The colourful Little Egret

Little Egret is now a familiar sighting in southern Britain and Ireland, but there are also large increases in Scotland. This time of the year is a great time to see this water bird, as shown by the BirdTrack reporting rate graph below.

BirdTrack reporting rate

Being such an obvious bird, and coupled with their long legs, the Little Egret lends itself very well to being identified by colour rings. The majority of birds are ringed as chicks, providing information on brood size, hatching location and sibling ID for the Nest Record Scheme.

Despite how few foreign recoveries we have for Little Egret, they can move reasonable distances and do so on a regular basis. Colour rings increase the number of sightings of these birds and account for 94% of all of the finding reports that we have in the BTO ringing database for this species.


Colour of location: Ringed in Britain and Ireland, Found Here; Ringed Here, Found in Britain and Ireland

North Notts Ringing Group have been colour ringing Little Egret chicks at Besthorpe Gravel Pits, Nottinghamshire since 2013 and have had some very interesting movements so far. They have not had a single report of a dead bird yet. The map below shows some selected sightings. The ringing site (red pin) and the sighting locations (blue and purple pins) are highlighted.

After being ringed, one chick (blue C3) finished growing, learnt to fly and promptly zipped 122 km North to Filey, North Yorkshire (purple pin on map), in an incredible 85 days after ringing! You can see the dispersal of these birds are generally north but they can go in any direction, as we've posted previously. C3 was seen at Filey for over a week.

Little Egret. Photo taken by Ian Elsom

Preening Little Egret. Photo taken by Ian Elsom

If you do see a colour ringed bird feel free to check out European Colour-ring Birding for a list of colour ringing projects. The ringer will then get back to you with the details and submit the sighting to their ringing scheme.

Last year, Great White Egret was added to the list of birds ringed in Britain or Ireland, see the online reports. These birds were also colour ringed, so if you have any doubt about which species is which, check out the BTO Little Egret and Great White Egret ID video.

Ringing, recording and recoveries at Sandwich Bay

Steffan Walton, Assistant Warden at Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory writes:

Life at a south-eastern Bird Observatory is full of surprises throughout the year. Late winter cold snaps on the continent can start the year off with a bang as wildfowl and thrushes burst into the recording area, whilst counts of almost 150 Woodcock in a morning have occurred in recent times. The spring sees thousands of northbound finches flying over, thermalling raptors, and Whimbrels passing through en masse, whilst typically scarce overshoots such as Kentish Plover, Temminck’s Stint, and Serin are reasonably regular. In 2016 an epic Lithuanian Blue Tit recovery set new records in the spring (see Demog Blog story), whilst both Long-billed Dowitcher and Common Crane treated the visiting young Next Generation Birders.



This is what a Lithuanian Blue Tit looks like - photo by Becky Johnson

Summers are typified by the (now increasingly rare in the UK) sound of the Turtle Dove, breeding waders, and of course, the Nest Record Scheme. Co-ordinated efforts to monitor, ring, and assess our breeding populations take priority whilst our recently started Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) projects on House Sparrow and Collared Dove are already bearing their first fruits. Bee-eater, Quail, and Honey Buzzard are all possible this time of year but highlights are just as likely to be non-avian being a truly fantastic site for Lepidoptera and Odonata records.

As the summer draws to an end things start to heat up. Autumn is traditionally our busiest time of the year avian-wise. Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory has a long history of ringing unusually large numbers of House Martin, Common Sandpiper, and Lesser Whitethroat during this time, as well as being one of the premier sites in the UK for Pallas’s Warbler. Just under 10,000 birds were eventually ringed in 2016, most of which were caught in autumn. In a typical year 7-8,000 birds may be ringed though a recent high of 11,000 occurred in 2015. Looking back at the most recent autumn, numbers such as 1,350 Blackcaps, 1,200 Chiffchaffs, 585 Robins, and 640 Blackbirds make impressive reading.

Tallies can vary from year to year as weather dictates what arrives and what carries on towards France. Meadow Pipits are usually ringed in excellent numbers, species such as Firecrest, Nightingale, Ring Ouzels, and Redstart frequently show well, as well as being one of the best sites to get to grips with continental Coal Tits. In recent year’s rarities such as Red-flanked Bluetail, Great Grey Shrike, Icterine Warbler, Wryneck, and of course, double-figures of Yellow-browed Warblers have found their way into our mist-nets.



Icterine Warbler - photo by SBBOT

The real highlights though come in the form of some very note-worthy foreign controls including a series of Robin recoveries all arriving in a fantastic three week period in October. One bird from Usquert, Netherlands moved 427 km in 16 days, another 545 km from Helgoland, Germany also in 16 days, but one record stood out from the others, the cream of the crop was an individual that was ringed at Kovda, Kandalakshskiy District, Murmansk Oblast, in RUSSIA! A movement of 2,460 km and believed to be the longest distance and furthest east Robin recovery in BTO history. Further interesting records included a good run of Common Redpolls (one being a Danish ringed bird, a movement of 814 km) as well as another Eastern Lesser Whitethroat (S.c.blythi) confirmed by DNA analysis (below).



Lesser Whitethroat - photo by SBBOT

If you would like to visit or ring, then stop by the Field Centre for more details. The home of Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory offers modern, comfortable, self-catering accommodation, allowing you to be on hand for early morning bird ringing, late night moth trapping, club events or just more time to explore the local area. We offer a self-contained flat, twin, family, and single rooms. All guests have use of shared shower facilities, kitchen, dining room and lounge. What’s more, you just might get a snapshot of all the additional behind the scenes crucial work ongoing at Bird Observatories across the UK. Be it the full digitisation of historic data for Birdtrack, Butterfly Monitoring Scheme Transects, the Kent Moth Group, RSPB Wildlife Explorers and Phoenix clubs, and more.

For more information see our website.

Where do our wintering Blackcaps come from and why?

Over the next three winters, a new study focusing on Blackcaps wintering in Britain and Ireland will help reveal how novel migratory changes arise and spread.  The study will look at genetic and morphological differences between breeding populations and migration strategies, as well as investigate aspects of wintering behaviour, movements and survival of individuals wintering in Britain.

Up until 50 years ago, wintering by Blackcaps in Britain & Ireland was quite unusual, but numbers have since increased considerably, with many thousands now counted each winter by BTO Garden BirdWatch. Gardens are favoured sites where a combination of ‘natural’ berries and fruit along with specially provided fat, seeds, cake and pastry is the main attraction, often fiercely defended by some individuals. 

Male Blackcap. Photo by Greg Conway.

Typically, the majority of Blackcaps breeding in northern Europe migrate to the Mediterranean region for the winter. However, this is changing – some of these birds may now be migrating in a north-westerly direction to the British Isles instead! These changes appear to be facilitated by milder winters and the abundance of food provided by people, according to research carried out using Garden BirdWatch data.

A number of studies have suggested that our wintering birds come from central Europe (southern Germany/Austria), but the small number of ringing recoveries available (see map below) indicates that many may originate much closer to home, or even be resident!  Unfortunately, few recoveries confirm movements between the breeding and winter season.


Origins of ringed Blackcaps wintering in Britain and Ireland and their locations from the breeding season (red), autumn (blue) and spring (grey) (Migration Atlas – Wernham et al 2002).

To improve our knowledge of migration and breeding origin, a number of wintering Blackcaps have been fitted with Geolocators (accurate to around 70km).  These will reveal where they spend the summer, but only once re-caught back at their wintering sites.

Female Blackcap fitted with a geolocator. Photo by Greg Conway.

Colour ringing allows individuals to be identified with unique combinations and this will be used to learn more about winter behaviour, movements and use of wintering sites in Britain, which is surprisingly little understood.  Some appear to remain in the same garden all winter, but others do not!

Male Blackcap with unique colour rings. Photo by Greg Conway.

We would be very grateful for your help with the following:
Blackcap sightings - If you have wintering Blackcap in your garden please let us know and report your counts using BirdTrack or consider joining Garden BirdWatch.

Colour ring sightings - Please report all observations to: blackcap@bto.org

Ringers – Help with catching and colour ringing more Blackcaps over the coming winters would be much appreciated.  If you don’t have sites with Blackcap we can provide details of local sites where ringing is required.

To find out more about getting involved please contact: blackcap@bto.org

Greg Conway (BTO) & Benjamin Van Doren (Oxford University)
This study is collaboration between Oxford University, BTO, Exeter University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany.

Something for Saturday? Second ever ringed Green-winged Teal sighted in Suffolk!

With the wildfowl shooting season either finished or nearly finished (depending on location), our recovery rate of ducks and geese is about to reduce substantially. Birders and ringers, however, will continue to provide much needed data on distribution, longevity and movements.

Green-winged Teal, a scarce visitor to Britain & Ireland from North America, is a good bird to record on your BirdTrack list when out birding. Some individuals will have escaped from captivity, which complicates the situation some what, but that deserves a whole post in itself.

BirdGuides are currently reporting a very interesting Green-winged Teal at Blythburgh, Suffolk which, importantly for the BTO Recoveries Team, is wearing a nasal saddle, and thus has a known history!

Green-winged Teal taken by Barry Yates

The nasal saddle works by only covering the top of the upper mandible, thereby not interfering with feeding or other behaviour. Even though we don't use nasal saddles as part of the BTO Ringing Scheme, this marking method is used to great effect in Portugal, as a previous report of a Lesser Scaup on the Demog Blog shows.


Green-winged Teal taken by Barry Yates

The origin of this bird is unknown. It may have escaped from a European collection or it may be a genuine vagrant. We do know however that it was ringed as a juvenile male at São Jacinto Dunes Nature Reserve, Aveiro, Portugal (40º41’N 08º44’W) on 21/01/2015. Since then it has stayed in the area until at least 10/02/2015 when it was next reported and photographed in Suffolk on 01/02/2016 and is still being reported at time of writing.



There have only been two British or Irish ringed Green-winged Teal in the 107 years of our Ringing Scheme (in 2001 and 2003) and in that time we've only had one report of a foreign-ringed Green-winged Teal being found in Britain & Ireland, which was shot on the Isle of Scilly in 1971. Hopefully the Suffolk bird will continue to be reported to us and our Portuguese colleagues on its journey.

For more information on the work done by our Portuguese colleagues, check out their website, www.pt-ducks.com and if you see this bird feel free to report it to BirdGuides and to us via www.ring.ac (using the ring number J15195 and scheme of Lisbon).

"My Precious" Cormorant

BirdTrack's own Nick Moran writes:

The BTO Nunnery Lakes reserve boasts an imaginatively nicknamed ‘Cormorant Tree’, a favoured perching site of…you guessed it…Cormorants. On 23 October 2015, I pointed my new-to-me bridge camera at a metal-ringed Cormorant I’d noticed in said tree. Reviewing the images, I was pleased to see that the first two digits were clearly visible as ‘25’ and the third looked likely to be ‘2’. Not having much experience of L rings, I showed the photos to Lee Barber. The shape and size of the ring and proportionally very large numbering meant he instantly recognised it as not being a BTO ring. Game on!

Numbers 252 confirmed. Taken 23/10/2015

I became Gollum for a week, consumed with an unrelenting obsession to ‘possess’ the One Ring.  And what more appropriate beast to be bearing it than a real life Nazgûl-bird?! Fortunately for me, the wearer of my preciousss was considerably tamer than the other Cormorants, allowing relatively close approach. However, the Cormorant Tree stands right on the bank of the Little Ouse, making it impossible to walk round and unlike the real Gollum, dark, cold and dirty water is not my thing. The only option was to approach from opposite sides of the river on successive visits, striving to see and photograph the ring from all angles.


Through the tree hole. Taken 26/10/2015

Looking fine for (252)39. Taken 27/10/2015





Final digit falls (25239)4. Taken 27/10/2015

By 27 October, after an awful lot of ‘here we go round the Cormorant Tree’, I’d managed to piece together 252394 and the address: Helgoland, Germany. After submitting the sighting to the BTO, the ringing details have just arrived. The bird was ringed as a chick in Wasservogelreservat Wallnau, Fehmarn, Germany on 11 June 2009. Surprisingly, it is only the eighth German-ringed Cormorant to be controlled in Britain & Ireland at the time of writing!


Confirmation of the Ringing Scheme. Taken 27/10/2015

Like all good stories, there was an unexpected twist: whilst clearing some photos from my old smartphone, I came across a ‘phonescoped’ shot I’d taken of a metal-ringed Cormorant on the same branch of the same tree…on 31 October 2014! The digits ‘25’ were once again clear to see, and close comparison of the bill and facial skin confirm it to be the same individual.



The Goldrush

With all the excitement of the Yellow-browed Warbler influx at the moment, from Shetland to Cornwall, it could be easy to overlook the fact that Goldcrest is also doing very well (see the reporting rates on BirdTrack below). Weighing about 6g, this tiny bird was thought to ride on the backs of Woodcock to our shores (as they arrived at a similar time to Goldcrest) from Scandinavia and the Continent because they wouldn't be able to make it on their own; hence the old name of 'Woodcock pilot'. We now know this is not the case and they can make these massive migrations all on their own.

Ringers all over the country have been catching large numbers of Goldcrest with 150 ringed at Landguard Bird Observatory and 485 ringed at Spurn Bird Observatory over the last three days. This would be a small fraction of the number of birds actually moving through, as the 1,000+ estimate at Gibraltar Bird Observatory on one day can testify.

We have heard that a few have been caught wearing rings from different countries, for example the Mid Lincs Ringing Group caught a Goldcrest ringed in Denmark and a Polish-ringed bird was caught by Tees Ringing Group and Sandwich Bay Bird Observatory caught a Dutch and Latvian ringed Goldcrest. Mike Marsh and his team from Orfordness Nature Reserve managed to catch 109 Goldcrest last Sunday (11 Oct) and one of them was ringed on 6 October at Falsterbo Ringing Station, Sweden! Amazingly, the ring number was TM3052, which, if you put this as a grid reference on an OS 1km map, is only 15km from where the bird was caught. We don't believe this Goldcrest was pre-programmed to go here!

Goldcrest from Sweden. Image of ring taken by several photos of ring merged. By Dave Crawshaw

There are bound to have been more foreign Goldcrest captures over the past few days so feel free to share your stories below in the comments box.

This week in ringing blogs...

It's been very quiet for exciting news here at The Nunnery (we're all waiting for the preliminary CES and NRS results next week!), so we thought this week we'd take a quick tour of some of the ringing group blogs out there. Links to many of the most popular blogs are listed in the right-hand column here, so why not browse and follow a few.

Bardsey Bird Observatory
This week Bardsey Bird Obs resurrected their buried portable walk-in trap and had some success catching Starlings. They can be tricky to age accurately so catching several together allows for a good comparison. There have been several long-distance movements of Starlings ringed on Bardsey including to Latvia, Belarus and Lithuania. However, it's not only movements of Starlings that are interesting. One individual that was ringed on Bardsey was found killed by a bird of prey in the same location nine years later!

 

Teifi Ringing Group
Also catching Starlings in Wales were Teifi Ringing Group, but more exciting news on their blog was just the sixth Firecrest caught at the site since 2009. This bird came with a further surprise in the form of a ring with a Belgian address on. This is the 11th record of a Belgian-ringed Firecrest in the UK, with other foreign-ringed Firecrest coming from The Netherlands (three), Channel Islands (two) and Germany (one).

Gower Ringing Group
One last Welsh blog focuses on a few wader captures at a new netting site, with a pre-dawn catch managing to produce both Snipe and Jack Snipe at the same time. It's not every day you get the chance to compare these species side-by-side in such detail, so the pics are well worth a look.

Snipe - Tommy Holden

Jack Snipe - Tommy Holden

West Cornwall Ringing Group
Staying in the west, further colour ring records from the West Cornwall Ringing Group included this young male Peregrine in France. Whilst there are several other movements to the near Continent, these unexpected sightings in your email inbox are certainly a treat.

Lower Derwent Valley
With wildfowl starting to come back to the valley in good numbers, the ringing group have just started to catch again (including this smart male Teal), but they've also taken the opportunity to look at a few of the more interesting group recoveries, including a Mallard that was later found in The Netherlands.

Gibraltar Point Bird Observatory
In the east, many sites were still benefiting from an earlier arrival of winter migrants, including small numbers of warblers. Scarce species such as Yellow-browed Warbler are getting scarcer now, but various sites were catching Chiffchaffs, some of the collybita race and others the eastern migrant tristis race (Siberian Chiffchaff), such as this one ringed at Gib Point on 22nd November.

Portland Bird Observatory
A rather more unexpected warbler catch was a Willow Warbler at Portland on 24th November, the latest ringing record at the site.

The BirdTrack results for Willow Warbler show how unusual this record is, with very few Willow Warblers seen beyond late October.

Winter of the Wisp

During the winter, our population of Snipe increases with an influx of birds from the continent and in some years this could be as many as a million birds. The reports of Snipe into our Ringing Scheme mainly come from hunters reporting them shot (90%+).

Summer Snipe in Iceland - Nigel Clark

We recently heard of one of these birds being 'found' this way in County Monaghan, Republic of Ireland. This bird was ringed on 1 August 2013 as a juvenile bird at Turov, Zhitkovichi district, Belarus and made the 2,302 km movement to Ireland. This is the fourth Belarusian-ringed Snipe to be found in the UK or Ireland; the majority of foreign birds come from Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, Iceland and Denmark.

Ring recoveries show Snipe that breed in the north of the UK move to Ireland for the winter and Snipe that breed in the south of the UK move to France or Spain, with a few moving to the near continent. This draws on some parallels with Blackcap that we have reported previously, where birds come to the UK and Ireland for the winter while some or all of our UK and Ireland population go south.

So far this year the winter has been unseasonably warm, so we haven't experienced large movements of Snipe yet but in the next few weeks it is forecast that as the temperature will drop in Russia and central Europe, and so water bodies freeze over, more Snipe should reach these shores. If the temperature doesn't drop, the reporting rate via BirdTrack might continue to decrease.

Keep informed on Snipe predicted movements on the BTO Migration Blog.

Spring encounters of the bird kind

You will be glad to hear that we are now reaching the 'tail end' of the auk wreck that has effected thousands of Puffins, Guillemots and Razorbills up and down the country (posted previously). We are still however receiving reports from the various ringing schemes involved, showing the great distances these birds can travel during the winter.

Collared Doves have been known to make large movements occasionally and one such bird travelled south from Fair Isle, Shetland all the way to Halkirk, Caithness (238km) to end up being killed by a cat on the 06 April. Reports of interesting movements of Chaffinch include two Norwegian ringed birds, one killed by a cat in Powys and one to be found fresh dead in Wiltshire both found in mid March. At a very similar time a BTO ringed Chaffinch from Lincolnshire met his end in Norway after not seeing a window in time.

Chaffinch - John Harding

Windows were also responsible for 2 BTO ringed Dunnock recoveries of note. One was the 11th record to Norway (again ringed in Lincolnshire - 1721km) and the other was the 2nd ever Dunnock to be found in Denmark (ringed in Suffolk - 744km).

The BTO migration blog and BirdTrack is currently showing a good influx of spring migrants at the moment with species like Chiffchaff, Blackcap and Swallow, and with this comes encounters with ringed migrants. A Sussex ringed Chiffchaff for example (ringed in September 2013) met its end on its return migration when it was found dead in someone's kitchen in Spain (928km).

BirdTrack reporting rate of Chiffchaff

We have also received our first report of a returning Osprey, to the Glaslyn Osprey Centre near Porthmadog, Gwynedd. This bird was identified by a video camera placed near the nest during the winter. It was originally ringed as a chick at Rutland Water in 1998 in a brood of three.

A window was the likely cause of a Lincolnshire ringed Oystercatcher death in Norway (733km) but more positively, several Irish ringed Oystercatchers have been seen in their breeding grounds in Iceland (1519km).

The future’s bright - the future’s green

I remember the exact day that I became hooked on birds. I was four years old and my family had just moved to North Norfolk. My Dad, Tony, a biology teacher who is interested in all things natural history, went with a colleague to see a male Hen Harrier that had been roosting on Kelling Heath and I tagged along. I’d been looking at birds in the garden for a year or two previously (and have the check-list, full of terrible spelling mistakes and even more horrendous misidentifications to prove it), but this was definitely the point of no return; fast forward 35 years and I am now a qualified ringer and keen nest recorder who has the privilege of working on birds for a living as a BTO staff member.

Male Hen Harrier - the species responsible for Dave writing this post. Copyright Martin Bennett

  

The path from hobby to career was fuelled by many things. The proximity of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s Cley reserve, just four miles north of my home, did no harm in terms of reinforcing my interest, as did the endless streams of high quality documentaries, particularly those featuring the soporific tones of David Attenborough, which were compulsory viewing in my house. It was people who made the real difference, though – parents (my Mum, Barbara, still collects Blackbird colour-ring resighting data for me), teachers (Dave Horsley and Ralph Wiggins deserve special mention) and friends (Gav Horsley and Nick Acheson in particular) who tutored me and, equally importantly, transported me to the local hotspots. OK, so I didn’t have access to the wonders of the internet, but then I didn’t have the distractions of it either.

Dave's Mum Barbara has been collecting colour-ring resighting data on individually marked Blackbirds in her garden almost every day since March 2007

But this post isn’t about me as I’m rapidly becoming the past; it’s about the future, and that future is looking a little greener. A few days ago, Lorraine Miller directed me to an article on the wonderful A Focus On Nature website, an essential networking tool for any aspiring young conservationist. The piece was a focus feature on five naturalists, aged between 9 and 13, including Lorraine’s daughters Abby and Evie. I already knew that Team Miller were contributing to the BTO’s Nest Record Scheme, but I was still amazed at the wealth of other surveys that were mentioned. Four of the five folk highlighted are already training to ring, including prolific bloggers Toby Carter and Findlay Wilde, or seeking trainers (and the photo of the fifth, Harley Wilde, sees him holding a bird at a ringing demo) while Garden BirdWatch, BirdTrack and the Winter Thrush Survey all feature.

Ringing demonstrations are a great way of sparking the conservation interest of the next generation, whether they go on to be ringers or not

This makes me a bit of a late-starter. While I was birding at four, I twitched away my teens and it wasn’t until I hit my mid-twenties that I started actually making a real contribution to conservation by participating in surveys. These guys have got a decade on me already, and most of them didn’t have the luxury of doorstep nature reserves or teachers with time to spend on after-hours activities. These are fast-tracked conservationists and, with green issues seemingly at their lowest ebb on the political agenda, we need them now more than ever.
Dave Leech
Head of BTO Nest Record Scheme

Autumn migration underway

August is a great time to be out birdwatching and also ringing and nest recording. At this time of year birds including finches and pigeons are still nesting, but some have already finished breeding for the year and are starting to migrate, like our BTO Cuckoos. Waders start moving through our country at this time of year and we have had reports of Swallows starting to gather and Swifts leaving the country (graph below).

BirdTrack reporting rate for Swift

With the migration and dispersal of birds there are often interesting recoveries or sightings. Some recoveries from July include a Lesser Black-backed Gull ringed on the Isle of May, Fife in 1995 and seen in Spain (2170km), a Gannet ringed on Sule Skerry, Orkney in 2005 caught by another ringer in Iceland and a Spotted Redshank from The Netherlands had its ring read in Norfolk!

Gannet colony - Nigel Clark

One of the big stories was a sighting of a Balearic Shearwater being seen North West of Annet, Isles of Scilly. Not only is it the first ever report of a Balearic Shearwater wearing a ring in UK or Irish waters, but this bird was also wearing a small geolocator. To help save this critically endangered species, these loggers record the movements and behaviour of the bird while it is away from the breeding grounds. For more information on this data-logging project click here.

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.

Mealy good

This year the BirdTrack Challenge and TEAL Cup (a 'bit of fun' between BTO and RSPB staff) have triggered heightened levels of wildlife recording on the reserves around the two organisations' HQs. Naturally birds have been the main focus so far, so it was with no small measure of envy that BTO staff read about their RSPB counterparts' excellent start to the year on the redpoll front. Much scouring of the modest numbers of redpolls at the Nunnery Lakes ensued, but unfortunately the first two 'interesting' redpolls found did not give good enough views to clinch their ID.

All that changed when a fine Common Redpoll appeared in our winter ringing site, a patch of blackthorn scrub between two extensive rows of alder. The bird in question found its way to our nyger feeder on Thursday 10th February and was also there the following day, so it was with an air of anticipation that we opened the nets on Saturday morning. Sure enough, the first net round came up trumps:

This individual had a wing length was 76mm and the condition of the tertials and primaries aged it as a 6 (the condition of the tail was attributed to the damp overnight conditions). Compared to Lesser Redpoll, the underparts were strikingly pale, lacking most of the buff wash and being less extensively streaked:

Later the same morning, a second bird was caught (also a 6, wing length 79mm), this time providing direct comparison with Lesser Redpoll: