Colour ringed Little Egret sighting

I got an email from the co-ordinator of the British & Irish Little Egret study today with details about a sighting of a colour ringed Little Egret at Langness.

The bird in question was ringed as a chick in the nest on 13th May this year near North Somercotes, Louth, Lincolnshire, England.
It was then seen between the 3rd and 8th August this year on the East coast of Scotland at Belhaven Bay, Dunbar, East Lothian, a movement of 333km.
Then on 8th September this year it was seen at Langness, a further movement of 254km.

Also, click here to see Sean's blog with details of a colour ringed Twite seen in Ramsey that had originally been ringed in Machrihanish, Kintyre, Scotland.

Cormorant Recovery

I received an email about a Cormorant recovery from the BTO today.

Ring number 5255563 had been put on a nestling at the colony near Maughold on 17th June this year as one of a brood of 3 young in the nest.

On 20th August this year the bird was found freshly dead floating in water at Tyttenhanger Gravel Pits, Hertfordshire, England.

A distance of 394km and only 64 days after being ringed in the nest. A short life for such a bird but it just goes to show how quickly some of our birds can disperse in a short space of time. Remember that when the bird was ringed it was still unable to fly and would have probably spent at least another 2-3 weeks at the colony before fledging.

New Colour ring projects

We have had the go-ahead to start colour ringing Rock Pipits in what should be an exciting new project for us. We will be using 3 coloured rings in addition to the usual Metal BTO ring so that individual birds can be identified in the field.
The colour rings we will be using can be seen below (do let us know if you see any Rock Pipits with any combinations of these rings!):



We have also started up the Mute Swan colour ringing scheme again, in co-operation with the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) and the North West Swan Study Group which monitors the Mute Swans in North Cheshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Cumbria.

Most of the Mute Swans on the Island were colour ringed in the 1990's however the majority of those colour rings have long since been lost and only the Metal BTO rings remain. There was a huge amount of interesting information gathered from those colour ringed birds being re-sighted all over the Island and further afield in England and Ireland. It is hoped that over this Winter we will be able to colour ring a large percentage of the Mute Swan population on the Island. Another exciting project!

Click here to open a document describing more about the colour ring schemes we do on the Isle of Man.

Wildfowl and wet vans.

I met up with Sean this morning on his patch 'up North'.
First of all we tried for some Rock Pipits at Port Mooar using our spring traps. There were a few birds milling about on the weed but they just weren't interested enough in the mealworms.
Having drawn a blank there we moved on to the North side of the entrance to Ramsey harbour, a good spot for Rock Pipits.
W caught 1 Rock Pipit here and we also noticed a small flock of Turnstone feeding on the tideline.
Sean has recently made an 'Ottenby trap' for just this sort of thing so we set the cage on the seaweed but luck just wasn't on our side in the morning and we didn't catch, so we packed up and moved on to bigger things!

Rock Pipit

The Ottenby 'walk-in' trap

Having had successs catching some Swans yesterday, Sean took us to the slipway by the swing-bridge in Ramsey harbour. Here we caught 1x Canada Goose and 5x Mute Swan.

Canada Goose and Swan ringing

We added our last 4 colour rings to the first 4 Mute Swans caught, and just metal ringed the last one. One of the four birds given colour rings was a retrap 'U7291' which had originally been ringed on 21st Feb 1998 and had previously worn colour ring 'A68' which was now missing (hence we always metal ring every bird).

We will soon have more colour rings and are looking to try and get the majority of Mute Swans on the island ringed, as was the case in the 1990's when some very interesting data was gathered on their movements throughout the island and further afield to Ireland and England.

After leaving the Swans, we went up to the Whitebridge on Sulby River to see if there were any wildfowl to catch up there. On our arrival we found something very different in the middle of the river!!

Why can't the 'Window wizard' cast a spell to get himself out?

He won't ignore this sign again!

Great garden session

I met Chris and Kay at the garden/orchard site near Sulby this morning to do some netting and we had a decent morning.
The highlight of the morning was catching the Great Spotted Woodpecker, quite probably the first one ever to have been ringed on the Isle of Man! Other decent birds caught included Blackcap & Lesser Redpoll.

The totals for the morning were:

Blue Tit 16 + 5 retraps
Chaffinch 9
Great Tit 8
Greenfinch 5
Robin 2 + 2 retraps
Coal Tit 2 + 1 retrap
Dunnock 1
Blackcap 1
Lesser Redpoll 1
Great Spotted Woodpecker 1

First year female Great Spotted Woodpecker - probably the first ever to be ringed on the Isle of Man!

Thanks again to Ron & Hazel for letting us set our nets in their fantastic gardens and orchard (and for the tea & biscuits!).

Wader netting

Sean and I decided to do some wader netting last evening, making the most of the flat calm & overcast conditions.
Unfortunately, although the conditions were good, the birds just weren't about and we ended the evening having caught just 1 Redshank.

Luckily, Sean had his camera - thanks for the pictures mate!

More Redpolls & Crests

We went back to Corlea Plantation by the Cringle Reservoir again this morning.
Not as good a morning as yesterday with noticably fewer birds about but there were good numbers of Redwing first thing in the morning. Unfortunately the tree height meant that the Redwings never quite made it down to the level of the nets, despite being attracted to the call.
The totals for the morning were:

Goldcrest 7
Lesser Redpoll 4
Coal Tit 1
Dunnock 1
Wren 1

Male Goldcrest - note the vivid orange under the yellow (Females do not have the orange), see close up below.

Lesser Redpolls

Lesser Redpolls

The net with the Goldcrest call playing was in view of our ringing base and we watched at least 6 Goldcrest able to fly more-or-less straight through! The net was a standard size mesh 'North Ron' but, with just a little shake of their body, the birds were able to go right through the holes. They obviously breed them slim up in the hills!
Thanks to Sean for the pictures! You can see more of his excellent bird pictures at his website http://www.grayimages.co.uk/

Recent Recoveries

I got a small batch of recoveries from the BTO today.

Included were 2 of the control Storm Petrels we caught on the night of 20th/21st July this year at Fort Island (St Michael's Isle).

Given its locality, Sheepland Harbour is one of the more regular sites for interchanging Storm Petrels but the East coast bird at Craig Stirling is much less common for us. Click here for a map showing all recoveries of Manx caught Storm Petrels.

Storm Petrel 2639054 ringed on 22 Aug 2009 at Sheepland Harbour, Ardglass, Co. Down, Northern Ireland by the Belfast & Down RG. Retrapped by us on 20th July 2010 at St Michael's Isle. 332 days, 67km.

Storm Petrel 2630513 ringed on 11th August 2007 at Craig Stirling, Grampian Region, Scotland . Retrapped by us on 21st July 2010 at St Michael's Isle. 1075 days, 363km (as the crow flies).

Also inlcuded in the recoveries was a Greenfinch ringed on 12th October 2009 at the Calf of Man BO, killed by a cat near Ballasalla, Isle of Man on 31st July 2010. 292 days, 15km.

Redpolls, Goldcrests & Rock Pipits

I met up with Sean this morning at Corlea Plantation to try and catch some Goldcrest and Redpoll.
We has a succesful morning, ringing 34 birds:

Goldcrest 18
Lesser Redpoll 3
Robin 3
Coal Tit 2
Blue Tit 1
Great Tit 4
Dunnock 1
Chaffinch 1
Wren 1

One of the Redpoll we caught this morning - however as we both forgot our cameras then we had to make do with the camera on our phones - not ideal! So,below is what a Redpoll can look like...

Fantastic birds!

Other birds seen during the morning included 3 Redwing over, several flocks of Skylark over (about 40 birds in all), 5 Mistle Thrush over, several flocks of Goldfinch, numerous Siskin and one of the pair of Raven drifting close by.

We then had another quick go for Rock Pipits on the beach at Niarbyl. We caught another 4 new Rock Pipit and a single Robin. As usual for Niarbyl we were able to show the birds and ringing to an appreciative crowd of onlookers.

A great days ringing, hopefully more of the same tomorrow!