Some recent recoveries from the Calf of Man Bird Observatory

I received a batch or recoveries for the Calf of Man Bird Obs recently with some interesting movements in them. They are listed below.

Herring Gull
GA35839  1   01/07/2001 Calf of Man (Isle of Man)  map
               RR 08/07/2010 Skomer Island (Pembrokeshire) 259km S 9 yrs 7days

GA39195  1   01/07/2002 Calf of Man (Isle of Man) map
                XF 27/04/2011 Blencogo, Wigton (Cumbria) 131km NE 8 yrs 300days

GA39195 was found freshly dead with no head. GA35839 was recorded by a warden reading the ring number in the field.

Willow Warbler
CKB071   4 31/03/2009 Portland Bill Bird Obs (Dorset) map
               R 29/03/2011 Calf of Man (Isle of Man) 424km NNW 1 yr 363days

Goldfinch
L468347  3J 16/10/2010 South Walney Bird Obs (Cumbria) map
               R 28/03/2011 Calf of Man (Isle of Man) 105km W 163 days

Lesser Redpoll
L554497  5 13/02/2011 Sevenoaks Wildfowl Reserve (Kent) map
              R 29/03/2011 Calf of Man (Isle of Man) 456km NW 44 days

T438248  3 14/11/2007 Icklesham (East Sussex) map
              R 29/03/2011 Calf of Man (Isle of Man) 510km NW 3 yrs 135days

An interesting pair or controls from South East England caught on the same day at the Calf.

More Chough and Gulls

Sean and I did another couple of Chough nest sites on Tuesday evening, this time both were in barns on active farms. Broods of 5 and 2 brought the Chough pulli total to 53 so far this year.
One of the nests was on top of a box put up by the farmer for Choughs to nest in. This year a Muscovy Duck started to nest in the box so the Choughs built their nest on top of the box. It is a good height up to where the box is located at the top of the barn so it was great to get a help up on the fork-lift truck!

Thanks to all the farmers and landowners who assist in our monitoring of the Chough nests. It's great to see how enthusiastic everyone is about 'their' Choughs!

We then went in search of more Gulls and caught 2 cracking adult Summer plumage Black-headed Gulls.

We also found our first Herring Gull chicks, although they were only a few days old and not large enough to ring yet.

Choughin Marvellous

Thursday and Friday were spent checking on the bulk of our Chough nest sites with Sean and our friend Kane Brides who had come across from England to help.

15 Chough pulli ringed on Thursday followed by a further 27 on Friday.

All the Chough were colour ringed with a unique combination as part of our long running scheme, allowing individuals to be identified in the field.

Colour ringing Chough

Thanks to Sean and Kane for a great couple of days! There were plenty of miles covered by car and by foot and an almost constant barrage of cutting banter.

Sean passes the bag of Barm Cakes/Baps/Choughs to Kane. You could have worn a clean coat to get on that flight home mate!

To top the day off yesterday, after dropping Kane at the airport we found and ringed 3 Ringed Plover chicks near Pooyl Vaaish.

Ringed Plover chick

Sean has made a fantastic little video of the work we did which can be seen below. Well done mate!

Click on the video to view it in a larger format.

Time for me to update IPMR with the nest record and ringing data now...

Nest checking

I was out with Sean this morning ringing our first Chough pulli of the year. A brood of 4 young, all FM (wing feathers medium grown). All were given a unique combination of colour rings as part of our long-running Chough colour ringing scheme.

Young Chough with colour rings and BTO metal ring

We then noticed a Mute Swan on the shoreline in the bay. On checking we saw that it was not colour ringed and had an old style metal ring on which was very worn. We quickly caught it and removed the old, worn ring and replaced it with a new BTO metal ring and a colour ring 'N23'.

'N23', previously known as A07 and A20, aged at least 23 years old!

On checking the ring we were able to just about read the number U0326. This Swan was ringed on 26th July 1990 at Douglas and was given colour ring A07 at that time. A year later the colour ring had disappeared so it was given a new one, A20, in 1991. The Swan then held territory in Castletown harbour with its mate A13 from 1992, 1993 & 1994. It was then seen on and off until 1999. The last previous sighting of the Swan was on 18th December 1999. It obviously then lost its 2nd colour ring as there had been no other records since we caught him today. Given that he was an adult when originally caught in 1990 then he is at least 23 years old and possibly much older than that.

Then this afternoon I checked on some of my nest boxes - 2 broods of 4 House Sparrows ringed and young in 2 Blue Tit and 1 Great Tit boxes. Whilst at Lower Ballafodda, mum showed me a Pheasant nest in the orchard that she had found recently.

Spot the Pheasant 

Gull and Wader nests

I spent the day with Sean finding Gull and Waders nests today. We found numerous Lesser Black-backed & Herring Gull nests, 2 Common Gull nests, 2 Great Black-backed Gull nests and a handful of Ringed Plover & Oystercatcher nests too.
During the process we managed to catch a number of adults at the nest. Totals were - 1 Lesser Black-backed Gull, 2 Common Gull, 1 Ringed Plover and 1 Oystercatcher.

Common Gulls

Lesser Black-backed Gull

The LBB Gull was also given a colour ring as part of our 'large Gulls' colour-ring project. LBB Gulls migrate to South West Europe and North Africa for the Winter so hopefully we may get some sightings from the numerous keen Gull watchers in these areas this winter.

Ringed Plover

Oystercatcher

All the birds were processed quickly and all were back on their nests within 10 mins of release. The nests will be monitored closely over the next few weeks and we look forward to ringing the pulli once the eggs have hatched!

"We might catch a Whimbrel mate!"

That was what I said to Sean at the start of the week when I said that it would be worth getting a bit of dazzling in during the new moon before we stopped for the nesting season. By the end of the week we'd had some fantastic results. The totals were:

Dunlin 20
Whimbrel 9
Ringed Plover 6
Turnstone 2
Knot 1
Sanderling 1
Little Tern 1

Getting 9 Whimbrel was superb. The group have only done 3 in total prior to this year and it was a bird that Sean had never seen in the hand. There are a lot of them around the Island at the moment as they pass through on their migration from Western Africa to Iceland and Northern Scandinavia to breed.

Whimbrel

Whimbrel

Whimbrel

summer plumage Knot

summer plumage Turnstone

Little Tern

Ringed Plover

Dunlin

Sanderling

That's it for dazzling until early August when the waders and terns start moving back through the Island after the breeding season. Hopefully we'll have some more good catches then.

Springwatch

Sharpy and I met up with Chris Packham & Martin Hughes-Games from BBC's Springwatch programme today. They were filming the Cormorant colony at Maughold.

Chris, Martin and the crew insisted on having their photo taken with me!

The main aim had been to film us ringing the Cormorant chicks, however as predicted following our earlier visit in April, there were no young large enough to ring today. However they did film the birds on the nests and interviewed Sharpy about the colony.

A great bunch of people and a cracking time - hopefully next time they visit Kate Humble will be with them (no offence chaps)!!
Watch out for the film when Springwatch starts at the end of the month.

Checking Choughs

A busy day out today with Chris and Sean checking on 15 of our Chough nest sites to judge their progress in order to work out when the young will be ready to ring.
14 out of the 15 sites checked were in use, the majority of which held young under 5 days old. 1 adult female was also caught and ringed.



Eggs hatching

Still blind

Downy and eyes now open

Wing feathers in pin

Adult female



Several of the nests were in active farm barns. It was great to see how pleased the farmers were at having Choughs nest in their barns and they all seemed very proud to have such a fine bird choose their farms to nest in.
Near to the last site we checked, we found a rather old Jackdaw nest...

How many Jackdaws does it take to build a nest??

The nest must have been older than Sean and Chris there were that many sticks in it!!

All the nests checked were recorded for the BTO nest record scheme and with any luck, it looks like we will be ringing plenty of young Chough in a few weeks time.
We also collected Chough feathers found below the nests in order to be sent for DNA analysis as part of a study which the Manx Chough Project are partaking in.

Note - Choughs are a 'schedule 1' species under the IOM Wildlife Act 1990 and as such are specially protected at all times. All Manx Ringing Group members hold the appropriate licences allowing us to study the nests.

April Ringing Totals

An excellent month, helped by the favourable winds and weather throughout. A total of 289 birds of 35 species were ringed.

The monthly totals can be see by clicking here.

Great Spot

Highlights included the 2nd Great Spotted Woodpecker to be ringed on the main Island ringed in the same Sulby garden as the first GSW to be ringed last year, 11 Wheatears, 6 species of Warbler including a Grasshopper Warbler and 4 Turnstones dazzled.

Grasshopper Warbler

The Mute Swan colour ringing project started to give some interesting movements with a handful of Ramsey ringed birds turning up in the South of the Island and other Swans wandering around different locations in the South, ranging up to 5km or more. These will be Swans moving back to their nesting sites and other, non-breeders being displaced by territorial disputes. Any reports of colour ringed Mute Swans will always be greatfully received - report them via email manxrg@gmail.com or the manxbirdlife website sightings reporting form.