Mist and Woosh nets = great days ringing!

Ffyn and I met up with Sean yesterday to do some ringing at the Ballaugh Curraghs feeder site and Sean's woosh net site near the Point of Ayre.
It was a great day with 123 birds caught in total (89 new birds, 33 retraps and 1 control).

First up was the garden site in the Ballaugh Curraghs - totals were:

Robin 1
Blackbird 1
Coal Tit 4 (+4 retraps)
Blue Tit 19 (+11 retraps)
Great Tit 23 (+14 retraps)
House Sparrow 1
Tree Sparrow 1 (+1 retrap)
Chaffinch 11 (+1 control)
Greenfinch 1
Goldfinch 11

Tree Sparrow

The control Chaffinch R744889 had originally been ringed on 25 September 2006 at the Calf of Man Bird Obs, some 5 years and 33 days between captures and 35km between the sites.

Then in the afternoon we set up at the woosh netting site near the Point of Ayre. It looked good on arrival with plenty of birds down on the seed and there were 19 Twite seen as well as good numbers of Lesser Redpoll in with the Goldfinch and Linnets.
We took 2 catches (16 & 3) in what turned out to be a quiet few hours although the presence of both Sparrowhawk and Hen Harrier could have been the reason!
Totals were:

Goldfinch 10 (+3 retraps)
Linnet 5
Lesser Redpoll 1

Ringing the Lesser Redpoll

Chief photographer Ffyn - look out Sean, you've got some competition!

A great days ringing!

Dazzling

With the new moon on the 26th I decided to try a late season dazzling session so met up with Sean on Thursday night.

Turnstone

It was a bit too windy and hardly any cloud cover so it was no surprise that we only caught 1 Turnstone which turned out to be a retrap from September!
Annoyingly I missed a juv Tern, it looked like an Arctic Tern, but with just a quick glimpse in the torch beam as it flushed up it was hard to get a positive ID.

Mute Swan day

Sean and I spent Tuesday checking on as many of the Islands Mute Swans as we could in order to see if we could catch and ring any of this years youngsters and also see which ringed birds were where.

We ended the day having caught and ringed 3 new Swans, all of them adults. We did find a brood of 3 young at Billown Mansion but the Cob kept on calling his young away from the bank and out of our reach so they didn't get ringed this time.

At the end of the day we had re-sighted 16 Swans and ringed 3 new ones. We had also caught 3 Mallard and to top the day off I got a rare Manx 'tick' in the form of my long-held bogey bird on the Island - Kingfisher. We had superb views of the bird as it spent several minutes loafing around the road bridge over Peel harbour before heading off up the hillside into thick bracken!

First Brent Geese sightings of the Autumn

The first sightings of Light-bellied Brent Geese came in today with reports of groups of 8 and 12 birds seen in Ramsey by Claire from Manx BirdLife.

Previous photo of Light-bellied Brent Goose 'J4YY' which has been recorded wintering at Derbyhaven for the last 4 years.

3 of a flock of 8 birds seen on the Ramsey Rugby Club pitch on Mooragh Promenade were colour ringed but due to a lack of a 'scope only 1 combination was confirmed - Left White ring '3', Right White ring 'C'. This is a 'new bird' to the IOM, not having been recorded here before.

The other 2 ringed birds had Red rings on the Left leg and White rings on the Right Leg. the letters on the red ring on each bird were recorded ('V' and 'H') but the letters on the White rings couldn't be made out.

All the sighting info has been forward to the Irish Brent Goose Study team who co-ordinate the colour ringing of Light-bellied Brents. I will post an update once we here back from Graham McElwaine, their re-sighting co-ordinator.

Any IOM sightings of colour ringed Brent Geese (or any other bird!) can be sent to us for forwarding onto the study co-ordinators and we will pass the history of the bird back to you.

Sean catches up with an old friend

Sean took a couple of photos of colour ringed Herring Gulls in Peel yesterday whilst in the area for a seawatch.

T1UB ringed on the Calf of Man on 12th July this year

T6TX ringed at the Point of Ayre Sand Quarry on 30th June this year and in true Blue Peter style...here's a photo of T6TX we took earlier!!

A great coincidence and good to know that this years young Herring Gulls are wandering around. This is the second time that Gulls from the 2 extremities of the IOM have been seen together in the same area, the others were seen together in Howth Harbour, Co. Dublin, Eire the other week.

More colour ringed Cormorant sightings

When Sean and I first talked about colour ringing the Cormorants I remember us saying that it would be great to get a few recoveries coming through in the early stages of the project. Well the flood gates seem to be opening as we have had 4 more confirmed sightings and 2 additonal probable sightings (slight clarification awaited on the ring code) in the last few days.

An interactive map of all the recoveries received so far from this years young can be seen by clicking here.

First up was a report from Hampshire from Martin Bennet and Bob Chapman. Z7P was photographed by Martin at Ibsley Water, Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve, Ringwood, Hants on 25th September. A distance of 418km from Maughold, IOM. Bob had seen a colour ringed bird on the reserve for several weeks but it hadn't given decent enough views to allow him to confirm the ring number. Thanks for the report Bob!

Z7P at Blashford Lakes NR - thanks Martin for this excellent photo!

Then Stuart Newson from the BTO (co-ordinator of Cormorant colour ringing in the British Isles and Eire) contacted me with several sightings from Seaforth NR, Liverpool Docks.

Z76 was seen there by Pete Kinsella on 04th October.
ZZN was reported by Steve White on 29th & 30th September.
We are awaiting clarification of a further 2 sightings of what is probably one of our birds too - Z3R (reported as 23R) seen on 17th & 30th September.

Thanks to Pete, Steve and Stuart for the information!

So the data is really coming through thick and fast now. Hopefully there will be plenty more to come and then in a few years time we will be in a position to confirm if the local youngsters return to breed in the IOM after their travels around the British Isles.