are fewer nests to find. The days of Long-tailed Tit nests in open-mouthed bramble are long gone. The crows' nests lie empty, hidden deep within the leaf canopy of dense trees. Gull chicks are now leaving their nests and some Cuckoos are already in Africa. Our beloved Swifts will soon be leaving our shores and their screaming summer song will be missed.

But it isn't over yet, our team is still getting out there and we continue to nest record. We still have some exciting nesting ahead. We still have the second brood of Reed Warblers to find, we have a Sedge Warbler that should be hatching soon. Tree Pipit, Whinchat, Lesser Redpoll and Stonechat are up on the moors feeding young in the nest. And even better, Mark Penney made a visit last Saturday (19th) and found a new Meadow Pipit with eggs! At our coastal location we have Wren and Yellowhammer on eggs and armed with our Schedule 1 licence, we are right in the middle of conducting an exciting breeding study on the Cirl Bunting. So far we have found 10 nests; six of these have fledged, one brood that I ringed last week just needs one more visit to the nest to record its outcome and we have two still on eggs. These are second brood nests from previously found pairs and one that is building. We have by no means finished yet. We have a trip planned next week for a second brood of Nightjar that could take us well into August.

Cirl Bunting nest and adult male (Josh Marshall)

Locating nests at this time of year can be more difficult and more challenging than earlier in the year when the vegetation is less dense, but the additional effort will add valuable data on late nesting species and timing of events to the Nest Record Scheme database. We may be coming to the end of the nesting season as we reach high summer once again, and our fast awakening autumn yawns its vibrant colours, but there are still many key species to monitor.

I was watching a young Robin just the other day, and I could see its adult plumage beginning to show through. Christmas came to mind, a stark reminder that the winter will soon be upon us and we will long for the nesting season once again. But then I think and smile, it is still the nesting season, and I will enjoy what's left... before the dark winter nights drop on us once again.

Hungry Black-headed Gull

The British and Irish Ringing Scheme ringed 5,783 Black-headed Gulls last year. A large proportion of these are also colour ringed, improving the information we can gather about their demography and movements. The map below shows where our Black-headed Gulls have been recorded in the past (BTO-ringed birds are shown in purple and foreign-ringed birds in yellow).

We regularly receive reports of these gulls from our colleagues in other ringing schemes and via our own ringers and ring-readers. There is a long list of countries on the online report that shows where Black-headed Gulls have been seen/found, and we now need to add a new one.

An adult Black-Headed Gull seen last Thursday (24th July) at Gibraltar Point Bird Observatory, Lincolnshire, was wearing colour ring Red HF0R, and had been ringed on 9th March 2014 at Sopron Landfill Site, Hungary (1,299km from Gib Point).

Black-headed Gulls can live to over 29 years old, so these colour-ringed birds can accumulate lots of sightings during their life time.

New BTO project initiated - Gull Positioning System (GPS)

This summer, 50 Lesser Black-backed Gulls breeding on Skokholm Island, Pembrokeshire and Walney Island, Cumbria have been kitted out with state-of-the-art GPS tags by scientists from the BTO as part of a project funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, studying how these birds might use areas of the marine environment earmarked for the development of offshore wind turbines, as well as areas where wind farms already exist.

The Lesser Black-backed Gull was classed as “Amber” in the most recent Birds of Conservation Concern and is declining at a number of breeding colonies where it is protected, included Skokholm and Walney. These tags gather high quality information that is already providing valuable insights into the habitats these birds use, which could be used to improve their conservation and management.

Lesser Black-backed Gulls breeding on Skokholm Island, photograph by Richard Brown

The birds were tagged in May, at which time they were incubating eggs and we are now receiving regular updates on where they have been, the altitude they are flying at and how long they spend in certain areas. Initially almost all birds from Skokholm went inland every day to feed, visiting reservoirs and agricultural areas throughout Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, as well as towns like Milford Haven and Pembroke. However, once their chicks started hatching towards the end of May, birds began to fly out to sea, suggesting these gulls were seeking high quality fresh fish for their youngsters. Recently, one female travelled as far as the Isles of Scilly before returning to her nest site, while another bird visited Great Saltee Island off the coast of Ireland.

A Lesser Black-backed Gull breeding on Skokholm makes a day trip to Ireland

Lesser Black-backed Gulls tagged on Walney Island have spent time in Barrow and other local urban areas, where gulls are not always popular. However, many birds have flown straight over these locations on their way to parts of the Lake District, while others have journeyed far out into the Irish Sea. Birds that do visit towns have tended to favour destinations like Blackpool, while others have made day trips as far afield as Warrington.

You can see where our birds have been going for yourselves if you keep an eye on these pages hosted by researchers at the University of Amsterdam, who made our gulls’ tags:

http://www.uva-bits.nl/project/seabirds-windfarm-interactions-skokholm/

http://www.uva-bits.nl/project/seabird-windfarm-interactions-walney-2/

This project would not have been possible without the help of Skokholm Wardens Richard Brown and Giselle Eagle, and Matt Lipton, Warden at South Walney.

For more information on this BTO project and to watch our gulls on the BBC One Show click here