New Colour ring project - Cormorants

Cormorant on nest, Maughold, Isle of Man. grayimages.co.uk

We are commencing a new colour ring project this year on Cormorants. After obtaining the relevant permissions and getting allocated a colour/code scheme by the BTO we have now got the rings made up. They are specially shaped for the flattened tarsus of Cormorants, being eliptical, and they also have our email address along the top.

The colour rings for use on Cormorants

As can be seen, the scheme we have been allocated is a White ring with Red inscription. The scheme allocated to us is 3 digits, always starting with a letter, followed by a mix of 2 letters/numbers. The Manx RG scheme has been allocated the following letters which will be at the start of the code: N, P, R, S, T, U, X, Y or Z (another scheme uses the remaining letters as the start of their code which also uses white rings with red inscription).

Cormorants at the nest, grayimages.co.uk

We will be studying the colony near Maughold in the North East corner of the Isle of Man and the majority of the ringing will involve nestlings. Over the years we have ringed over 800 Cormorants on the Island, mostly at the Maughold colony, and this has generated over 60 recoveries as far afield as Spain.

A map showing some of the recoveries of Manx RG Cormorants can be seen by clicking here.

Obviously with adding the colour rings to our Cormorants we hope to greatly increase our recovery/reporting rate. A similar project on Cormorants in Scotland is generating a 1 in 4 reporting rate on their colour ringed birds!

Cormorants displaying at colony site

When we survey the Maughold colony each year we see numerous breeding adults that are ringed with the usual metal ring (as on the bird on the right in the picture shown above) but due to the location and topography of the colony site, taking telescopes with us to try and read the ring numbers isn't really an option! The colour rings can be read through binoculars, making it possible to record individuals at the nest. This is another reason for the project - to see how many of the young return to the same colony to breed and if they do, then do they go elsewhere for the Winter?

Cormorant chicks in the nest

We will hopefully ring the first young in early May so from that date on keep your eyes out for colour ringed Cormorants! Any sightings can be reported to us via email manxrg@gmail.com or via the Manx BirdLife website.

A right Bobby Dazzler

I went 'dazzling' with Sean this evening. 4 birds caught:

Dunlin

Sanderling

and 2 Turnstone

Measuring the Bill length on a Turnstone

A great start on dazzling for 2011. Hopefully next time the Whimbrel will have arrived!

A great garden session

I went up to my mums farm cottage, Lower Ballafodda (a great B&B), this morning to put up a couple of nets in the garden in the hope of catching a selection of garden species.

Extracting the catch from the nets in the front garden

It turned out to be a fantastic few hours with 73 new birds caught and a control Chaffinch (from the Calf of Man Bird Obs). Totals below:

Chaffinch 25 (+1 control)
House Sparrow 16
Great Tit 16
Goldfinch 7
Blue Tit 7
Dunnock 2

Male House Sparrow

Goldfinch

The control Chaffinch, L214188, was ringed at the Calf of Man Bird Obs on 04th October 2010, a movement of 11km and 174 days between captures.

Movement of Chaffinch L214188

Thanks for the help and the lunch mum!

Mute Swan saves the day

I was out with Sean again today, meeting up at one of our coastal sites to try for some Rock Pipits before they all moved off to their breeding territories. Unfortunately, the glorious, warm Spring morning must have put their minds 'on the job' and there were none left on the beach on our arrival! There were a few Pied Wagtails about so we put the nets up but failed to catch anything. There was some momentary excitement when a Chough blundered into the net, however it quickly got itself out again!

Chough (and the net it had just got itself out of!)

We then moved on to Pooil Vaaish to try our luck there, however the nearest we got to catching anything was when a Ringed Plover 'bounced' the net.
Our final attempt at catching something today was to go to Castletown Harbour for some Mute Swans.
We had a small group of 12 in the area which were quickly brought to the slipway with some of Ramsey Bakeries finest sliced white and Sean expertly caught an adult male. It was quickly ringed with 'J23' and the BTO metal ring and set back into the water. The majority of the Swans present were already ringed and the few that weren't just wouldn't come within reach of either the swan hook or ourselves.
A surprise was seeing 'B21' a female Mute Swan which we had caught in Ramsey on 21st December last year. It had been seen regularly in Ramsey, last seen there on 3rd March. A movement of 33km to Castletown harbour. It seemed to be paired up with the male that we had just caught 'J23'.

Mute Swan 'B21' in Castletown Harbour

We also resighted 7 other Mute Swans, including the 2 young which we ringed at Billown Mansion on 31st January this year.
Although we ended the day having only caught 1 new bird it was still a grand days birding/ringing with my good mate! Cheers for the photos fella!

Mixed Fortunes

I met Sean up at the Point of Ayre Landfill site this morning with the plan being to catch some more Twite and Linnet there.
After 4 hours the only bird to have been caught was a Meadow Pipit.

Meadow Pipit

Things weren't all bad though as we had a male Wheatear in the area, the first I'd seen this year.

Update on Brent Goose sightings

Having been away all week I got back to an email from Pete confirming that the Light-bellied Brent Goose which was thought to be CLWW or LCWW is actually CLBW (Right Leg Blue 'C', Left leg White 'L'). Thanks Pete.
This is the bird that was seen here last April with 73LY.

Graham Macilwaine from the Irish Brent Goose Study advised that 73LY and CLBW are always seen in company of each other (probably a pair).

More colour ringed Brent Geese

There have been 4 different colour ringed Light-bellied Brent Geese seen in the Derbyhaven/Langness area over the last few days.
Sean took the photo below of one at Langness on 11th March 'NPWB' (right leg N, left leg P, right leg White, left leg Blue).

Brent Goose 'NPWB'

Then this morning, whilst on a coastguard patrol in the area, I saw the flock of Brent Geese high up on the shore below the Golflinks Hotel at Derbyhaven.
We pulled over and I scanned the flock for colour ringed birds. Straight away I saw 'J4YY' and then clocked 2 other colour ringed birds (??LimeYellow & ??WhiteWhite).
I couldn't make out the digits on the rings but as luck would have it, Pete Hadfield & Wendy Gawne pulled up too and Pete was able to get some photos with a zoom lens and was able to confirm the first bird as '73LY', a bird that was seen here last April. The 3rd bird appeared to be 'CLWW' or 'LCWW'. Hopefully Pete will be able to confirm that one once he has been able to look at his photos properly.

Brent Goose 'J4YY'

The Brent Geese are ringed by the Irish Brent Goose Study Group and have been seen on BBC's SpringWatch & AutumnWatch programmes.
There is a flock that gathers over the Winter in the Langness and Derbyhaven area each Winter, with numbers peaking around this time of the year. 'J4YY' has been seen here each Winter since 2007 and '73LY' was seen here last April in company with another colour ringed bird from the same project.

Mute Swans, Plastic Crows and a Herring Gull

I tempted my old mate Sean out this morning with the offer me paying for breakfast from the Station garage followed by some Mute Swan catching in Castletown Harbour (I'm not sure which one was the clincher on the deal!!).

I had been contacted by the harbourmaster yesterday who let me know that 4 young Swans had turned up in the harbour this week and that they didn't appear to be ringed.

So we arrived just after 9.00 and found 6 Mute Swans feeding at the entrance to the Outer harbour.

Castleton Outer Harbour (on a much nicer day than today!)

Sure enough there were 4 'new' young swans, one of which was wearing ring 'F23', a bird we had done at Billown Mansion on 31st January (see the entry for that day here).
None of the young swans were coming close enough to get caught but we ended up catching an unringed adult male swan which we ringed with 'G23'.
Thanks very much to the harbourmaster for contacting me about the arrival of the young Swans.

We then moved to Scarlett Quarry where a male Mute Swan has been present on his own since his mate was found dead in suspicious circumstances with a broken neck last spring. We quickly caught him and ringed him with 'H23'. Hopefully he will find a new mate soon.

Left - 'H23' at Scarlett Quarry

We also had great views of a Little Egret feeding in the middle harbour below the Castle. It was fascinating watching it shake a foot in the mud and then lunge at the small fish and crustaceans that were disturbed, sometimes running after them!

Little Egret, Castletown Harbour - photo by Sean Gray www.grayimages.co.uk

We ended the morning at Port St Mary breakwater, having another go at catching some Gulls. It looked like we weren't going to have any luck again today however we decided to place two plastic decoy Crows that Sean had recently bought out by the trap in order to try and entice the Gulls down - Bingo!

About 100 Gulls were straight down to the bread thinking that the Crows were going to get it all and we caught one Herring Gull.

It was already metal ringed - GN53191 - a bird that had been ringed as a chick on the Calf of Man Bird Obs on 10th July 2007. We added one of our colour rings 'T6TW'.

We also saw Herring Gull 'T1TW', a bird that hasn't been seen more than a few hundred metres from the breakwater since it was ringed on 21st July last year!

'T1TW' - resident of Port st Mary Outer Breakwater and the nearby Scallop factory!

What are the odds??

After spending the day out ringing with Sean, I decided to put up the mist net in my garden for an hour before tea this afternoon.
I only caught 1 bird, a ringed Blue Tit, and on checking the ring I recognised the sequence as one I knew wasn't mine but had seen before and presumed it must have been a bird from the Calf of Man Bird Obs.
When I checked IPMR (the ringing data programme used by BTO ringers) I was amazed to find out that the bird was actually one that Sean had ringed in his garden at Port-e-Vullen, 35km away at the other end of the Isle of Man!!

The movement of L623274 from Sean's garden to mine!

The Blue Tit had originally been caught by Sean on 10th October 2010 as a first year bird. It had travelled 35km SW in 144 days. When I caught it this afternoon it was a good weight of 11.8g.

Crossbills, Mute Swans and Garden Ringing

I met up with Sean at his site at the top of Tholt y Will Plantation this morning to try for some Redpoll & Crossbill, having managed to not even see any down at my site at the Cringle the other day!

Straight away it was an improvement as we had flocks of both species in the area right by the net. We had some stunning views of Crossbills, several bright red males, including one which was singing from the top of one of the conifers.

Male Crossbill, photo by Sean Gray www.grayimages.co.uk

We also saw Siskin, Hen Harrier, Peregrine and several Ravens.

Unfortunately after a couple of hours we hadn't caught any birds, probably due to the net being in the strong sunshine making it more visible than usual.

We packed up and headed to Ramsey harbour to see if there were any Mute Swans to ring.

We started feeding the Swans but none of them were coming out of the water onto the slipway, presumably they had been fed well earlier in the morning. On checking those which did come near, only 1 wasn't ringed and we read 5 of our colour rings (A86, A87, B21, F21 & J21).

Mute Swan 'B21'

We decided to finish the days ringing with a session at our regular garden site near Sulby.We set up a 20 foot and a 40 foot net and within 2 hours we had caught 64 birds (47 new birds and 17 retraps). Totals below (retrap totals in brackets):

Blue Tit 29 (11)
Great Tit 8 (5)
Coal Tit 8
Chaffinch 1
Blackbird 1
Dunnock (1)

First year Blue Tit, showing good contrast between the moulted (adult) inner greater coverts and the retained (juvenile) outer greater coverts.

We also had brief views of a Great Spotted Woodpecker in the tops of the tall trees in the garden. Thanks again to Ron & Hazel, the tea and biscuits went down a treat!

Sun, Seaside and Rock Pipits - it doesn't get much better!

I met up with Sean on Tuesday, the 1st of March, and it felt like Spring really was just around the corner. It was a very sunny day and warm too with no wind so we decided to try for Redpoll & Crossbill at Cringle Plantation.
After a couple of hours we hadn't caught anything, although we'd had great views of a female Hen Harrier and a male Sparrowhawk, so we packed up and headed to Niarbyl to try to catch some Rock Pipits.

We set 9 spring traps of various types and put up 2 double panel nets on the shore over the rotting seaweed.

One of the mist nets and a few of the spring traps on the weed/shingle.

We ended up catching 5 Rock Pipits, 4 new birds and a retrap from August last year. We put colour rings on all of them to add to our project.

Rock Pipit 'Lime over Lime left, BTO over Blue/White right'

We have now colour ringed 31 Rock Pipits at various locations around the Island and we will hopefully start to see some dispersal as birds move away from the favoured winter sites to find their nesting territories.