Swanderings abroad

Being large, white and usually occuring in large fields or water bodies, swans are an 'obvious' part of our countryside. In winter there can be large concentrations of birds, especially at WWT (Wildfowl & Wetland Trust) reserves, mainly comprising of the migratory Bewick's and Whooper Swans.
   
Our other swan species, the Mute Swan is seen in the UK all year round. Around 124,700 Mute Swans have been ringed in the UK and Ireland and from recoveries it's obvious that the majority of Mute Swans are sedentary. Once a bird finds a mate and a territory it remains faithful to the site and rarely moves more than 5km.

Mute Swan - Jill Pakenham

I received a phone call recently regarding a Mute Swan that had wandered into a John Deere tractor shed at Ringwood, Hampshire. It was very thin and in heavy moult so had to be taken into care but the signs are looking promising of a full recovery. Thankfully this bird was ringed and this ring hinted to its origins staight away. It was wearing a German ring from the Helgoland Ringing Scheme! It will be interesting to know when it was ringed, to see if the sea crossing had anything to do with its poor condition.

You will be used to seeing maps on the Demog blog but the BTO are now able to produce them on our 'recoveries summaries by species' online ringing reports section of our website. The map below is from the Mute Swan page which shows how special a German Mute Swan recovery is.

Mute Swan recoveries. Ringed in Britain or Ireland; Found in Britain or Ireland

Kestrel vs Barn Owl - a nesting tale

The Barn Owl is by far the most commonly nest recorded owl species in the UK and Ireland (1,823 nest records in 2011, compared with 476 Tawny Owl and 143 Little Owl). The Barn Owl has benefited from all the hard work volunteers have put into increasing the number of possible nesting sites through Schedule 1 licenced nest box schemes all over the country. With the increase in nesting sites, Jackdaw, Stock Dove and Kestrel also nest in these boxes.

We have just heard from Adrian Blackburn concerning a Barn Owl box that has been used by Barn Owls for the last 3 years. When this box was checked on 05/06/2012 it had 5 white Barn Owl eggs and also 4 Kestrel eggs (below) that were being incubated by a female Barn Owl. This would normally mean that the owl had evicted the female Kestrel and laid her own. However when the next check was done, there were 5 tiny Barn Owl chicks and one tiny Kestrel chick, two warm Kestrel eggs and one addled Kestrel egg. The next box check had 3 Barn Owl chicks and the unhatched Kestrel egg.

As owls usually incubate from when the frst egg is laid, the owl chicks will hatch about a day apart, giving the earlier hatching chicks a better chance of survival during lean times. This is done by eating their siblings and in this case the smaller Kestrel chicks would probably be on the menu.

Adrian and his team have had dual occupation in their boxes before i.e. Barn Owl / Kestrel and Barn Owl / Stock Dove but never with a Barn Owl incubating the other species eggs and hatching them out!

Thanks to Jill Pakenham for the Barn Owl picture and Jim Lennon for the egg picture.

Return of the Hirundo

Seeing the first Swallow of the year is always a very welcome sight and they are now begining to increase in numbers in Britain and Ireland. To see the current situation see the birdtrack Swallow page.

After having a Swallow from Retford reported in South Africa in a previous post, I didn't think we'd get any more interesting recoveries of Swallows...I was wrong. This morning we received an email from our colleagues at Birdlife Malta regarding two Swallows their ringers had caught wearing BTO rings.


The Swallows were caught at Ghadira Nature Reserve, Mellieha (blue pin). One bird, X861373 (red pin), was caught last night 09 April 2012, and was ringed as a juvenile on 07 August 2009 near Boughton, Stoke Ferry, Norfolk (2144km). They also managed to catch L486230 this morning 10 April 2012, which was ringed as juvenile on 31 August 2010 at Westwick, near Bishop Monkton, North Yorkshire (2408km).


View Malta Swallow in a larger map

Malta has been quite a hostile environment for birds and we have received very few recoveries from here. This will be the 24th and 25th report of a British or Irish ringed bird of any species reported in Malta and the first ever Swallows! A Malta ringed Swallow was controlled in Starbotton, North Yorkshire on 20 August 1982 but nothing since.

These Swallows were caught in a roost of about 150 birds so fingers crossed a few of their ringed birds get controlled in Britain or Ireland this summer.

Thanks to Jill Pakenham for the photo.

It's Loony that we only get one a year!

Birdfacts quote: "In Shetland Red-throated Divers were considered one of the best weather indicators, short cries (or flying inland) indicated fine weather, long, plaintive ones (or flying out to sea) wet weather." Although probably not a statistically significant weather predictor, the Red-throated Diver is an amazing bird.


Occupying shallow ponds and lochs in Scotland during the summer and heading out to sea in winter, this bird is tricky to see, let alone ring, unless you live on Shetland, Orkney or the Western Isles. In 2010 we ringed 91 birds and all apart from three were ringed as chicks from broods of one or two.

In 2010 we had one report of a Red-throated Diver, ringed in Sweden (red pin) on 31 July 1996 and found fresh dead on 6 February 2010 in North Wales (1326km). We have just heard that we have now had our annual quota of foreign ringed Red-throated Divers for 2011 in the form of a bird ringed in Finland (blue pin). This bird was ringed on 28 July 2008 and found dead on Stronsay, Orkney on 13 November 2011 (1753km).


View Red-throated Diver in a larger map

Thanks to Jill Pakenham for the photo.