Chiffin'

After having seen a Chiffchaff looking for insects/spiders on the side walls of the 'river' bridge on Sunday, and then hearing it or another in full song 100m further up the lane yesterday, it was my pleasure to ring one in the garden today.


As expected, it was a male (with a wing of 62mm) and it was carrying little fat at 8.0 grams. It had obviously been feeding up fairly recently as it had what we call "pollen horns" (see photo). Some of the nectar that the bird has been collecting from the flowering trees and shrubs sticks to the minute feathers around its upper and lower mandibles, producing this effect. Nectar is a good and quick source of sugars which the birds convert to fat to power their migration flight. It would, most likely, have obtained this 'horn' in northern Spain or south-west France before making a concerted push to arrive here in England yesterday or today.

Many ringers have reported catching their first Chiffchaffs in the last two/three days.

A cabaret at last.

Despite the light fog and gloomy outlook, I opened the garden nets once more, sometime about when the sun should have appeared over the horizon.

It turned out to be quite a nice 'tickle', with 11 birds caught and just 3 of them re-traps. First was the female Blackcap (see previous post), and the second was a 3CY male Blackbird that is dominating the front garden and its bird table (this also has sultanas provided!). A male Blackcap made up the third bird with a ring on.

Best bird was a Carduelis cabaret, only the second to have been noticed in the garden during the 18 months we've been here.

2CY Lesser Redpoll (C.cabaret)

All up, it came to the following numbers:
Blue Tit 1
Blackcap (2)
Wren 1
Blackbird (1)
Song Thrush 1
Chaffinch 2
Greenfinch 1
Goldfinch 1
Lesser Redpoll 1

That brings this year's total for the garden to 161 new plus 100 re-traps of 23 species, and an all-up total of species ringed so far to 43.

Going, going, . . . .!

Library picture of female Blackcap (51)

Today I recaught the female Blackcap (51) that has been with us since the New Year. She is now starting to lay down fat and was fat score ESF30 and 24.5 grams early on. She's obviously looking to move on.

I have just re-caught the male Blackcap (53) that also had a fat score of ESF30, two weeks ago. His weight (early doors) was 20.1 grams and he has stayed around, although avoiding capture. Today his fat level was down to ESF10, but his weight remains fairly stable at 20.5 grams. There is a lot of 'in-fighting' with the second male over who should feed first at the Camellia bird table.

The other male Blackcap (77) continues to evade capture; on the last day of February he weighed just 16.5 grams, first thing in the morning. I'll have to put a net up in a new position if I want to trap him before he, too, leaves. I wonder how much weight he's put on?

Library picture of male Blackcap (77)

How much longer will these birds stay around and feed off the soaked sultanas on the bird table? Days, I should imagine. I doubt if they will attempt to migrate all the while we are more or less fog-bound.

Good things come in twos.

It's been much of a muchness since my last blog. Somethings are moving, some others have gone and yet more are to arrive.

I have managed to ring in our small orchard on the even days of the week from sunrise 'til 10-ish, by which time the sun has risen quite a way and spotlighted the net(s). It has been steady and pretty reasonable for a small set-up like we have here. Things will improve as soon as we are able to return to the meadows, once the willows and alders sprout their leaves. But I'll probably catch a Chiffchaff in the garden before that happens.

2CY female Siskin

Noticeable was the pairs of Greenfinch that I caught every day. One day I was blessed with a male and female Siskin in the net inches apart, only the third and fourth of the year so far. Another day, three Goldfinches - although we had just had a cold, cloudless night. Not the local birds, since they all know the way to approach the feeders containing sunflower hearts and seldom make a mistake.

2CY male Siskin

Another duo, this time of female Blackbirds, found the short net across our small shrubbery. So far this winter I have ringed or retrapped 25 male Blackbirds, but, with these two, just 13 female birds. There's something going on here but, as yet, I have not fathomed it out. There are also twice as many 2CY birds as full adults (Euring class 6) of both sexes, which is about par for this time of year - if the previous breeding season was a good one.

So, this week's tally comes to 18 new (&9 r/t) of 11 spp.:
Woodpigeon (1) - a very fat male!
Great Tit 2
Blackcap (1) - the long-staying female from the New Year
Blackbird 2 (3)
Robin (2)
Dunnock 1 (1)
House Sparrow 1
Chaffinch 1
Greenfinch 6 (1) - r/t was originally caught in mid-Jan 2011 as a 6M
Goldfinch 3
Siskin 2

However, the week didn't end there.
My new trainee was back from Cuba and wanted to brave the colder air. So, in order to get a feel for the impending spring, I set four nets in one of the meadows the night before. We didn't bargain for the weather, though! Fog had been forecast most mornings but there had been no signs of it in the village, but we could see it capping the top of the Quantocks. Today proved otherwise; dense, wet FOG, hanging on the nets that I had put up the night before. We were right cheesed off but stuck it out. Just as well we did, because our first "hit" was a pair of 2CY Kingfishers, the male being one I ringed here last August when it still had 'brown legs'. They were busy all morning defending their territory downstream of the bridge, once released.

2CY Kingfishers - male above, female below

The rest of the session was rather rubbish, as one would expect in the circumstances but it did give us a chance to have a 'recce' prior to the season kicking off. 8 VTOL Redwing departed at first light, a Song Thrush sang non-stop for 4 hours and a Dipper 'buzzed' through. As I was packing up, a hungry Chiff was hunting spiders in the cracks of the stone walls beside the bridge.

GT = 5 new (&5 r/t)
Kingfisher 1 (1) - new female
Blue Tit 1 (1)
Great Tit 1 (2)
Wren 1
Dunnock 1 (1)
... and the nets are in the airing cupboard - along with my boots!

Here's to Spring! [summer-time starts in a fortnight!!!] I expect it will arrive with gales and rain! [I'm usually an optimist] We'll see!

Is it a Control?

With hazy sunshine and a very light easterly breeze, it would have been a sin not to have opened the nets!

A steady trickle of birds, a mix of new and old, from forty minutes after sunrise kept me going until noon.
All in all, I had 6 new and 3 re-traps, including a Siski with an unfamiliar ringno. Would this be control or a re-trap? It wasn't John's on the far side of the village, so it might be a technical control if it was one of Denise's.

It turned out to have been ringed by her new C permit holder, Karen, in her home village, which is 7km West from my homestead. The other thing was that it had been ringed just 6 days ago. Was it moving out for the summer to God knows where?

A fine adult male (6M) SISKIN from this morning

Day's total:
Blue Tit (1) - a male from "day 1" last year when it was aged 6
Blackbird 1
House Sparrow 2 - several males have been chasing through the garden today
Chaffinch 1
Greenfinch 1 (1)
Goldfinch 1
Siskin (1)