Incredible Goldcrest recovery

Just a few days ago we had our first session at our winter feeding site in Horsford Woods, three days later and we've just heard from the BTO about one of our Goldcrests ringed there last December. This bird was retrapped on the 11th September on the island of Eggegrund, on East coast of Sweden, an incredible 1334 km North East of us!

There is a bird observatory there which caught this presumably on its Autumn migration so I wonder how much further North East it has spent the summer! Wouldn't it be great to catch it again this winter...

The bird followed a similar trajectory (though in reverse) to our other long-distance Goldcrest as mentioned previously on the blog back in 2011 - http://uearg.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/waxham-recoveries-foreign-owl-pellet.html

This year so far at Waxham

It has been a pretty good year at Waxham so far. Due to work commitments and weather I think only one session was done in the spring and we have since ran 6 Sessions (4 in September, 2 in October) in the Autumn for a total of 412 birds.

A young female merlin, the first for UEARG, caught in the meadow pipit nets 

Our first of three Yellow-browed Warblers this Autumn

Waxham offers the group a real variety of species not caught at our other sights. This is very important for our trainees, handling a wider range of species and learning different aging and identification methods. We've had some real highlights this year including a Turtle Dove in the Spring and in the Autumn - Redstart, Pied Flycatchers, Yellow-browed Warblers and most recently Tree Pipit and Merlin, both new species for the group. One of the Autumn sessions was a ringing demonstration for new Masters students studying ecology and conservation at UEA.

First Tree Pipit for UEARG

Totals

Cantley ringing 2014

Over late summer this year we made several visits to our ringing site at Cantley. It turned out to be particularly good for roosting birds this year, most likely due to the reed bed having much higher water levels compared to recent years. This high water appeared to attract much greater roosts of swallows and wagtails, presumably because it is safer for them, in turn we caught many more birds this year.

A fantastic 114 new yellow wagtails were ringed!

As well as the roosting birds we also caught good numbers of Acros and Beardies as we have come to expect from this fantastic site.

Totals for the sessions are as follow:

		Retraps/
	New birds	Recoveries	Total
Kingfisher	5	0	5
Sand Martin	54	1	55
Swallow	1344	26	1370
Yellow Wagtail	114	7	121
Pied/White Wagtail	1	0	1
Wren	7	0	7
Blackbird	1	0	1
Cetti's Warbler	6	0	6
Sedge Warbler	241	29	270
Reed Warbler	411	46	457
Bearded Tit	35	11	46
Blue Tit	4	2	6
Great Tit	4	0	4
Linnet	4	0	4
Reed Bunting	94	8	102
Total:	2325	130	2455

Surprise Stodo

Its not often we catch adult Stock Dove's in mist nets so this was a nice surprise this afternoon whilst ringing on campus. Photo courtesy of IB.

Totals were: (retraps in brackets).

Lotti 1

Greti 0(14)

Lesre 3(3)

Dunno 0(3)

Blabi 2(1)

Robin 1(1)

Chaff 3

Bluti 2(2)

Goldf 2

Bramb 1

Comre 0(1)

Grefi 1(1)

Woodp 1

Stodo 1

KPP, IB, JLD & JJS

More Mealies at the Feeders

A short morning session at the UEA feeders was quite productive, highlights being 2 Mealy Redpolls, a Jay and a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

Mealy Redpolls (left hand bird wing 77mm, right hand bird 75mm)

Mealy and Lesser Redpoll

This photo shows nicely how we ages this bird as a 5 (a bird hatched in the previous calendar year). Red arrows showing unmoulted 'Juvenile-type' feathers (the outer alula, all the primary coverts and the outer greater covert) Notice how the pattern of the bands across the primary coverts is the same on each feather showing they were grown at the same time. Green arrows show new 'Adult-type' feathers (second Alula and greater coverts).

Totals 

New birds (retraps in brackets)

Blabi 6(3)

Lesre 5(4)

Comre 2

Grefi 4

Bluti 3(16)

Dunno 0(2)

Robin 2(5)

Grswo 0(1)

Bramb 1

Greti 2(11)

Jay 1

Lotti 2

Frosty morning riverside session!

A good short ringing session this morning at the campus river site, despite us all being freezing and extremities becoming occasionally numb! 

30 new birds and 49 retraps, consisting mostly of everyones favourite feisty blue tits, with the highlights being a few long tailed tits, five new blackbirds some nice 6 male chaffinch and a lovely 5 female bullfinch. 

Photo below showing a nice contrast between the new iridescent gc's and old buffy tipped ogc's.

Crow Trap!

With decent numbers of corvids roosting in the Blackdale Woods on campus (recent estimates being 1300 birds involving 60% Jackdaw, 30% Rook and 10% Carrion Crow per LON) A few of us spent Friday morning making a crow trap to see if we can catch a few!

It only took an hour or so and there's still a bit of work to do before its finished but hopefully it will work. The design is slightly more 'heligoland' than traditional crow trap, the idea being that birds can be driven to end of the funnel and extracted.