2015 nesting season underway by New Year!

Dave Leech writes:

For many BTO nest recorders, particularly those monitoring Barn Owl repeat breeding attempts well into the late autumn, it feels like the 2014 breeding season has only just drawn to a close. However, the respite is brief – while we seek shelter from the biting winter gales, the avian community is gearing up for the coming spring.

The Met Office have recently announced that 2014 was the warmest year on record in the UK and this winter has certainly been mild if, as most bird ringers will point out, a tad windy. Mild weather at the start of the year can certainly stimulate opportunistic singing, and I’ve already heard Great Tit, Wren and Dunnock in song within walking distance of my house in southwest Norfolk; nest recorder Mark Lawrence has been listening to the reedy warbling of the latter since early December on his patch in Devon.

Dunnock singing - Liz Cutting

While the nestling diet of these birds is not necessarily conducive to early breeding, species able to take advantage of soil invertebrates are less limited by food availability and may breed opportunistically at the end of winter, particularly around human habitation where temperatures are artificially raised and bird feeders provide additional sustenance. Nest recorder Mark Lucas has already reported his first clutch of Robin eggs in North Yorkshire via Twitter, found on the 9th January, beating the earliest record submitted to the BTO Nest Record Scheme by a fortnight. A pair of Mistle Thrush breeding in a Glasgow park were also flagged up on Twitter, the young having fledged in the last week.

Mistle Thrush nest - Herbert and Howells

Some birds couldn’t even wait for the New Year to start the 2015 season. RSPB warden Doug Radford was told of a Moorhen on eggs in Cambridgeshire in mid-December which had hatched by Christmas, and we’ve also received reports of Grey Heron laying at the start of the month. Not to be outdone, the BTO’s own Nick Moran stumbled across a brood of small Mallard ducklings on the 12th December at our reserve in Norfolk.

Mallard with ducklings - John Harding

While these examples demonstrate birds ability to respond to windows of opportunity, they are all anomalies. The data collected by BTO volunteers for the Nest Record Scheme over the past 75 years tells us that the main Robin breeding season kicks off towards the end of March, while most Moorhens start to lay from the beginning of April onwards.  Grey Herons are early breeders (Table 1), but laying doesn’t typically start until mid-February, with Raven generally the next species to follow in any number, then Tawny Owl, Collared Dove and Magpie at the very beginning of March.

BTO data have played a key role in demonstrating the advance in avian laying dates in response to the warming climate, as summarised in the recent BirdTrends report, and it is vital to ensure that this monitoring is ongoing. So, if you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution that furthers your knowledge while also giving something back to the conservation effort, why not make 2015 your first year as a nest recorder?

Table 1. Top 10 earliest UK breeders as calculated using Nest Record Scheme data for the period 2000-2009. Dates shown are the fifth percentile of the laying date distribution. Note that some early breeding species (e.g. Long-eared Owl, Crossbill) are excluded due to very small sample sizes.

Art meets science – both win

On Wednesday evening I found myself in an art gallery in London, wearing a suit. As someone far more accustomed to donning chest waders and traipsing through reedbeds, the ‘fish out of water’ analogy would have seemed particularly appropriate, were it not for the nature of the event - the presentation of the Dilys Breese Medal and Marsh Awards at the annual Society of Wildlife Artists (SWLA) exhibition.

The best clue to proceedings was probably the 10ft high giraffe forged from scrap metal to which all eyes were drawn on arrival, a piece by SWLA President  Harriet Mead, daughter of the BTO Ringing Unit’s inimitable Chris. A diverse array of floral and faunal images cloaked the walls; while styles ranged widely from the abstract through the impressionistic to the feather-perfect, the quality was uniformly outstanding, as one would predict from the prestigious list of exhibitors which included Bruce Pearson, Carry Akroyd, Esther Tyson and Darren Woodhead. Those expecting an air of contemplation and quiet appreciation were in for a surprise, as the room buzzed with the sort of conversation and excitement that (and I appreciate I may be slightly biased here) can only be generated when wildlife enthusiasts gather together. Artists mingled with journalists, BTO supporters and surveyors, exchanging tales of recent observations, experiences and inspirations, their different perspectives on a shared passion reflecting the theme of the evening, that art really does “breathe life into science”.

And true to form, science was given equal billing on the night, the medal and award presentations honouring outstanding individual contributions to the world of ornithology. The Dilys Breese Award highlights achievements in the world of the media, and I was really pleased to see John Ingham from the Daily Express join the list of recipients. My first contact with John was back in 2008 when he ran a piece on Cuckoos and Reed Warblers (before it became my personal obsession), and in recent years he has become an increasingly staunch BTO supporter, helping to spread the word about targeted surveys such as Winter Thrushes and Blackcaps.

The Marsh Awards, developed by the Marsh Christian Trust, celebrate achievements in all walks of life, but tonight the focus was ornithology. Dr Jim Cassels, the winner of the Marsh Award for Local Ornithology, Regional Organiser for the BTO Bird Atlas 2007–11 on Arran. Now, I spent many summer holidays on the island in my youth, so I fully understand that achieving complete coverage of all 139 tetrads is no mean feat, given the sparse population, difficult terrain and distinct lack of tarmac. The fact that Jim, working with the Arran Natural History Society, managed to persuade 700 individuals to submit records is astounding, and I can’t wait to see the end product.

The president of SWLA - Harriet Mead

The Marsh Award for Innovative Ornithology was presented to Dr Christian Rutz of the University of St Andrews, who has pioneered the development of miniature cameras that can be mounted on individual birds, collecting unique information on their behaviour. I’ve seen footage from his corvid-cams on the internet and was gutted not to get a chance to speak to him, as I’ve got a few ideas I’d like to discuss (which may or may not involve Cuckoos and reedbeds…..).  I was equally pleased to see Dr Jane Reid from the University of Aberdeen collect her Marsh Award for Ornithology – Jane is a dyed in the wool ringer, having started training at 16, which gives her a real understanding of the practicalities of scientific studies as well as analytical techniques. Her impressive publication record encompasses everything from Starling incubation to Shag population dynamics, and she is also renowned for providing sage advice to amateurs who want to develop their own ringing studies, particularly during Scottish Ringers Conferences where she remains an oasis of calm in frequently chaotic surroundings!

The final presentation of the night was made to Dr Lars Svensson, winner of the Marsh International Award for Ornithology. This is a man who is a deity in the eyes of many, including myself, having produced the ringers’ bible in the form of the ‘Identification Guide to European passerines’, a unique publication that details the ID features and aging and sexing criteria for every songbird species found on the continent. Without this book we would simply be unable to collect the data that allows us to calculate survival rates in such detail. Such is the volume of information contained within, that I had long presumed ‘Lars Svensson’ was a brand, not an individual, an umbrella term for a room full of dedicated researchers armed with wing rules and eye colour charts. While I didn’t get a chance to confirm his identity through biometrics, I can now confirm that he is but one man – how he also finds time to produce birders’ bible the Collins Guide, I cannot imagine.

Professor Bill Sutherland (right) presenting Dr Lars Svensson (left) with the Marsh Award for International Ornithology

The opportunity to chat to ringing stalwarts such as Andrew Harris and Peter Wilkinson was the icing on the cake and I hope that my attire was convincing enough to be invited back in future years. I’d highly recommend that anyone passing by the Mall Gallery between now and the 10th November has a look around the SWLA exhibition as the artwork on display is truly amazing – don’t forget your chequebook!

Posted by Dave Leech

Eggstremely long season

The breeding season starts in earnest in March, you might expect that by the beginning of August, most species would have finished nesting, giving both parents and their offspring time to grow or replace feathers and accumulate fat reserves in preparation for long migratory journeys or harsh winter conditions in the UK. However, volunteers taking part in the Nest Record Scheme are still reporting active nests of many species. It has been a terrible breeding season, with ringers catching very few young birds at Constant Effort Sites and migration hotspots, so these late broods could provide a vital boost to juvenile numbers at the eleventh hour.

After recent flooding destroyed the majority of breeding attempts, we thought that the Reed Warblers at our CES site in Norfolk would give up and move south, but 50 pairs were able lay one more clutch of eggs in a last ditch attempt to make their 9,000km round trip to Africa more worthwhile. The latest chicks will not be leaving the nest until the 26th August.

Yellowhammer

Many nest recorders still have Swallow and House Martin chicks to ring, with young broods reported this week by observers in North Yorkshire, Cumbria and Suffolk and birds sitting on eggs in East Lothian, Dorset and Devon, the latter close to a pair of Spotted Flycatchers with young still in the nest. Some resident species are still nesting too, including an incubating Yellowhammer found in Cambridgeshire on Tuesday, Reed Bunting and Tree Sparrow broods soon to be ringed in Suffolk and Meadow Pipit, Stonechat, Dartford Warbler and Linnet with large chicks this week in Devon.

 

Reed Warbler

Add to this the traditional late nesters such as Woodpigeon, for which the peak of the nesting season occurs in August and September, Collared Dove, Stock Dove, Barn Owl, Moorhen and Coot, and there are still many more nest recording opportunities to be had in 2012! Contact the Nest Records Organiser for more information.

Thanks to Dave Leech for the photos

Waiting for the kids to leave home

Over 36,000 Reed Warblers were ringed in the UK during 2010, so what was interesting about the seven caught at a site in south Norfolk on Thursday?

During the summer of 2011, a team of BTO staff, collectively known as The Swamp Things (AKA Dave Leech, Lee Barber, Rachael Portnall, Mike Toms and Jez Blackburn), decided that the best way to spend their free time would be to slip into a pair chest waders and wander the reedbeds of Norfolk. Why, you ask? A good question, especially when the temperature rises into the high twenties and the horseflies are hungry, but there was method in their madness as there really is no other way to collect data on the nesting success of Reed Warblers.

So, when the warblers arrived back from Africa in April, The Swamp Things sprang into action, catching and ringing the adults, finding their nests and ringing the chicks. The first full clutch of eggs was recorded on the 8th May, and the last nestling was ringed on the 12th August, by which time several of the team were looking considerably sleeker and, at least from the shoulders up, more tanned. In the intervening three months, they monitored 257 nests and ringed 596 nestlings. An added bonus was provided by the 12 nests parasitized by Cuckoos, of which at least seven were thought to have fledged (and by now have presumably joined Clement , Martin, Caspar, Lyster, and Chris on their wintering grounds).

The seven birds mentioned at the top of this posting were all ringed as chicks in the nest between the 8th and the 30th July and are still finishing their moult and building up their fat reserves. By adding this information to the other recaptures of ringed nestlings, the team will be able to learn a lot more about the behaviour of the youngsters when they reach independence and prepare for their first ever migration, an incredibly important, yet seldom studied, period in their lives.

Thanks to Dave Leech for this post.

Nunnery Nest News - update

After our previous post about the Nunnery ringing group nest recording, Dave Leech realised that we were perilously close to recording our 1000th nest since the group began monitoring in 2006!

This milestone has now been reached with a Blackcap nest (below) found by Rachael Portnall, about a metre off the ground on an ivy-covered wall in The Nunnery garden.

Blackcap and Chiffchaff are the first of our migrants to lay eggs as they winter in the Mediterranean Basin and therefore have a shorter return journey than most. The first brood of Chiffchaff at The Nunnery hatched on Monday and will be ready to ring at the weekend.


We don't have that many nest boxes on the reserve so a large proportion of those recorded by the group are open nesting species, such as thrushes, wablers, finches and buntings - these records are particualrly valuable as the total submitted to the Nest Record Scheme have been declining in recent decade. Other nests that have been recently found on the reserve include Skylark with a clutch of four (above), the first ever eggs of this species recorded here, plus several incubating Whitethroat and more Linnet on eggs.


Some recent news from the BTOs Tawny Owl nest box which we previously reported: the ringed chicks are now 'branching', this is a term used for chicks that leave the nest and wander around the branches before they can fly.



Thanks to Dave Leech for the photo.