The Big Biggleswade Starling RAS

Denise Cooper-Kiddle and Derek Gruar write:

The BTO Breeding Bird Survey survey has recorded a 49% decline in Starlings across the UK since 1995. Why numbers have dropped so dramatically is not fully known. Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) projects are helping find out whether adult mortality is a possible cause.


Adult Starling. Photo by John Harding



My back garden in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire gets more than its fair share of Starlings (4,446 ringed here since 2010). Three years ago, the BTO suggested I should start a RAS project. As well as a unique metal ring I also add a colour ring to every adult bird caught between 1 April and 31 August each year. Since then I’ve colour ringed 634 adults. My RAS uses red rings with a white letter/number code starting with a P or a K and are unique to each Starling throughout Europe.

Starling roost. Photo by Laura Kuselska

What makes the Biggleswade RAS exceptional is the volume of data it produces. In June 2015, two months after the start of my first RAS season, I was contacted by a retired couple living a few streets away. They had started seeing Starlings with red rings in their garden and a leaflet they picked up in a local shop (1,000 had been distributed around the area) told them about the project. Brian and Viv took on Starling spotting as almost a ‘day job’ and Brian, an ex data manager, decided to set up and manage a complete project database. Every red-ringed bird is added into the database and every day on which that bird is sighted is recorded. This shows that an ‘amateur’ ringer and some absolute hero volunteers can provide a lot of information about a declining species.

So far the database contains 7,382 confirmed day sightings (ring code seen clearly among the mass of Starlings rushing around feeding). Looking at when individual birds were sighted shows that some birds are only seen during the breeding season and some are seen all year round.


Click to enlarge

Staying around or not, can make a lot of difference regarding the number of days on which a bird is sighted. Take two of the ‘regulars’ that have been seen on over 150 days since they were colour ringed. PIF has been seen on 158 days since being colour ringed on 4 May 2015. PVC has been seen 163 times, but wasn’t colour ringed until 14 June 2016. The difference is that PIF disappears for months at a time outside the RAS season and PVC has been seen on at least two days in every month since being colour ringed.

I did consider colour ringing the juveniles I catch as well, but decided against it as so few return as breeding adults the following year: of the 271 adults I have red ringed in 2017 only 52 had been metal ringed here as juveniles in 2016 (about 5% of the total of 980 juveniles ringed here in 2016). A lot will not have survived their first winter, but hopefully quite a few will simply have dispersed and gone elsewhere. It does look as if some birds return at some point because three Starlings metal ringed here in 2011 or 2012, and never seen or retrapped since 2012, suddenly turned up this year to ‘collect’ their red rings.

Juvenile Starling. Photo by Christine Matthews

Where do Starlings ringed in Biggleswade go? A number of recoveries and controls of birds within a 40 km radius suggests they disperse over a reasonable area. Two recoveries have been very noteworthy - a juvenile ringed here in August 2014 was found dead in Capel-Sylen, Carmarthen in March 2015 and an adult ringed here in November 2016 was found dead just outside Bunschoten-Spakenburg in the Netherlands in August 2017. This was especially interesting for me as I lived in Bunschoten-Spakenburg for 11 years; just one of those quirks of fate when investigating these fascinating birds.



With the 2017 RAS season now finished and the data entered into the database, who knows what the results will show us in the next few years. If you do see a red colour ringed Starling starting with the letters P or K, feel free to contact me on Info@denisecooper-kiddle.com.

Keeping Starlings under surveillance

Graham Martin, Worcestershire writes:

While local bird watchers have been marvelling at some spectacular murmurations of Starlings, my attention has been focused very closely on my local colony of about two dozen resident Starlings.

I have eleven boxes up around the garden and for the last five years, one has been rigged with a standard IR nest box camera. Ten of the boxes are now occupied and breeding has got underway very early this year, with the first egg laid on March 18th, in the camera nest box. According to BTO records, this is the 9th earliest date ever recorded for Starlings. It was 25 days earlier than the first egg that I observed in 2013.

Starling under surveillance - Graham Martin

One very interesting behaviour has been the male singing at full volume repeatedly from within the box. Given his mimicry this has meant that from my box I have had a succession of Buzzards, Chickens and Little Owls.

The first egg appeared and was duly noted on March 18th, but on the second day I switched the camera on at 06:00 and soon after watched as a bird entered the box, poked around a bit and then removed the egg. Fifteen minutes later a bird entered the box and showed more nesting behaviour until at about 10:00 another egg was laid. So the nest record now shows two successive days with one egg but because of what the video revealed, I know that this is in fact the second egg for the nest.

Starling - Terry Levitt

Just what is going is very difficult to say. Last year I also recorded two successive days with just one egg. At that time I assumed that the female had just interrupted laying for one day, but it could well have been that the first egg was also removed last year. Who took the egg? There are many options but it could be another female from one of the nearby nests helping herself to some ready nutrients or it could be a rival male trying to decrease someone else’s paternity.

I hope that this year, because of the early breeding and the mild and damp conditions, these starlings will be able to produce two broods, like last years camera box nest, but whether it was the same adults will remain a mystery.

Another Curlew Tit is spotted

The life of a wild bird is not an easy one. The BTO get quite a few reports of 'unusual' looking birds with abnormal plumages and deformities. The types of deformity vary widely but the most commonly reported are of the legs and especially the beak.

The most common bill deformities reported by Garden BirdWatch members are:

• Upper mandible over grown
• Upper and lower mandible crossed over
• Upper and lower mandible elongated together
  
• Lower mandible over grown
• Bill fractured
  

Ringers are in the unique position of being able to record abnormalities by measuring and by taking photographs. John Griffin from Devon recently caught this adult Blue Tit with an 18mm long bill! The cause behind this abnormality is unknown but this bird was at a healthy weight so was able to feed and take care of its plumage to some extent.


Ringers have reported ringing birds (Blue Tits in particular) with normal beaks and then, on re-catching these birds again months later, they have varying abnormalities. This proves that the abnormalities in birds can occur at any time in their lives. The most common bill deformities in Blackbirds are fractured bills, however this is rarely reported in Blue Tit, Great Tit or Starling. More information can be found on the Garden Birdwatch pages.

Thanks to John Griffin for letting us know and the photo.

Recoveries in June

The processing of ringing recoveries in the demography team have been going very well recently. We've had lots of reports almost ready to send out to ringers and finders.

We thought it would be good idea to give you a taster of these (possibly unchecked).

Lesser Whitethroat Y60214 (blue pin) was ringed at Eilat Ringing Station, Israel on 10 March 2009 and was caught by ringers at Heysham Bird Observatory, Lancs on 12 June 2011 (1791km).

Starling LC14381 (red pin) was ringed on 29 Jan 2010 near Upton Magna, Shropshire was unfortunately killed by a cat in Minsk, Russia on 22 June 2011 (2022km).

A Redwing RT32238 (green pin) didn't do much better, after being ringed at Theddlethorpe St Helen, Lincolnshire on 15 October 2009 and hitting a window in Outokumpu, Finland on 4 June 2011 (1976km).

Sandwich Tern DK31758 (yellow pin) had its ring number read, probably while roosting. This bird was ringed at Sands of Forvie NNR, Newburgh on 30 May 2008 and was seen at Foce Isonzo, Staranzano, Italy on 5 June 2011 (1662km).


View June recoveries in a larger map

Other birds of note were a Hobby ringed in Powys seen at Minsmere, Suffolk (325km) and a Great Spotted Woodpecker found dead in a Squirrel trap.

'Red-beaked Starling' on the wrong side of the road

We received a phone call from a member of the public in March of this year concerning a little Starling that had sadly been hit by a car in Cirencester, Gloucestershire. It apparently looked ‘a bit odd’ as it had a red beak. Luckily this bird had a ring on its leg, 7T54587 and the words Bruxelles.

Finding a Starling from Belguim is very nice of course. To date, there have been 208 Belgium ringed Starlings found in the Britain & Ireland (see table below taken from the online ringing and recovery summaries):

However, we have just heard back from the Belgium Ringing Scheme and they have informed us that this was actually a Water Rail (now the red beak makes sense)! It was an adult ringed on 15th March 2009 at Bellem, Oost-Vlaanderen, which is a distance of 388km in 365 days. As you can see from the table below, there are far fewer recoveries of this species:

Out of interest we have now had a total of 5 Water Rail recovered as a result of collision with a car to date. The origins of the birds were UK, The Netherlands, Germany and two from Belgium.

Say it with flowers!

Despite the cold winter and recent wet weather, birds are still making good progress with their nests and romance is obviously in the air. Nest recorder Frank Mawby recently watched a male Starling carrying a purple crocus flower to its nest. While we can’t rule out the possibility that he had forgotten an important anniversary, previous studies have suggested that Starlings are adept at using herbal remedies to combat parasite infestations in the nest, often incorporating vegetation in the lining.

Long-tailed Tits seem to have been less affected by the cold winter than many of us feared - here at The Nunnery most have now built their beautiful lichen and spider web nests and are in the process of lining them with feathers. ‘Our’ Song Thrushes and Blackbirds are just starting to lay, but the first reports of chicks are starting to arrive and many Robins are now busy feeding their broods.



With so much happening, it’s a great time to be out looking for nests. If you’ve found one, get in touch with us at nrs@bto.org and we’ll send you a Nest Record Scheme Starter Pack so that you can monitor it, or you can go on-line to take part in Nest Box Challenge www.bto.org/nbc.

It doesn't always go to plan... (Starlings and Little Owls)

The best laid plans and all that.....

The last couple of nights have seen over 1,000 Starlings feeding over the sports fields on the UEA campus in Norwich, roosting in 2m high Elders - perfect for catching! So we hastily assembled a crack ringing team from BTO and UEA, expecting a catch of at least 2-300 birds. So we all gathered next to the somewhat empty-looking fields, with only a token five Starlings flying around looking lost. Our catch???...


Yep, one out of five! All wasn't entirely lost though, as on the way, a car load stopped off at a hollow tree near Thetford, following up a hot tip from a local walker. Inside.....


We don't ring many Little Owls locally, so this was a real pleasure!

Thanks to all of the 23 ringers who turned up for the Starling roost (and to the 'event organiser' who shall remain anonymous), and to Kate Risely for the photos.