A ringing recovery!

Well this took me quite by surprise. Mark has just informed me of the recovery of one of our Redpolls last spring. It was trapped in the garden on 30 Dec last year, re-trapped on 21 March this year and then controlled on 18 April at the Calf of Man. Splendid!
It's Marks first recovery outside Lancashire as well.

'Banding' in the garden again

With the hope rather than expectation of some reasonable ringing weather, Mark came round with his nets yesterday morning to get an update on the birds in my garden. Things started very well - the first bird in the nets was a male Bullfinch, probably one of the ones that managed to acrobatically avoid the net in March.

Unfortunately, no other finches were playing ball though there were a larger number of Tits in the nets. Around 10 we got a total of 13 birds in the top net all at once. these included a coupleof retraps of adult Tits and female Bullfinch.
A new bird for the garden ringing list was the only bird caught in the net at the bottom of the garden, a splendid male Goldcrest.

Mark had to go to watch Burnley lose again around 11:30 but in the two and a half hours the totals were:

Goldcrest              1
Coal Tit                 3 plus 1 retrap
Blue Tit                 7 plus 2 retrap
Great Tit               10 plus 1 rettrap
House Sparrow      2 
Chaffinch               1
Goldfinch               1
Bullfinch                2  plus 1 retrap

The tits of the area have certainly done OK this last year it seems, though only the occasional Long-tailed is going through the garden still.

Around 1pm, the flock of greenfinches, Chaffinches and Goldfinches recided to put in an appearance as did the Great Spotted Woodpecker, Jay and a huge female Sparrowhawk. Next time....

Anyway, a quick late afternoon trip round the reservoirs producted five Goosanders on Rishton and seven on Parsonage along with two Goldeneyes. The only grebe was a Great-crested on Parsonage. The water levels are right to the top now - not surprising given the amount of precipitation we've had lately.

Miserable weekend

I'm full of a cold and feeling distinctly under the weather, so no birding for me this weekend. There were good numbers of finches in the garden today with at least 19 Goldfinches and 12 Chaffinches. One of last year's ringed female Bullfinches put in an appearance but there's still no sign of an Redpolls. Long-tailed Tits have been rather scarce this year as well.
It was good to see a flight of five Goosanders bombing down the canal as I haven't seen all that many over the past year or two though they are regular at the reservoir.

North-west Bird Fair

I spent all weekend at Martin Mere on the Lancashire & Cheshire Fauna Society’s stall at this year’s bird fair. We were ‘banned’ last year along with all the other charitable organisations and consequently they had little on offer. This year’s was much better, even with the howling gale and heavy showers (though not as heavy as in Cumbria). Things were busy throughout the two days and I’d like to say thanks to all of those who either helped on the stall or paid us a visit for a chat.

I hoping that the weather will calm down this weekend and entice Mark over to do some garden ringing.

A weekend in Girvan

A quick look at the calendar and I realised that if I was to get my Girvan Atlas square survey done, then it was going to have to be this weekend as I was doing something on all the others through to the end of the year.
The rain pelted down as we made our way carefully up the M6 on Friday evening and I was getting more than a little concerned that the weekend would be a washout! Herring Gulls woke me from my slumbers the following morning - the day was fine! So once the sun was up I grabbed the bins and the notebook and headed for the shore outside the house.
The tide was almost at its height so there was not much beach exposed, nor waders anywhere. Eiders and single Red-brested Merganser and Red-throated Diver got the list off to a good start. A flock of Linnets fed on the shoreline with a couple of Greenfinches and two Rock Pipits. I made my way to the outcrop of rocks on the southern corner of my square where I hoped to find some roosting waders; I wasn't disappointed, in fact I was rather elated to find ten Purple Sandpipers in amongst the tideline seaweed. You know I had great views as I didn't have my camera with me! The sun appeared briefly and it was remarkably calm as a flock of ten Twite flew over! It was certainly a different bird list to last week, though the next bit though the nearby woodland was very quiet with very few birds - two treecreepers being the highlight.
After I had done the circuit, we headed to Ayr for an afternoon of non-birding though I stopped briefly at a flood near Littlemill for the reported Smew - seen successfully in the now pouring rain!

Today, Sunday, turned out bright again but very windy. I decided to see if I could get some shots of the Purps. Suffice to say, there was only one and it was VERY shy. However I did get some images of a couple of Rock Pipits that got me really scratching my head. They were the size of Rock Pipits with the long, dagger like bill and smudgy breast markings but the legs were paler that I was used to, the body browner and the bright yellow base to the lower mandible was most pronounced. The eye ring was clear and there was more than a hint of a supercillium - littoralis (Scandinavian) Rock Pipits possibly.

A wander up to the harbour yielded a flock of 20 Greenfinches on the shore and a large flock of roosting waders - 140 Ringed Plover, 12 Sanderling and 17 Dunlin. Nearer the harbour itself there were around 40 Turnstones and a seething mass of irridescent Starlings feeding on the weed. After brunch, we headed home via Stranraer and stopped at Bishop Burn for a little while as the tide was full and it's just a great place to get lots of good birds reasonably close.

There were loads of birds around the burn when we arrived such as the pale-bellied Brent Geese and Scaup below, but a couple with their dogs must have seen we were getting good views and so decided to let their hounds loose. Thanks!

There were already over 150 Scaup, lots of Goldeneye and Wigeon, several Great-crested and Slavonian Grebes along with twenty or so Brents, a tystie and 'loads' of mergansers. It's just a great place to watch birds - and the sun is behind you so the light is wonderful! The journey home was uneventful - now back to job-hunting!

Atlasing near Gisburn

As I opened the curtains this-morning, the sun was just about to come up but the forecast overnight frost had clearly not happened. We'd planned to start our Atlas survey work today as it was meant to be calm and sunny but as we made our way north east, the drizzle started!
I parked up at Stirk House, donned waterproofs and set off over the fields towards the river. We hadn't gone far when we came across a large thrush flock - at least 250 Fieldfare and 40 Redwing along with several Song Thrushes and Blackbirds. There were also a couple of large flocks of Chaffinches, though no northern interlopers no matter how hard we searched. We slip-slided our way down Steep Wood to the Ribble that was in full spate - not ideal for riverine birds to say the least; the woods were generally rather quiet but we managed to get a few more on the day's list. We had seen several Hares so far and our mammal list was augmented with a herd of over 30 Sika Deer seen through the trees including a magnificent stag. We continued round our circuitous path but there wasn't a great deal else to be seen, though six Goldcrests in the Leylandii back at the car were nice as there have been so few this autumn. A weasel trapped momentarliy in a cattle grid gave crippling views! We headed round to the other side of the tetrad and picked up a few Meadow Pipits and another large flock of Chaffiches but then ran out of survey time.
Next it was up to Wigglesworth to reccy the area where I'll do another square. We passed a couple of flocks of Fieldfares on the way including one of over 300 birds just north of Paythorne. Finally, the sun came out and as we searched for suitable paths and starting and ending points, we noticed a large congregation of birds on the flood-plain of the Ribble just north of the village. Though just outside my square, I had to check this out, so I set up the scope from a lay-by. There were approximately 800 Wigeon, a couple of hundred Teal, plenty of Mallard, Canada Geese and Lapwings and some bonus birds in the shape of at least 20 Shovelers, a few Pintail and a Redshank. We were not too far away from Hellified Flash so I thought that there must be a few birds there as well. There were, but nowhere near as many as on the flood-plain and having scanned through them a couple of times it was time for lunch at The Buck in Paythorne - yum!

Before the storm

Just did a quick tour of the local Reservoirs this-afternoon. They were sailing on Rishton Res so not much there. The four Great Crested Grebes were still present as were 41 Canada Geese. Up on Parsonage there were at least 11 Snipe on the small reservoir with the Little Grebes and Coot. another 69 Canada Geese with two Pink-footed Geese fed in the field. On the main reservoir, there were quite a fe duck (in comparison to recently anyway) - two Goldeneye, 13 Teal and three Wigeon.
We'll see what the storm brings tomorrow - not the ideal weather for winter atlas work so that'll have to be postponed a week or so.