UEARG ringing report 2020

There are a lot of reasons to be pretty dour about 2020 and the months to come, but this isn’t the place for that. Despite periods in which ringing was restricted to our gardens, curtailed by group size limits, and Covid related decreases in group funding; 2020 was a fantastic year of ringing for us and was one of the groups most productive years on record.

2020 saw us collect 8180 records of 6365 unique individuals consisting of 5540 birds ringed, 2199 retraps/controls, and 441 sightings (metal or colour ring reads in the field). It was also the most diverse year with a total of 79 species recorded, 73 of which were ringed, 3 were only recorded as retraps/controls and 3 came only from sightings. 3 species were firsts for our group: Little Grebe, Water Pipit, and Whinchat, and several others were the first the group have caught for many years such as Tawny Owl, Coot, Herring Gull, and Little Owl amongst others. Whilst it may have been a diverse year in terms of number of species, as much of our ringing is based at woodland feeders (particularly in the winter), Blue Tits romp home and take the top spot once again with ease. 

Monthly captures, shaded region was full lockdown period with ringing restricted to gardens

Species	New	Retraps/ Controls	Sightings	Total
Blue Tit	1134	943	0	2077
Lesser Redpoll	549	2	0	551
Reed Warbler	438	19	0	457
Swallow	407	3	0	410
Great Tit	376	507	0	883
Goldcrest	355	8	0	363
Sedge Warbler	330	15	0	345
Greenfinch	237	44	0	281
Chaffinch	226	59	0	285
Goldfinch	165	16	0	181
Reed Bunting	159	6	0	165
Blackbird	142	76	6	224
Long-tailed Tit	132	142	0	274
Robin	113	76	1	190
Mute Swan	95	50	329	474
Wren	68	9	0	77
Bearded Tit	59	20	0	79
Dunnock	56	70	0	126
Blackcap	50	1	0	51
Chiffchaff	41	6	0	47
Coal Tit	30	82	0	112
Meadow Pipit	28	0	0	28
Pied Wagtail (yarrellii)	47	0	0	47
Starling	21	0	0	21
Cetti's Warbler	20	0	0	20
House Sparrow	19	0	0	19
Brambling	16	1	0	17
Skylark	15	2	0	17
Black-headed Gull	15	1	50	66
Redwing	15	0	0	15
Sand Martin	14	0	0	14
Mallard	13	2	15	30
Great Spotted Woodpecker	11	4	0	15
Woodcock	11	3	0	14
Woodpigeon	10	1	0	11
Willow Warbler	9	1	0	10
Song Thrush	9	0	0	9
Treecreeper	8	4	0	12
Collared Dove	8	0	0	8
Sparrowhawk	6	1	0	7
Linnet	6	0	0	6
Yellow Wagtail	6	0	0	6
Jack Snipe	5	2	0	7
Green Woodpecker	5	0	0	5
Greylag Goose	5	0	10	15
Bullfinch	4	3	0	7
Siskin	4	1	0	5
Garden Warbler	4	0	0	4
Lesser Whitethroat	4	0	0	4
Water Pipit	4	0	0	4
Marsh Tit	3	8	0	11
Jay	3	2	2	7
Canada Goose	3	1	7	11
Stonechat	2	1	0	3
Coot	2	0	0	2
Kingfisher	2	0	0	2
Lapwing	2	0	0	2
Little Owl	2	0	0	2
Redstart	2	0	0	2
Stock Dove	2	0	0	2
White Wagtail (alba)	1	1	0	2
Common Redpoll	1	0	0	1
Firecrest	1	0	0	1
Grey Wagtail	1	0	0	1
Herring Gull	1	0	4	5
Little Grebe	1	0	0	1
Magpie	1	0	0	1
Moorhen	1	0	0	1
Snipe	1	0	0	1
Tawny Owl	1	0	0	1
Whinchat	1	0	0	1
Whitethroat	1	0	0	1
Yellowhammer	1	0	0	1
Nuthatch	0	4	0	4
Grasshopper Warbler	0	1	0	1
Kestrel	0	1	0	1
Barnacle Goose	0	0	15	15
Lesser Black-backed Gull	0	0	1	1
Turnstone	0	0	1	1
	5540	2199	441	8180

Captures of most species were up from last year as a result of increased effort and improved understanding of how to work the sites from those of us who joined the group relatively recently, but also reflect trends seen nationally such as the eruption of Lesser Redpoll this year that saw us catch 551 (for reference only 204 were caught across the entirety of Norfolk in 2019). 

The group joined three colour ringing projects this year to improve on the scientific outputs of our work, whilst the existing Jay colour ringing project has had limited success (perhaps unsurprisingly, but if you don’t try you’ll never succeed). The most prolific of these projects has been the Norwich Swan Project, which has seen us colour ring 124 Mute Swans across Norwich and generate over 500 sightings since we started in July. We also started colour ringing Black-headed Gulls and whilst we only catch modest numbers (15 adults caught by hand and a handful of chicks that were metal ringed on non-UEARG rings), we hope to build upon this in the coming years. Finally, we joined the national Water Pipit colour ringing project after catching two individuals at Cantley in late Autumn, and have subsequently colour ringed a further two individuals. Please keep an eye out for any colour ringed birds and report sightings, however menial you think they may be.

Water Pipit

Data will continue to come in over the next months for birds we have controlled in 2020 or have been recovered elsewhere, but in total we caught 16 controls this year (excluding Mute Swan controls from a local ringer outside our group that is also active in Norwich and local RSPCA rescue birds) and have had 14 recoveries so far (excluding colour ring sightings). We’ve also had 63 >1km movements between our own sites but these were mainly movements of colour ringed Mute Swans. Beyond those Swan movements, we also record several movements between Charter Wood and UEA Campus (~3km). Here’s a map of 2020 controls and recoveries we have data for so far, excluding Mute Swans:

This year we ringed at 34 sites across Norfolk (and a little bit of Suffolk), but the vast majority (77%) of records come from just 5 main sites (Charter Wood, UEA Campus, Horsford Wood, Cantley Beet Factory, and Waxham). Charter Wood, UEA Campus and Horsford Wood are all woodland feeder sites primarily worked in the winter months, Cantley Beet Factory is an extensive reedbed in the factory settling pools primarily worked from late summer to early winter, and Waxham is coastal scrub and woodland on the east coast worked through spring and autumn passage.

Highlights

• 551 Lesser Redpolls is a great total for us, all of which were caught at Waxham on the east coast during passage. 343 caught in one day (October 17th) gave us our busiest single ringing day we can remember (393 birds in total).

Only one Common Redpoll was caught amongst that lot was less than expected, but still nice to get. Unfortunately, poor weather curtailed our efforts at Waxham during Autumn passage and we probably lost the final two weeks of passage ringing as a result.

Common Redpoll

• Perhaps most impressive was that despite Red-flanked Bluetail, Red-breasted Flycatcher, 2 Pallas’ Warblers, and multiple Yellow-browed Warblers all turning up within ~1km of our Waxham site (which is scrub and woodland right on the east coast), and 12 visits during that autumn passage period, not a single scarcity was ringed. Fingers crossed for 2021!

• Just the one foreign control from Waxham this year, but it was a cracker. This first-year Kestrel from the Netherlands may well be our bird of the year but we are still waiting for details on where and when it was ringed. This is the 64th Dutch Kestrel to be controlled in the UK, but not all of these will be trapped birds such as ours (i.e. some could be dead birds or ring reads in the field).

First-year male Kestrel from the Netherlands

 

• Our other foreign control this year was a Black-headed Gull caught by hand in Wensum Park. This bird was ringed in Denmark but we are still waiting for further details.

Black-headed Gull from Denmark

• Here’s some pictures of our personal highlights of 2020:

Little Grebe, dazzled on Bowthorpe Marsh

The groups first Whinchat

Little Owl, one of the breeding indivduals on UEA campus

Jack Snipe

Common Redstart

Lapwing

Coot

Tawny Owl

Skylark

Kingfisher

Woodcock

Yellow Wagtail

Male and female Stonechats

Green Woodpecker

Brambling

Bearded Tit

Lesser Whitethroat

Grey Wagtail

Stock Dove

Finally, a massive thank you to everyone who helped out with UEARG ringing activities this year not least the many land owners and managers who grant us access and permissions. Group sizes were restricted this year but our ringing was a cumulative effort across 15 ringers. Our ringing would also not be possible without the continued support of UEA and Dr Iain Barr.

Norwich Swan Project - 6 months in

UEARG has been ringing swans in Norwich for many years, but not typically in big numbers. Last winter we ringed 20, which I thought was pretty good, but the metal rings we put on typically don't get a lot of returns and unless the bird is very close can be tricky to read without recapturing the bird. With colour rings, amassing additional encounters is easier, the public can get involved, and most importantly it's less hassle for the bird. I therefore approached Mike Reed to join his national colour ringing project on Mute Swans, in the hope of setting up a mini project within his larger project. With the Norwich Swan Project (as I have named it), our aim is to get a better idea of how swans use Norwich waterways and get a better assessment of how well the population is doing.

One national lockdown later I set about getting swans across Norwich colour ringed, hoping I could match the 20 I did the previous winter. Six months have now passed and it's fair to say my expectations have been well and truly surpassed. To date we have colour ringed 123 swans across Norwich, amassed over 400 sightings, across 17 sites, and we are only scratching the surface of assessing the life histories of a species that can live into their late 20's. 

The first of many! When reporting make note of the ring colour (orange), the writing colour (black), and the code (4DUA)

Here's a map of all those encounters, each point is a location that a swan has been ringed or sighted with darker points indicating more encounters. The lines show movements between locations, with darker lines showing more movements. 

The majority of our catching takes place in the east of the city at Whitlingham Country Park, Carrow Road Bridge, and Thorpe River Green. Three sites I've affectionally dubbed the Swan triangle. As a result, the points and site links here are stronger but it does reflect the much higher density of swans in this area (hence why we do so much catching here). Anyone passing these sites this year will be familiar with groups of 30+ swans eager for some food. The Carrow Road Bridge area in particular has recently become a hotspot for swans in Norwich due to people feeding from their balconies that overlook the river.

Only 12 of our 123 swans colour ringed this year were hatch year birds, and the majority of these turned up late in the season likely dispersing from their natal sites. We think this may point towards low breeding productivity of swans within Norwich itself, and is an area we want to explore further next year. If you know of any nesting locations we'd be keen to know about them, especially next spring when swans start to pair up and nest build.

We also need more sightings! If you are in Norwich and you see a colour ringed swan, please stop and give it a read if you can and submit your sightings to mike.reed2017 [at] outlook.com or contact me directly through our Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook pages. It doesn't have to be a long distance movement to be interesting to us, all data is good data!

I Cant-ley believe the season is over already

As we rapidly approach October our premier reed bed site suddenly feels very quiet, just as our coastal migrant site starts to liven up. With that, our period of more intensive ringing at Cantley reed bed is over for another year. It’s been an interesting season, but a small team of us managed 12 sessions between July and September getting a flavour of the amazing passage of Acrocephalus warblers that pass through the site on their way to Africa, mostly for the first time (~96% of Acros ringed were first-year birds). 

Misty mornings and late nights with swallows are regular features of reed bed ringing

High water levels and plenty of sunshine produced a very good reed growth year and probably helped bump bird numbers up where the high water levels provide extra predator protection. That being said, Swallow roost numbers were down partially as a result of up to 6 Hobbies present in the area which moved the Swallows to alternative roost sites later in the season.

In total 1,402 birds were processed, of which 1,349 were new and 3 were controls. Acros made up 766 (57%) of the new birds, a total we were very pleased with and with 328 ringed it was a very good year for Sedge Warblers for the site. Bearded Tits and Cetti’s Warblers also seemed to have a good breeding season, and are always a pleasure to share the reed bed with. 

Species totals 2020:

Species	New	Retraps	Unique inds.	Total
Reed Warbler	438	19	440	457
Swallow	407	3	409	410
Sedge Warbler	328	15	329	343
Bearded Tit	48	13	52	61
Reed Bunting	53	1	54	54
Blue Tit	18	1	18	19
Cetti's Warbler	15	0	15	15
Sand Martin	14	0	14	14
Wren	8	1	8	9
Yellow Wagtail	6	0	6	6
Chiffchaff	4	0	4	4
Starling	4	0	4	4
Linnet	1	0	1	1
Garden Warbler	1	0	1	1
Great Tit	1	0	1	1
Kingfisher	1	0	1	1
Whinchat	1	0	1	1
Whitethroat	1	0	1	1
Total:	1349	53	1359	1402

A first-year male Whinchat caught on the 31st August was probably our bird of the season, being the first for UEARG.

With 52 different individual Bearded Tits caught this year (48 new), they are clearly doing well on site and can often be heard pinging away in the reed bed.

This juvenile male Kingfisher was another highlight of the season and a species you can never get bored of seeing up close.

Yellow Wagtails were probably present in smaller numbers than previous years this season, reflected in just 6 being ringed. A far cry from the 104 ringed in 2014! 

A good year for Cetti’s Warblers that as you’d expect are often heard belting out their song around the site. 15 individuals ringed being a good total here.

A bumper year for Sedge Warblers passing through, 329 different individuals encountered including this monster that came in at 21.2g (the average on site this season being 11.7g)

Reed Warblers dominated the catch in almost all sessions this season

A special thank you to British Sugar that give us access to the site, and to Kirsty, Jack, Max, Alex, and Adham for their hard work helping on site this year.

Charter Wood and its surroundings: One year of intensive monitoring

In March 2019 two UEARG members (myself & Kirsty) moved into our new home, which fortunately for us backs onto Charter Wood. This 35-acre wood on the western outskirts of Norwich was planted in 1994, and is managed by the Norwich Fringe Project. The wood is flanked by horse pasture and a 50-acre arable field with corn grown last year and the field was left as a stubble through winter. The group have previously not ringed here, so we weren't sure what to expect. I’m lucky enough to be able to work at home with my computer-based PhD (even before Covid-19!) which has afforded me the opportunity to monitor the woodland pretty intensively over the past year. It's not a particularly busy ringing site, and this enables me to balance ringing with work (with some additional evening catch-up where needed).

Ringing effort was mainly in the garden and a single 18-metre mist net just the other side of our back fence leading into the woodland. Supplementary feeding was supplied year-round but was greatly reduced during summer. We also dabbled in a bit of dazzling in the stubble field in late-winter.

View from the ringing room overlooking Charter Wood.

 Charter Wood and the garden by the numbers.

Despite the woods relatively young age we’ve been pretty surprised by not just the numbers, but the diversity of species ringed in the past year. For me this is a nice signpost that these relatively immature planted woodlands, especially when managed as Charter Wood is, can be a great ecological success. Here is a brief overview of totals, but at the end of this blog I’ll throw in a bunch of more detailed graphs of what we have found for those of us that enjoy a graph or two.
Between March 31^st 2019 and March 31^st 2020, we ringed a total of 1,568 birds across 27 species within Charter Wood and the garden. Unsurprisingly with feeder-based ringing, Tits dominated the catch with Blue and Great Tits making up 49% of the total birds ringed. However, we also had good returns of finch species, particularly Greenfinch with 167 ringed. Inevitably with feeder ringing, you also accumulate a lot of reencountered birds and with these subsequent encounters included it brought our total encounters for the year up to 3,509 and supplies us with great ongoing data on survival in the population. Despite this large number of reencounters, the majority of our birds are still yet to be subsequently encountered.

Table: Birds ringed in Charter wood 31/03/2019-30/03/2020.

Species	New	Retraps	Total
Blue Tit	468	795	1263
Great Tit	301	682	983
Greenfinch	167	23	190
Chaffinch	149	39	188
Blackbird	102	66	168
Goldfinch	87	18	105
Dunnock	57	82	139
Robin	54	100	154
Long-tailed Tit	42	95	137
Collared Dove	26	1	27
Jay	15	13	28
Woodpigeon	15	7	22
Chiffchaff	14	1	15
Blackcap	12	0	12
Coal Tit	11	9	20
Wren	10	2	12
Great Spotted Woodpecker	8	3	11
Goldcrest	8	0	8
Bullfinch	6	1	7
Brambling	4	1	5
Treecreeper	2	2	4
Reed Bunting	2	1	3
Song Thrush	2	0	2
Sparrowhawk	2	0	2
Magpie	2	0	2
Green Woodpecker	1	0	1
Starling	1	0	1
Total	1,567	1,941	3,508

Highlights:

• I estimated a loose winter flock of ~250 Greenfinch were present in the wood this year, an excellent number for this species that was so badly hit by trichomonas. This is potentially an underestimate, as catching two-thirds of the flock would be a pretty good rate.      

• Chaffinch numbers would be higher, but the local population is suffering from papillomavirus and as such those birds are released unringed.
• A couple of Brambling were great additions during early winter and two more individuals were ringed during spring passage. I assumed the Autumn birds were just passage, but a retrap of the female 17 days later indicated she was perhaps just being inconspicuous.

• 26 Collared Doves ringed won’t excite many ringers, but by 2018 numbers this is 50% of the county total.

• 15 Jays ringed on the other hand did feel special for a single site in a short-ish period, so we started a colour ringing project on them in January 2020. We’ve only fitted 2 colour rings so far, but we are expecting/hoping captures will increase later in the season.

• No feeding station would be complete without a Sparrowhawk or two eking out a living. We’ve had at least two individuals this year, with both a male and female finding their way into a mist net. Sadly, the male was found dead after entering a man-made structure locally just 22 days later.

• Controls and recoveries have been pretty quiet for this site sadly. What movements we have had have only been local movements of Tits. We are still waiting to hear back about a Blue Tit ringed back in 2014 though, so hopefully that will be more exciting.
• 9 ringed birds have subsequently been found deceased, in all cases unrelated to the ringing event. 5 of these were a result of predation from domestic cats, a Sparrowhawk died after entering a man-made structure, and 3 birds succumbed to natural causes.

Heard often in Charter Wood but rarely ringed, just six Bullfinch over the year.

Heard even more than Bullfinches, but seldom caught. This adult female is one of at least five Green Woodpeckers in Charter Wood. You can see the sticky saliva in her bill that helps them catch ants and other invertebrates.

Charter Wood doesn't attract many Goldcrests, only 8 were ringed across the year.

One of the two Treecreepers ringed.

Plenty of Woodpigeons in Charter Wood, only a tiny proportion were ringed.

The very first bird ringed; a Great Tit sporting a completely white outer tail feather.

Dazzling

Bordering the northern edge of Charter Wood is a 50-acre arable field that was left as stubble this winter. Skylarks breed here on the neighbouring horse pasture so I suspected we may also have a wintering population that we could try and monitor. Being inside a city doesn’t really lend itself to dazzling (catching birds by torch and hand net), our light pollution to put it simply is pretty horrendous and for dazzling you want it dark. The saving grace was a thermal imager, lent to us by group leader Iain Barr. With the imager we can find birds more efficiently and ensure a better approach for catching; combining this with choosing the best conditions to reduce light pollution really helped our success rate. We didn’t have access to the imager for most of the winter but in February and March we had a chance to put some time into monitoring the birds using the stubble field during winter. It was also a great opportunity for me to teach a few group members that have not experienced much of the technique and I usually had a group with me in tow. To our surprise we stumbled across a particularly good population of Woodcock (in Norwich terms) with counts as high as 15 our best. We were delighted to ring 9 Woodcock, especially considering only 9 were ringed in the entirety of Norfolk in 2018! Counts of Skylark roosting in the field peaked at ~10-15 on a single night, with at least three singing males during the day that I can currently hear singing high above the house as I type. We managed to ring 15 Skylark, a species rarely caught by conventional methods which is reflected in the fact that only 2 adults were ringed in the whole of Norfolk in 2018.  We also recorded several pairs of Red-Legged Partridge, as well as sparse encounters with Lapwing, Stock Dove, Little Owl, Redwing, and Fieldfare. This was only with a handful of visits though, so we are excited to get back out monitoring next winter.

Ringing totals:

Species	New	Retrap	Total
Skylark	15	2	17
Woodcock	9	3	12
Stock Dove	2	0	2
Lapwing	1	0	1
Redwing	1	0	1
Total	28	5	33

I had peak counts of 8 Stock Dove on the farm during the day mixed in with the more common Woodpigeons, but we didn't come across many roosting at night.

No day time records of Lapwing on the farm, so to record an individual present at night was a treat.

One of the many Woodcock using the farm to feed at night, and the view through the thermal imager as I approached it.

Charter Wood nest box scheme

As part of ongoing monitoring of the wood we embarked on establishing a nest box scheme in early 2020. With a grant from UEARG to supply the wood we built 56 hole-fronted nest boxes and 5 open-fronted nest boxes that have gone up throughout the wood. We have also put up raptor boxes with one of each Kestrel, Tawny Owl, and Little Owl box going up. With this and a large chunk of nest finding, we can now hopefully start monitoring the breeding success of some of the wood’s inhabitants. Unfortunately, a well-meaning member of the public has recently also put up roughly 20 boxes through the woodland (without permission) and these boxes are sealed shut so will not be able to be monitored.

One of the many passerine nest boxes.

Tawny Owl Nest Box. Both Male and Female calls have been heard in Charter Wood through early spring.

Graphs of Charter Wood ringing

Captures by month

Total monthly captures unsurprisingly peaked in late autumn/winter months, with the busiest month being October. Supplementary feeding was provided to a far greater extent in winter and winter is generally the time when bird numbers at the feeders peak.

Captures by month corrected

Correcting for the amount of trapping effort each month isn’t very easy when you operate varying trapping methods (some of which are passive such as maze traps). A very rough way of correcting for effort is to simply calculate number of birds caught per trapping day (where a trapping day is considered a day where at least one individual was trapped). Here we see peak captures occurring in November rather than October.

Species richness by month

The number of species caught each month was fairly stable but this month was our best with 21 different species ringed.

Top 6 species by month

Here is the monthly captures for the most frequently caught species, corrected by number of trapping days in that month.

Capture number histogram

Most birds (57%) have only ever been encountered once, but a small proportion can be described as ‘trap happy’ and end up making up a surprising proportion of our large number of retraps (just 26 individuals make up almost 20% retraps). These are mostly Great Tits, Dunnocks, and Robins that become accustomed to potter traps and perhaps considered the free meal a worthwhile trade for the data I wanted from them.