Fire with red and yellow

It has been an exciting time in the Demography team over the past month, with data and news arriving in earnest. In terms of bird migration, the winds were coming from the east, bringing rare birds with them to our shores, as described in the BTO Bird Migration Blog.

Yellow-browed Warbler featured very highly last month, with another bumper year, see BirdTrack reporting rate graph below. At the beginning of October, Fair Isle Bird Observatory counted 72 and Cape Clear Bird Observatory managed to ring its 60th Yellow-brow of the autumn. West Cornwall Ringing Group have also been doing very well for this species with 56 ringed so far this autumn.

The Online Ringing and Nest Recording Report shows recoveries for Yellow-browed Warbler are few and far between, with exchanges only occurring between Britain and Ireland and the Channel Islands, Norway and the Netherlands. This year however, we have heard that one was caught at Brownstown Head, Ireland wearing a Russian ring! Hopefully we will get all the data soon.



Yellow-browed Warbler, taken by Lee Barber

Another autumn visitor is the Firecrest and we have just received the ringing details of a Firecrest recaptured a few years ago by the Teifi Ringing Group wearing a Belgium ring. This bird had travelled 566 km in two months and 10 days.

Whilst migration of small passerines is starting to reduce, thoughts now move to the influx of winter birds such as thrushes and Waxwings. Redwing in particular have been arriving in large numbers, and some ringers are getting close to 1,000 birds ringed this autumn. We will have to wait and see if our 2016 ringing total for Redwing beats the 11,743 ringed in 2015, but it is looking good so far.

The return of the Waxwing!

Ringer Peter Alker from Orrell, Greater Manchester, recently got in touch with the 'Demog Blog' team with some rather interesting news:

"It is many a birder’s dream to have a Waxwing visit their garden and that dream came true for me in February 2013, when one started feeding on apples I had put out for thrushes and wintering Blackcaps. One was soon joined by another, and the number steadily grew, peaking in mid-April with 220 birds chomping their way through 25 kilos of apples each day! Some birds stayed well into spring and the last three were seen on 8th May, by which time I had caught 265 birds, nine of which had been ringed elsewhere in the UK or abroad.

A Waxwing tree - Peter Alker

Waxwing - Peter Alker

Since then, people have often asked me if any have come back to the garden or if I think they will. I would always tell them that none had returned and that I thought it would be unlikely, even if there was another big irruption; such is the Waxwing’s reputation as an irruptive migrant in search of food. The number of Waxwings recorded in the UK this winter has been particularly low, so I was astonished, to say the least, when one turned up in my garden last Saturday (7th February), almost two years on from the appearance of the first in 2013. It was an adult female but, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see if it was already ringed. It didn’t visit the garden the following day so I was relieved when it returned the next Monday and incredibly I could see it was wearing a metal ring. Grabbing a camera, I was able to read the ring number from photographs and it was a bird I’d ringed in the garden as a first-winter female on 23rd February 2013.

The key shots from the hundreds of photos taken.

On the face of it, the appearance of this bird was a bit of a contradiction as it seemed unlikely that it had returned to my garden by chance but on the other hand irruptive species are not known for showing any site fidelity in winter. I wasn’t sure if there had been any similar occurrences so I contacted Raymond Duncan, of Grampian Ringing Group, who has been colour-ringing Waxwings in and around Aberdeen since 1988. He confirmed that they only have seven records of birds returning to the UK in subsequent winters, from over 3,100 birds ringed there, and only three of these were to the original ringing site. One of these birds was ringed in Kintore, near Aberdeen in February 2009 and photographed back in the same village in February 2010; also a winter when there were very few Waxwings in the country.

Waxwing - Peter Alker

So what, if anything, could these records tell us? They may be the exceptions, but it seems to me that Waxwings have the capability to return to sites used in previous winters in certain circumstances, and it is the circumstances that are rare and not the ability itself. Most Waxwings will not need to move to the UK in search of food more than once in their lifetime, as large irruptions are relatively infrequent and Waxwings are not particularly long-lived. Their main food source of berries can vary in abundance in the UK, affecting the birds’ distribution and movements in search of food. They are a very gregarious species in winter and the behaviour of an individual will be influenced by other birds in the flock. These factors together reduce the likelihood of any Waxwing being found returning to the same site in the UK in subsequent winters.

The interesting point about these two birds is that both had returned to previously-used sites in non-irruption years. This might suggest that they were returning in search of other Waxwings and not just in the search for food. Lastly, a further factor in the case of my bird is the provision of apples. It was ringed on 23rd February 2013 and was retrapped later that winter (on 28th March), so had stayed over a month and probably much longer. The provision of apples for Waxwings is a relatively recent phenomena and experience of a long-term reliable food source may have played a part in the return of this particular bird."

Baltic Waxwing

It's always a pleasure having a half-decent flock of Waxwings in your garden, although keeping them fed and happy is no mean feat. But the lengths Peter Alker has gone to to keep get birds into his garden in Orrell (Manchester) are something else! His efforts have been well rewarded though, with a small flock now regularly visiting.

In late February Peter noticed that one of these birds was ringed with what certainly didn't look like a BTO ring. A week later he finally caught the mystery bird and was rather surprised to see it was from Estonia! The Estonian Bird Ringing Centre were kind enough to let us blog the details straight away and this bird was actually ringed in Pärnu in western Estonia in mid-October 2012.

Waxwings wearing Grampian Ringing Group colour rings

This is in fact the first Waxwing movement to/from Estonia, with most of the previous records being to/from Scandinavia (see map below). Interestingly though, there are two records from Russia, both of birds ringed in the UK. Presumably this bird was on migration when ringed in Estonia and is actually surprisingly far south...

Thanks to the Estonian Bird Ringing Centre for the details for this bird and to Peter for letting us know about it in the first place and for the photos, and more can be found on his own blog.

Swedish birds legs

Raymond Duncan writes:

A long morning for Lindsay Cargill, Walter Burns, Derek Robertson and Euan Ferguson in Allenvale Cemetery, Aberdeen on 5/11/10 was finally interrupted by a single waxwing flying into the mist net. It turned out be a juvenile male wearing a Swedish ring 3474720! Ringing information is on its way.


Sadly and unbelievably this bird killed itself against a window 5 days later in Aberdeen. The legs and rings arrived back in the post thanks to local ornithologist Ian Patterson. The bill from Royal Mail for £1.19 for the oversize package is in the post Ian! Never the less, this is our first recovery (not including sightings) out of nearly 200 Waxwings ringed!


Another 9 window fatalities of which none were ringed, were collected from another site but please keep checking any dead birds, roaming flocks and any photographs of Waxwings for colour rings.

Thanks very much to all for sightings so far. Most recent sightings have been from Harry Bickerstaff in Montrose, Jim Duncan at Hogganfield Loch, Glasgow and Kane Brides in Greater Manchester. Jim Duncan sent a photograph of a colour-ringed bird showing only the metal and white ring, which wasn’t enough to identify the individual. He very kindly returned the next day only to get a photograph of a different colour-ringed bird!

Raymond Duncan
(On behalf of Grampian Ringing Group)

Waxwing returns to Scottish garden

A Waxwing ringed in a Grampian garden on 19 February 2009 made a welcome return this week, almost exactly a year after being ringed. It, and 31 others, was originally ringed after being lured into the garden using 'spiked' apples - good tip there!


We haven't seen many Waxwings in the country this winter, and there are only four in this particular garden now, but this was a surprise returnee, identified by its unique colour rings.

There aren't too many examples of Waxwings being seen back at the same site in subsequent winters, so this is really good to hear of. The only examples I could find quickly were both Grampian birds as well. NV11840 was ringed in January 1990 at Kemnay and seen back there on 8 November 1990. It was then seen three times locally into mid December. The other was NV59223 ringed in Aberdeen in November 1990 and then seen in Cleveland in March 1991, but back in Aberdeen in November 1993!


So it's good to know there are colour-ringed Waxwing back in the country, so have a close look at any flocks near you and let us know via www.ring.ac

Many thanks to Walter Burns for the pictures.