How long do Red-throated Divers live for?

Dave Okill of Shetland Ringing Group writes:

On  26 April 2018, Mick Mellor was doing a routine Beached Bird Survey for SOTEAG (Shetland Oil Terminal Environmental Advisory Group), when on Urafith beach, North Mainland, Shetland he found a freshly dead Red-throated Diver (RTD) that had a ring on it. He carefully noted the number and emailed me when he got home. 

Not remembering the number, I started to look back through old, almost fading, files and I found that I had ringed it as a large chick on a small remote lochan not far from Nibon, North Mainland, on 27 July 1985. At well over 32 years old, this individual was an old bird. Looking at the BTO longevity records, the oldest-known RTD was a bird ringed in Hoy, Orkney in July 1986 and last caught at the same location in April 2015, 28 years, 9 months and 7 days later; our bird clearly beats that by some margin! Searching through North American and other longevity lists, it seems that our bird is probably the oldest RTD yet recorded anywhere.

Ringed Dead Red-throated Diver, Urafirth Beach, Shetland. Photo by Mick Mellor.

As well as demonstrating essential information on migrations, movements and dispersal, ringing also gives us the ages of different species; both the average age and the maximum age of the oldest individuals. Longevity records usually creep up slowly, so an increase in the maximum age of RTDs by four years is a notable leap. I suspect that divers are long-lived birds and this record will be well beaten in time.

The ringing site and the finding place are only a few kilometers apart and it is likely that this bird was a male returning in spring to nest in its natal area. Male divers return to breed close to the area where they fledged; females disperse widely before they breed and Mainland-ringed females have been found many kilometers from their fledging loch, up to the North Isles and as far as Orkney. Orkney females have also been found breeding in Shetland.

Red-throated Diver. Photo by Manuel Schultz/BTO.

Over the years our bird will have traveled widely but we only know two points in this bird's life. To help us understand divers better, JNCC are promoting a project to discover what divers are doing, especially on their wintering grounds, now especially important with the proliferation of vast off-shore wind farms which displace wintering and moulting birds from their traditional areas. Birds from Orkney, Shetland, Finland and Iceland will be investigated.  

Editor's note: all recoveries of ringed birds help to further our knowledge, so if you find a bird ring, please report the details at www.ring.ac. 

Birds of a feather, fly together

It's pleasing to have a flock of Siskins arrive in your garden, and thanks to ringing, we might know where they come from or go to, but can ringing tell us anything about the link between these individuals in the flock? A note in Bird Study by Juan Senar and Jeff and Allison Kew in 2015 revealed that the individuals in Siskin flocks have stable social bonds and move in stable social units.

Two more recent examples of Siskins apparently travelling together between Britain and both Finland and Sweden provide even more evidence to reinforce the existence of social bonding between migrating Siskins.

Hugh Insley writes:

The moment you take a ringed bird out of a net and realise that the number on the ring is not one of your own, is always pleasing. When the ring has a foreign inscription the pleasure rises to excitement.

Swedish ring being examined. Photo by Sandy Davidson

Following several spells of easterly winds this March, I wasn’t entirely surprised to find that one of the Siskins visiting my garden feeders (green pin on map below) was carrying a Swedish ring and had been ringed as a 5,M (last years fledgling, male) on 25 April 2017 at Overboda, Västerbotten (63 deg 51 min N 19 deg 55 min E) 1,490 km ENE of Inverness (red pin on map below).

Swedish Siskin recoveries are not as frequent as might be expected from such a close neighbour. Up to 2016 there had been 38 Swedish-ringed Siskins reported here, with 110 BTO-ringed individuals recovered there. This compares with 105 from, and 172 to, Norway. So, even though another bout of easterlies had followed, I was quite surprised to catch another Swedish ringed Siskin, on 4 April and even more so to get a third the following day. What was really interesting was that the third bird’s ring, was only seven numbers different from the bird caught the previous day so that it was nearly certain that these two birds had been ringed at the same location and were travelling together. Both birds had been ringed on 23 July 2017 at Handol, Jamtland (63 deg 16 min N 12 deg 26 min E) 1,119 km ENE of Inverness (blue pin on map below).



An email exchange with Malcolm Calvert of the South Manchester Ringing Group, with whom I swap quite a number of Siskins, revealed that he had had a similar experience over the weekend of 22/23 February 2016 when one of six Siskins caught in his North Cheshire garden was an adult and was carrying a Finnish ring; the bird had been ringed at Pori, Satakunta, Turku and Pori (purple pin on map below) on 15 May 2015. The following day Malcolm caught another six, and was delighted to learn that one of these had been recaptured two months later on 29 April 2016 at Niinivisi, Kupio  Finland (yellow pin on map below), albeit some distance from the ringing location of the Finnish ringed bird caught in his garden (brown pin on map below). Finnish recoveries are even scarcer than those from Sweden with only four Finnish-ringed birds reported here and 28 BTO-ringed ones reported in Finland up to 2016.

Two male Siskins squabbling over seed. Photo by Desmond Dugan

Any foreign recovery is interesting, but to find two different examples of pairs and probably groups, of Siskins apparently moving together is remarkable. It seems likely that Malcolm’s two Finnish recoveries involving his Cheshire garden would have involved birds that had been wintering in Britain. The Swedish birds in my Inverness garden could also have been birds that had wintered in Britain, returning north with all the other Siskins which seem to move up into the Highlands in March and April. Many of these travel via the Manchester area, as evidenced by all the exchanges with the South Manchester Ringing Group, or perhaps they might have been the result of drift migration following all those easterly winds?


Siskins at a feeder. Photo by Desmond Dugan

Siskin was the sixth most-ringed bird in 2017 with in excess of 35,000 individuals ringed. Even so, or perhaps because of this effort, every year is bringing new knowledge to our understanding of these charismatic little garden visitors.

Meds, Reds and Rockits

The BTO ringing recoveries team are in daily contact with other ringing schemes all over Europe and occasionally even America or Africa. European ringing schemes are part of EURING, which is the coordinating organisation for European bird ringing schemes and strives to coordinate and maintain good quality data and research for the benefit of wild birds.

Part of the EURING protocol is for member schemes to use a standard set of codes when referring to birds that have been ringed or recovered. The data can then be more easily shared and understood by other ringing schemes. In the autumn, contact between the ringing schemes increases as migratory birds cross borders and seas; many foreign-ringed birds are found in Britain or Ireland as well as BTO-ringed birds being found abroad.

Looking at recent records (from October until the time of writing), there have been quite a few reports of foreign-ringed birds reaching our shores. Mediterranean Gulls from Poland are becoming a regular occurrence, with eight individuals reported since October. Other recently seen Mediterranean Gull were originally ringed in Belgium, France, Denmark and Hungary.

Ringed, colour ringed and unringed Mediterranean Gulls. Photo taken by Dawn Balmer

A sighting on 2 October of a Norwegian Little Stint on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides was really exciting, so too was a Peregrine from Finland which was seen in Norfolk.

The recovery rate for Redwing is very low, but recently there has been a scattering of interesting recoveries, as the birds start to arrive here en masse with the cold northerly air flow. A Redwing wearing a Finnish ring was caught at Wolverhampton Racecourse in early November. Another Redwing was found freshly dead after hitting a window at Charlestown of Arberlour, Moray on 24 October after being ringed 387 days previously at Akureyri, Nordur, Iceland. The most outstanding report was a Redwing which was caught at Rhostryfan, Gwynedd, Wales wearing a ring from the Czech Republic on 31 October. This bird was ringed on 10 November 2014 at Olomoucky Kraj 1,508 km away!

Redwing with a lot to eat. Photo taken by Tom Wallis

On 6 November, a non-ringer reported that a Greenfinch had hit their window at Hoddesdon, Hertford; unfortunately it didn't survive. This bird was wearing a ring that was put on in The Netherlands and if the species is confirmed, this would be the 10th record of a Greenfinch from there being reported here.

A juvenile Norwegian Rock Pipit was caught at Poole Harbour, Dorest on 3 November. It was ringed (and colour ringed) at Maletangen, More og Romsdal (1,464 km). This is one of seven Rock Pipits to be reported to us since October, all of which were colour ring sightings apart from this recapture and a bird hitting a window in Whitburn, Tyne and Wear. More information on the recoveries can be found on the Online ringing reports page.


The Norwegian Rock Pipit. Photo taken by Shaun Robson

As you can see from this round up, we are receiving lots of reports of birds ringed in more northerly countries, but we will soon also be getting records from our more southerly ringing scheme colleagues of 'our' birds that have been seen or caught whilst moving further south for winter.



Who gives a hoot

Occurring throughout England, Scotland and Wales the Tawny Owl is well known, especially during the winter when their territorial calls can be heard during the night.

The Tawny Owl is amber listed, i.e. a species of medium conservation concern due to recent population declines. Surveying this species can be difficult, but studying them is easier due to their readiness to use nestboxes. Ringing the adults and their chicks, as well as following the progression of the nesting attempt (nest record), provides very useful information to help interpret population changes.
 


Adult Tawny Owl. Photo by Rachael Barber



Adult Tawny Owl with a more grey plumage. Photo by Lee Barber

The number of Tawny Owls ringed each year varies considerably; in the last five years the number ringed has ranged from 920 to 2,748 birds. The number ringed also varies by county, with ringers in Northumberland topping the list with an average of 183 birds per year. This is followed by Lincolnshire (107), North Yorkshire (100), Nottinghamshire (92), Norfolk (81) and Cumbria (81). Around 80% of the birds ringed each year are chicks. Ringing chicks enables researchers to follow an individual throughout its lifetime, providing vital information on where birds move to and exactly how long they live.


Tawny Owl chicks. Photo by Lee Barber

For most of the recoveries the BTO receive, the cause of death is unknown, but for some the cause of death is clear. Being hit by a vehicle is the most reported cause of death for Tawny Owls, followed by train casualty and drowning in artificial water containers like horse or cattle troughs. This doesn’t mean that 66% of all Tawny Owls die from vehicle strikes, however. Birds killed by vehicles are inevitably more visible than a bird that dies of natural causes in the middle of a wood. Also, as most of the birds that are reported are from areas with high concentrations of people, these are more likely to be reported when found.

By recapturing ringed birds, licenced bird ringers are in the privileged position to be able to gather information on the presence and condition of Tawny Owls that are alive and well. Last year one of our ringers re-caught a Tawny Owl that was originally ringed as long ago as 2003. This bird was ringed as a chick and re-caught in the same place (Kielder Forest, Northumberland), so the exact age of this bird is known (13 years). A bird ringed in 2004 at Rowlands Gill in Tyne and Wear which was also caught during 2016, that was an adult (at least 1 year old) so she could have been much older. It would have been doing very well to break the longevity record of 21 years 10 months.

Unlike some other owl species, Tawny Owls doesn’t generally travel very far or cross large bodies of water, so their distribution is restricted to mainland Britain.  Due to this behaviour we have had no foreign recoveries in the history of the BTO Ringing Scheme.


Tawny Owl chick about to be ringed. Photo by Lee Barber

I have received one recovery while working at the BTO, of a ring found in Iceland (without a bird) which was originally put on a Tawny Owl chick. This was an amazing record so (as with all our recoveries) some investigation followed. Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite as amazing as we’d hoped as we had a previous record that this bird had already died. The ‘used’ ring was put on a binocular strap for safe keeping after reporting. Some years later the finder was on holiday in Iceland when the strap broke and the ring was lost, only to be found later by someone else who reported it to the BTO via www.ring.ac.

The vast majority of data from ringing and the resulting finding of dead birds can provide an amazing amount of information, so if you do find a ringed bird please report it via www.ring.ac.  As a thank you, you will receive the information on where and when the bird was ringed.

What happened to all the Jays?

Around the UK, Jays haven’t needed to dip into their large cache of acorns much this winter, with the weather being so mild. They will top up their diet with invertebrates and any other meaty treats they can get. This search can lead them to gardens during cold periods and some of these gardens are occupied by BTO ringers.

Jay taken by John Flowerday

Last year our BTO ringers ringed 506 Jays in the Britain & Ireland (c700 is the five year average) and as Jays can live to a maximum of 16 years old, there are a good number of ringed Jays in the wild population. Being very clever birds, they can provide a challenge to ringers to catch them but once caught they deserve respect as they are incredibly powerful birds with very sharp claws and beaks. Once in the ringers hands the birds are ringed, aged, and several measurements taken to record the condition the bird and if any moult or breeding is occurring.

Jay taken by Lee Barber

Thankfully 89% of the reports of ringed Jays come from our ringers by re-catching them, months or even years later. This information is vital to understanding the movements, behaviour and survival of this beautiful bird. Ringed Jays are also found by non-ringers, which usually report them through www.ring.ac website.

Most of these birds are just found dead with no cause of death given, however a large proportion are legally shot/trapped with the aim of reducing their impact on other species nesting attempts. The Jay is not without its own predators however, as 6% of ringed birds reported to the BTO have been taken by a predator. Even the Peregrine is a little partial to the odd Jay as a recent BTO Demog Blog post can testify.

The twelve recoveries for Christmas

Partridge in a Pear Tree
There is no mention of a Pear tree on the BTO BirdFacts pages for Grey Partridge however we do have 127 recoveries for this species. Most of these recoveries are of shot birds, as you would expect, but we do have several that have been radio tagged and the mortalities reported. One of the predators of these is quite surprising. Click here to open this recovery

Two Turtle Doves
We have even fewer recoveries for Turtle Dove (101) on the system, due to a severe decline in numbers since the late-1970s. As a result, they are still on the 'Red List' of 'Birds of Conservation Concern'. These reports are mainly of birds found dead, shot or found after being killed by a predator but it is pleasing to see that 73 of these reports are from ringers re-catching ringed birds; helping to further understand their decline and movements.


Recoveries Of Turtle Dove for Britain & Ireland

You'd have to have good eyes to get this recovery. Click here to open this recovery

Three French Hens
Even though our Ringing Scheme doesn't ring chickens, it does ring the majestic Hen Harrier. There has been some great work in recent years on wing tagging Hen Harriers, increasing the life histories of these birds from their breeding quarters to their wintering areas. One bird getting an amazing 87 sightings compressed into just two years.

For our selected recovery, it has to be a French one though. Click here to open this recovery.

Four Calling Birds
At this time of year the Tawny Owl is starting to think about the up and coming breeding season and on those frosty nights, can be heard calling to each other. One recovery that you haven't seen the report for was a Tawny Owl ring found in Iceland! This caused some confusion here in the Ringing Team, as we have never had a foreign recovery of Tawny Owl. After much investigation we found out that this ring was put on a Tawny Owl chick, which died in the nest. This ring was collected (to avoid subsequent reporting) and put on the ringer's binoculars. After a binocular strap broke on a birding trip to Iceland, this ring was later found and reported to our Ringing Scheme.

Our chosen recovery however is different and is an unusual way to go. Click here to open this recovery.

Tawny Owl. Photograph taken by Lee Barber

Five Gold Rings
One of the highlights for 2015 were the numbers of Goldcrest caught. We posted previously just how good the Goldrush was.

The chosen recovery has links with the three French Hens. Click here to open this recovery to understand how.

Six Geese a-Laying
How can we not look at goose nest records after a title like this!? For 2015, the BTO Nest Record Scheme has received 108 Canada Goose, 49 Greylag Goose and seven Egyptian Goose nest records. This has remained stable but very low over the years. If you have any records please let the Nest Record Scheme know.

An amazing recovery from the Wildfowl & Wetland Trust. Click here to open this recovery.

Seven Swans a-Swimming
One of our highest reported groups of birds are swans. Being large, white and living in populated places they are easily found and reported. Many land on roads thinking they are rivers and being less maneuverable they do crash into wires, walls and bridges.


One of our Thetford, Norfolk colour ringed Mute Swans this morning, showing just how easy it is to get colour ring sightings. Photograph taken by Lee Barber

The Bewick's Swan is famous for it's migration route but this recovery points out they do live a long time. Click here to open this recovery of 28 years!

Eight Maids a-Milking
We were not able to find any maids in the BTO ringing database but there are quite a few cows mentioned. Unfortunately, it seems like they are not too keen on swans which can get trampled. We have a very different recovery involving a Sparrowhawk for our chosen recovery. Click here to open this recovery.

Nine Ladies Dancing
The Great Crested Grebe is famous for it's pair bonding display, where it rises out of the water and dances on the surface. Few grebes are ringed and even fewer are found later, giving a grand total of eight records to choose from. How the finder got this recovery is unknown but it probably took hours. Click here for the recovery.

Great Crested Grebe. Photograph taken by Chris Knights

Ten Lords a-Leaping
This may be a tenuous link but in the movie, 'Lord of the Rings', Gandalf leaps off Saruman's tower onto a Great Eagle. This looks remarkably like a Golden Eagle and we have 35 recoveries of this species. Click here to open this recovery.

Eleven Pipers Piping
Not 11 records of a Purple Sandpiper, but just one. This is the number of records we have of dead Purple Sandpipers. By re-catching 'purps' our valued ringers have increased the information on this species by 928 records. These include the data from a colour-ringing project in Norway which has produced an amazing 51 sightings in Britain & Ireland. Click here to open this recovery.

Twelve Drummers Drumming
The Snipe is famous for its drumming breeding display and we have received quite a few recoveries of this species over the years from 24 other countries. One of these was from one of our Constant Effort Sites (CES). Only one Snipe has been ringed at Cranwich CES to date and so far there is a 100% recovery rate for this species. Click here to open this recovery.



Measuring a Snipe. Photograph taken by Lee Barber

The Demography Team wishes you all a very Merry Christmas and happy New Year

Technical wizardry helps monitor Merlins

For many of us who can’t enjoy this species on its breeding grounds in the moorlands and uplands, the Merlin (Falco columbarius) is a bird of autumn and winter when they can be spotted in the lower lands chasing Skylarks or other passerines. The BirdTrack graph below illustrates that pattern, with an obvious peak in October. An increase in sightings in October is potentially also due to the presence of passage migrants and the incoming winter population.

Merlin chart from BirdTrack

Recently, Roy Filleul, a birdwatcher and photographer from Jersey, captured images of a juvenile Merlin on the side of a pond. The following day we received a phone call from a member of the public reporting a Merlin that had been taken into care in the JSPCA (Jersey Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Unfortunately this was the same bird that had been photographed by Roy and, sadly, it didn’t survive due to injuries.

Merlin, by Roy Filleul

The bird in question was ringed in the nest last June in Lancashire, one of their strongholds (click here for top five counties for species in 2013). Although this Merlin didn’t travel a long distance or move in an unexpected direction, this is the first time one ringed in the UK has been found in the Channel Islands.

As you can see from the photograph, as well as being ringed, this bird was also PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) tagged. These tags work in a similar way to Microchips for a dog or cat except that they are mounted externally (on a ring) rather than being inserted under the skin and are read by a receiver placed by the nest (by a licence holder). Metal ringing allows us to gather information on movements as well as survival; for example, it is possible to infer that when you stop catching a bird, that is normally caught year on year at a particular site, it has not survived (the principle behind the Retrapping Adults for Survival Scheme). As it is often very difficult to re-catch adult raptors, using a PIT tag allows us to follow a bird throughout its life to obtain data that categorically tells us the bird is still alive. If nests are monitored by a licensed nest recorder, levels of productivity over its lifetime can also be obtained from PIT tags. Unfortunately, as this bird died before returning to its breeding grounds, we will never know what information we might have gathered from this individual.

Currently in the online ringing database we have 54 recoveries of UK-ringed Merlins that have been found abroad, 35 of them in France. Also notable are the 31 Icelandic Merlins found in the British Isles, mostly recovered in Ireland. This reflects the fact that many British breeders winter on the continent and our remaining winter population is joined by winter visitors, predominantly from the Icelandic breeding population. See map of recoveries below.

Merlin recoveries map, from the online reports

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!

Adios Caledonia

Roy Dennis' team have colour ringed more than 1500 young Ospreys since 1966 and in 2007 they started using GPS tracking devices to 'fill in' the gaps left by colour-ringing alone. These satellite devices enable live monitoring of individuals and have revealed entire migration routes, identified stop-over sites and disclosed previously unknown hazards for different species. At Loch Garten 12 Ospreys chicks have been fitted with satellite tags and their movements are followed by many online fans and reserve staff. The 12 birds have been named and their return to their birth place as breeding adults is much awaited.

Sadly, the fifth day of the new year brought bad news to Roy Dennis, Loch Garten and all the Osprey fans, as Caledonia, a female bird ringed and satellite-tagged in 2012, had been found dead in Spain. We now know that Juan Antonio Martínez Martín, a member of SEO/Birdlife, found Caledonia dead in the garden of a convent in Seville, where it had hit some cables and killed itself during thick morning fog.

All photos thanks to Jesús Fernández

 At Loch Garten, the return of Caledonia was expected with excitement as this should be only three months away. She seemed to be a 'very safe' Osprey, having spent several days in the Guadalquivir River area where she eventually died, and had travelled the same route that saw her sad end before. The Guadalquivir River basin in south west Spain is used as wintering grounds or stop-over by many species including Ospreys.

San Clemente convent, by the Guadalquivir River, where caledonia was found.

The RSPB Community is devastated with the loss of Caledonia, they have posted photographs of her and told their own personal memories here.

This little story highlights the hazards that large birds face, in particular the iconic Osprey. They tend to attract the love and attention of the public, even reserves and conservation measures are established across countries for their benefit. However, in their lifetime, they not only need to overcome the natural elements, they also have to overcome the barriers that we put for them, for their home ranges expand beyond the reserves.

In the UK and Ireland 189 Ospreys were ringed in 2012, and in that year we received 134 reports of BTO-ringed Ospreys found in other countries. To find out more about ringing totals in the UK and Ireland, visit the Online Ringing reports.

Finding locations of Ospreys ringed in the UK and Ireland (purple)
and ringing location of birds later found in the UK and Ireland (yellow).

Thank you to Juan Antonio Martínez Martín for finding and reporting the bird, to Jesús Pinilla and Arantza Leal from SEO/Birdlife for providing further finding details, to Roy Dennis for ringing the bird and to Jesús Fernández for the photos.

Reed Warbler in the Net

The humble Reed Warbler doesn't often feature in blog posts about passage or migration as it is too ubiquitous. The home range of the scirpaceus subspecies spans across Eurasia and Africa and they can be found in a variety of habitats, typically near water. Breeding in the northern hemisphere as far as 60 N in Scandinavia and wintering as far south as the Congo basin or sometimes even further.

During recent weeks the arrival of reed warblers across the country has been documented "in the net" - both by ringers using mist nets and birders via the web.

The table below shows where Reed Warblers have been submitted by 'BirdTrack-ers', with the earliest records coming from eastern and south counties of England.

Numerous reports of Reed Warblers can be found in the blogosphere, as you can see from the selection below.

The earliest report I found was a reed warbler singing on the 12th april in Cotswold Water Park. Peter Alfrey reported one in Beddington on the 15th of April in his blog, and the same day one was reported in Pierrepoint Holme by the South Notts Ringing Group. A few days later, on the 19th, an early bird was reported in Walney BO. In South Bucks Chirs and Denise Lamsdell reported their first reed warbler of the summer on the 21st April, the same day that Julia wrote about ringing one in the Bristol area. By the end of April many had arrived in the UK, including one reported 'in the nets' at Trimley Reserve on 26 April by volunteer Anna Alum in 'Mick’s Blog'. The Avon Birds blog tells us that a reed warbler with a Portuguese ring was controlled in a ringing session on the 28th. And finally, Rachel Barber recently told us about reed warbler ringing in Cranwich in Norfolk.

However it was not the excitement caused by witnessing the wave of reports of Reed warblers in Britain that prompted me to write this post. What really helped to illustrate the feat of migration was news of a bird with a GBT ring trapped at Merzouga (Morocco) as it completed its crossing of the Sahara Desert. Standardised ringing is carried out there every spring by a Catalan ringing group.

Yasmina, Merzouga, Morocco; photo from the Yasmina blog.

A visit to the Yasmina blog is worth the click as the pictures are great and the array of species is amazing, including some UK-ringed birds.

From the totals summary below we can see that so far in 2012, they have caught 122 reed warblers - not bad for a little oasis in the desert!

Ringing totals from Yasmina, (Acrocephalus scirpaceus = Reed Warbler). Source: Yasmina blog

So, Reed warbler passage is ongoing - some birds will be still on the move while others will already have begun breeding. No doubt you will be hearing about breeding Reed warblers very soon, as BTO staff based in the Demography Unit are undertaking a great little project examining the breeding biology of the species at a site in Norfolk. Watch this space...

Jack Snipe for the Year List!

Jack Snipe are a difficult bird to survey, let alone ring, so what are the chances to get a foreign recovery?

A quick look at the online reports shows that the chances of receiving a recovery of a Jack Snipe are pretty slim, with only only a couple of birds recovered in good years (see table). Most of the recoveries are from shot birds.

Ringed and Recovered Jack Snipes, from on-line reports

Year	Ringed	Recovered
2011	39	0
2010	89	1
2009	77	1
2008	72	2
2007	87	0
2006	97	2

They are generally only seen when they are flushed at a very short distance and the estimation of total wintering numbers is based on information from the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, not on actual 'in the field' counts. It has been calculated that apparently one Jack Snipe is shot for every 10 Common Snipe (in France and The Netherlands).

I am sure you all will agree with me that Jack Snipe are always a great find, in the field or in the net, and the same goes for processing recoveries. So that is why, so far, the highlight of the month has been a report received from the Hiddensee Bird Ringing Centre with the details of a Jack Snipe ringed as a juvenile in August 2007 in Burgstadt, Sachhsen, Germany. This bird saw the end of its days in St Austell (Cornwall) on the 14.01.2012 when it was shot.

View Jack Snipe for the year list in a larger map

Kingfisher Pole Vaults to Ordfordness

The great majority of Kingfishers breeding in the UK are resident. However, the kingfisher that winters in your patch may have known other countries in its life, and that's what this story shows...

Last Monday we had news from Mike Marsh of what seems to be the first Polish ringed Kingfisher ever controlled in the UK, Mike said:

At Orfordness, Suffolk we catch a small number (up to 8) Kingfishers each year, usually in the autumn. We have assumed that these have been dispersing juveniles of fairly local origin. How wrong could we be ?

On Sunday Sep.25th we controlled one wearing a Polish ring – YN16870 !

From the on-line recovery totals this appears to be the first Kingfisher from Poland to be caught in the UK. Previously the most easterly Kingfishers recovered in the UK has been from Germany (5 from there). The distance moved by this bird will almost certainly be over 1000km which will be even further than the remarkable recovery of the BTO-ringed Kingfisher that went from Wales to Spain!

Without a doubt this will be one of the longest distance runners among the Kingfishers in the ringing database and we can't wait to hear from the Polish Scheme about the ringing details.

While we wait for this record to be processed, you can see a map showing the 4 longest distance runner Kingfishers in the ringing database so far:

In 4th position a bird ringed in Aken, Kothen (Germany) as a pullus in 2008 was controlled in Saltfleet Haven (Lincolnshire) the same year

In 3rd position a bird ringed in Templin-Knehden (Germany) as a pullus in 1998 was controlled near Sturry (Kent) the same year

In 2nd position a bird ringed in Horsham (Sussex) as young in June 2005 was controlled in Saint-Gaudens (France) in August the same year

On top of the marks is a bird ringed in Marloes (Pembrokshire) as young in Aug 1993 was controlled in Irun (Spain) in Sep the same year (in yellow)

View Kingfishers in a larger map

To prove the veracity of this story please meet the Polish Kingfisher itself!

Thanks to Mike Marsh for sharing the story and to David Crawshaw for supplying the photograph (they had not taken the ring off - this is a sequence of photos).

Kingfisher YN16870(2).jpg

What happened to the recoveries?

After looking at how many recoveries we get from predators in the last posting, I thought it would be nice to look at the recoveries we get as a whole.

I have used all the recoveries that we have received from August up until now. We use two codes to say what happened to the birds. The finding condition tells us, for example, if the bird was found dead or alive. The finding circumstances give the cause for what happened to the bird, if known.

The pie chart below is of the condition of the bird reported. As you can see the vast majority of reported birds are dead but a reasonably large slice goes to ringers catching birds after that have already been ringed (this generally only includes birds travelling more than 5km from the site of ringing).



The second pie chart is of the finding circumstances. We have a multitude of codes for the circumstances but I have just highlighted those that we have had more than 10 reports.

The 'bird found' slice is when the finder just finds the bird's body but doesn't know what happened to it. Obviously the pie chart results are very specific to this time of year and the proportions change very quickly. For example this is the start of the shooting season and we get a sudden increase in the number of birds shot compared with earlier in the year.


It should be pointed out that these portions are of reported individuals, for example you would hope that 100% of all shot birds would be reported but not all birds are reported that end up in a cat's belly.

Black Week for the White Owls

With the number of freezing days now having reached double figures in England and Scotland (read more on our brand new BTO website), the weather is making all the headlines. Similarly, the Ringing Office has received a number of reports from the public of ringed birds affected by the weather; found in gardens, barns, sheds, fields and city centres. Many birds are succumbing to this first wave of severe cold weather and the ringing recoveries reflect this.
For example, this week, we have received 31 reports of dead Barn Owls. In most cases the cold conditions figure as the cause of death. This was a black week for the Barn Owl, a species which probably found it difficult to find any small mammals due to the snow cover and the freezing temperatures.

Other dead birds reported this week which are also likely to be cold weather victims are a Reed Bunting, two Waxwings, a Chaffinch and a Long-tailed Tit.

It will be interesting to find out how many dead birds walkers find washed-up along the coastline this weekend. We will keep you updated on any interesting recoveries!

Thanks to Neil Calbrade for the photo.