Minding your P's and Q's

Our group was given another lie-in on Saturday morning courtesy of Mick who again arrived at the res early to erect nets and get the tape lures on before sunrise. Simon - a former trainee - visited us again this week to complete filming our activities. Happily, there was plenty to record because when the fog lifted, the captures rose sharply. Dave, Peter and I carried out the ringing while Mel and Mick did continuous net rounds keeping us with such a constant supply of birds that it was after 10:00 before we were able to grab a coffee and a bite to eat.

Simon was in need of some audio for his film - us giving the data to the scribe. As a group, we do enjoy a bit of banter between birds and when he began recording, minding our P's and Q's was rather a challenge! There was a collective sigh of relief when he had filmed enough and we could talk normally once more, lol.

Hats off to Adam and Dave for staying awake...Adam came out a little later after finishing night shift and Dave had pulled an all-nighter too, though in a much more pleasant way after a night's ringing with the Wash Waders. As well as Simon, local birder Ian popped in for a while. They couldn't have picked a better day to join us. We captured 186 new birds including 47 Chiffchaff, 10 Lesser Redpoll, 7 Meadow Pipit, one each of Whitethroat and Lesser Whitethroat followed by an assortment of more usual species. The top scorer of the day was 93 Blackcap including a Portuguese control, our first from this country. The day was concluded with the usual trip to the White Hart.

Portuguese ring

Micks Week

Well the Autumn migration continues and you have to admire Mick's commitment. He continues to arrive at Stanny in the early hours to erect the nets in the dark and to get the sound lures on. This week, due too the weather and other personal events, Mick only managed to get to the reservoir 5 of the 7 days. Ha ha.  We continue to catch good numbers of Blackcap and Chiffchaff. The totals for this week were; Tues (57), Thurs (112), Fri (132), Sat (206) and Sun (144).
Mick was on his own on Tuesday and Thursday. He had spent all last week texting me and light-heartedly winding me up about the Redstarts. Fortunately last Saturday we caught one and I was able to ring on it. So I thought at least there will be some rest from the text. Oh no! This week he's at it again and Thursday he surpassed himself. In the 30' net though the hedge on the railtrack he caught a young Whinchat. This is only the second Whinchat ever caught at Stanny, the first being in May 1981, 34 years ago. so a fantastic result .
On Friday Peter managed to get out and help Mick. On Saturday myself, Dawn, Peter and Mel arrived at 0615 and trundled down the track and met up with Mick, who again had arrived early and already put the nets up. As soon as I saw Mick  I accused  him of making up the story of the Whinchat but he assured me he had photos.  Indeed he had, but unfortunately I can't attach them at the minute because Mick is such a technophobe that he doesn't know how to email them across to me.( He has to get the services of a young girl to do it for him) As soon as I get them I'll attach them to this post.
Dawn was in fine form and relayed stories from her holiday in Majorca and in particular Albufera Nature Reserve.
With 4 of us ringing we managed to keep on top of the number of birds, the total for Saturday were:
Blackcap (122), Chifchaff (57), Reed Warbler (6) ,Sedge Warbler (2), Meadow Pipit (2) and singles of Lesser Whitethroat ,Whitethroat, and Garden Warbler.
The track where we base ourselves got a bit busy with hundreds of horses participating in a local charity horse ride, organised by the wife of one of our old ringers (Ed).
By 12.30 we had the nets down and en route to our HQ at the White Hart. It was definitely Micks week because not only had he caught the Whinchat, he won the draw in the pub and took home a BBQ pack of meat.
On Sunday just Mick and Adam went out and again got good numbers of Blackcap and Chiffchaff.
Late yesterday there was a sighting of a Wryneck, close to Stanny, so today Adam and Mick where out looking for it but were unsuccessful.
Hooray!!!
What a pretty bird.

Just to prove he did catch one.

What a start to September?

Well this week the migration has been in full swing and so has Mick. Unbelievably he has been out before dawn to set all the nets on every day this week other than Saturday. And that was only because it was raining. Because of either work commitments or people swanning off on holiday (Dawn), Mick has been out to Stanny on his own Monday to Friday. What a week he has had, each day having a respectable number of new birds.  Monday (159), Tuesday (110), Wednesday (55), Thursday (79) and Friday (113).  In that 516 birds were 5 new Redstart. These birds are not common visitors to Stanford and we are very lucky if we catch 1 a year, so 5 in 1 week is incredible.  He also caught a migrating Grasshopper Warbler which is a new species for us for the year. Unfortunately numbers of this species have been reducing over the last few years.
Saturday was a wash out and it was decided not to attempt any ringing. So ringing was planned for Sunday. The weather forecast was perfect with a clear night and very little wind. Mick had noticed that on these type of nights the number of migrating birds were high.
With Dawn still sunning herself, Adam going out on the razz the night before and Jo with family commitments the team was Mick, Peter and myself. At least that was 2 more than had been there for the rest of the week. To make it even better Mick volunteered to get all the nets up before dawn and myself and Peter trundled up at 06.15. Fantastic a lie in.
Boy did we need it!!!!! We met up with Mick. No time for coffee, off we went on a net round.
Mick had put 13 nets up and by the time we had reached halfway we knew it was going to be a brilliant day. Myself and Peter returned to the vehicles and started processing the birds. Mick continued extracting birds from the remaining nets. On Micks return to the vehicles he presented me with a single bird bag stating 'this is for you'. With excitement I placed my hand in the bag and took hold of a young female Redstart. The 6th of the week !!!!! I was really pleased because I had never seen a Redstart in the hand before and certainly never ringed one. Mick knew this and all week he had been texting me stating that he had caught a new Redstart and on one day even caught 2! He'll have to think of another bird to try and wind me up with now.
The day continued in this manner. Mick was extracting and Peter and myself ringing. Very little time for coffee!!! By the end of the session we had ringed 237 new birds and had had 6 retraps one of which was the Grasshopper Warbler from earlier in the week. The birds to note were 50 Chiffchaff and 123 Blackcap., but we also had good numbers of other species
Sedge Warblers (3). Reed Warblers(9). Lesser Whitethroat (3). Whitethroat (6). Garden Warbler (3). Willow Warbler (6) Goldcrest (4) and of course 1 Redstart.
All in all a  --------------------------SUPER SUNDAY AT STANNY

For those that are interested the groups annual report for 2014 is now published, and can be seen on our website.

Magnificent August

After a dismal July, August has been truly magnificent at Stanford Res. After last years record August of 833 we were hoping to get somewhere near that this year, instead we just smashed it with a 50% increase to 1233 birds ringed from 15 visits with all Warbler species showing a healthy increase. 33 species were ringed during the month, 8 of which showed a small decrease. Chaffinch with a 60% and Reed Bunting 45% being the worst. On the bright side all the warblers showed a healthy increase in numbers of between 34% and 60% except for Willow Warbler which was still up 12%. Lesser Whitethroat numbers were amazing with 64 caught this month, that's more than in most years!, together with Blackcap up from 93 in 2014 to 202 possibly due to an increase in breeding numbers after last years good breeding season. We also managed to catch a Tree pipit during the month which is only our 4th in 40 years and finally at the end of the month we caught a Pied Flycatcher, the first ever to be caught at Stanford. So all things considered we have had an excellent month, we hope it continues. Mick

July-----------A difficult month

Well what can we say really ? The weather during the month has been terrible here at Stanford with what feels like continuous wind varying from strong to very strong. This severally effected both the number of times we were able to get out [11 compared with 14 in 2014] and what nets we could put up/area we ringed thus reducing the catch.

 This month we have ringed a total of 706 birds of 30 species compared with 1073 of 33 species last year[2014] of these only 4 species showed an increase in numbers they being Kingfisher from 3 to 4 , Blue Tit from 32 to 35 Reed Warbler 59 to 74 and finally Blackcap 118 to 135 all the rest showed a decline the most dramatic being Tree Sparrow 156 to 28 Whitethroat 174 to 118 Reed Bunting 77 to 24 and finally although only small numbers are involved  I think it is still significant Linnet down from 13 to only 1 !!! In fact when I look at all the Finch and Bunting numbers they all show a significant decline, this can be for a number of reasons.
1. Smaller adult numbers. 
2. The fact we ringed 360 fewer birds this month.
3. Due to the generally cold weather birds are breeding later / failed to breed successfully.
 Hopefully its just a late breeding season and things will pick up in August. 
We have been trying a new area this summer on the Leicestershire side of the Reservoir. It was formally a field  that had sheep grazing it but some years ago the sheep were taken out and the field was left to go wild. I think we have been ignoring a good area as the catches in this area have been really good with 4 catches of 90+ birds and a French control of a Sedge Warbler. Hopefully this will continue throughout the rest of the year, finally we have just had a good Chiffchaff recovery a bird that was ringed in April last year and caught in Portugal on December 30th.

Mick

The first six months

After having our 2nd best start to the year last year with 1400 birds ringed by the end of June we were hoping for a similar start this year so by achieving a total of 1391 we have done really well when you
consider the incessant wind we have had to endure from the North. This has made things quite difficult for us as our site is quite exposed when the wind is from this direction. However we have persevered and
achieved better results than it felt. Surprisingly we caught exactly the same number of species as last year with 39 although 9 of these were different to last year. It's been a real funny year with most species being caught in smaller numbers than last year, some of which are really unexplainable. Wren and Robin have been caught in similar numbers but Dunnocks are down from 43 last year to 24 this year. The Tits are a bit up and down with Blue Tit up from 231 to 294 and Great Tits remaining static whist Long tailed tits are down from 42 to 25. Tree sparrows have increased dramatically from 141 to 234 .... a brilliant increase in numbers!
Apart from Chaffinch, all finches have shown a dramatic decrease in numbers with Bullfinch and Linnet being the worst with a 75% decrease. The warblers are all over the place with Reed and Sedge showing big
increases while Lesser Whitethroat ,Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Willow warbler showing the opposite with big decreases. Whitethroat and Garden warbler numbers look stable. This year has also seen a new breeding species for the reservoir with up to 3 breeding female Cetti's Warblers caught since May and three 1j's caught over the last 2 weeks, so overall not to bad a start to the year.

Mick

Moth Night 2

Last Friday evening Adam and myself went over to the Leicestershire side of the Reservoir to carry out a moth night. The second of the year. We got there about 18.30 and decided to set the nets in the reedbed ready for Saturdays ringing. Mick and Peter were due to come at 4.30 the next morning to try some new rides in the paddock area again on the Leicestershire side. Dawn had been ringing on Friday with Jed Andrews and chasing Egyptian Geese and was unable to come out with the group. Jo had decided a wedding was far more important than ringing (ha ha), so there was only going to be the 4 of us in the morning.
After setting the nets we set up the moth trap far enough away from the vehicles so it didn't disturb our sleep.Then we returned to the nets, extracted the birds furled the nets and processed the birds. Most were Reed Warblers as you would expect.After finishing with the birds we went to check the moth trap and to top up the generator. It was still very light so there were not many moths around. We left it running and returned to base for a well deserved beer and sleep.
Up early at 4.15 we went and unfurled the nets before returning to base and Adam produced from the back of his car bacon, rolls and surprise surprise he had remembered the frying pan. Fantastic. We quickly checked the moth trap to find out that the generator had stopped working sometime in the night. Another problem for Adam to sort out.
Mick and Peter arrived at 4.30 and set up their nets.We had 2 bases not in view of each other. So myself and Adam carried on as normal ringing extracting etc. About mid morning both our phones rang we were busy extracting birds so ignored them. As we got back to base they went again. It was Mick. Adam answered. Mick was apparently dancing around cheering like a kid. He had caught a French ringed Sedge Warbler.
Mick really is such a jammy git, if there are controls to be had on the site you can guarantee that Mick will process 90% of them.
Any way we carried on ringing and then check the moth trap. Unfortunately there was only a few in there.
Drinker 2, Straw Dot 2,Burnished Brass 2, Brown Rustic 2, Plain Golden Y and Marbled Minor 2.

By 11.00 we had packed up the nets and were check the reedbed for nests and pulli.. Although we only found one nest with pulli we did find several with eggs.

All in all a very successful ringing session returning with 46 new and 38 retraps, mostly Reed and Sedge Warblers although we did catch young Kingfisher which is always nice.

Mick had just about finished when we drove round to him and his totals were also very good 

Blackbird 1 /0  Dunnock 1/1  wren  3/0  robin 2/0  Reewa 4/5   sedwa  4/5   white  4/3  leswh  1/0   black  7/0   garwa  4/0   Goldf  2/1   bluti   3/0    linnet  1/0  treec  2/0    tresp  1/0  reebu  4/1    

Totals   44 new 15 retrap  1 control

And to top it off Mick had worked out how to use the camera on his phone and had taken this wonderful picture of this Dragonfly. Any suggestion for names?