New Moon = Dazzling. Superb!

I've been out dazzling for shorebirds with Sean the last couple of nights and had reasonable success given the general lack of birds seen on both nights.
Totals for the 2 nights were:

Ringed Plover 7 (+1 retrap)
Dunlin 2
Turnstone 1
Oystercatcher 1

Turnstone, Ringed Plover & Dunlin - photos by Ian Scott

Lapland Buntings

Earlier today I took a trip up to the Point of Ayre to the area where Sean has been putting down seed for Linnets for the last couple of months. Plenty of Linnets around as well as a couple of smart looking first year Northern Wheatears. Having walked about 100m North of the site I had 4 Lapland Bunting fly over with 2 of them landing a short distance away beside some Yellow-horned Poppies.

The 2 birds gave superb views down to about 10 feet at the closest and I sat watching them for ages (why do I never take a camera out with me??!).
It was great to have decent views of Lapland Bunts again, the last time I had such good views was when I was working at North Ronaldsay Bird Obs in 1991/1992.

General consensus amongst European birders is that the recent influx of Lapland Buntings into the North and West of the British Isles is from the Greenland/Arctic Canada population. What a journey for such a small bird!
There have been record numbers in Iceland and the Shetlands and Orkney Isles (North Ron had over 140 of them the other day!).

Linnets and Meadow Pipits

I met up with Sean this evening at the Point of Ayre where he had already set up his woosh net for Linnets and a Mist net for Meadow Pipits.

We caught 7 of each after my arrival, although the evenings totals were:

Linnet 22
Meadow Pipit 10
Swallow 1

Meadow Pipit

First year bird (Age code 3) showing the contrast in the Greater coverts.

Both pictures courtesy of Sean - thanks mate!

Oystercatcher movement

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had caught an Oystercatcher on the nest back in June which was already ringed (original post here).

I got the original ringing details from the BTO today.
FP01502 had been ringed as an age '8' (BTO code for at least 3 years old) adult on the 19th September 1998 at Llanfairfechan, Gwynedd, Wales by the Scan Ringing Group.

That's a distance of just over 100km NNE and makes the bird at least 15 years old (the current longevity record for a British ringed Oystercatcher is over 36yrs old).

Last week

I spent last Wednesday out ringing with Sean and my young lad Ffyn.
We met Sean near the Point of Ayre where he had his woosh net set up and had been 'filling his boots' with Linnets.
He caught 3 just as we arrived and then after a battery failure on the remote trigger system meant missing out on a fine Northern Wheatear we packed up and headed to Port Mooar for some Rock Pipits.
Despite plenty of interest in the traps by about half a dozen Rockits we only caught 1 so we decided to head on to our new garden site near Sulby.
We caught 72 birds in 2 hours - 71 new and 1 retrap Blackcap.
42 Blue Tit
21 Great Tit
6 Coal Tit
1 Greenfinch
1 Siskin
No sign of any Great Spotted Woodpeckers whilst we were there but a juvenile had been on the feeders that morning. Thanks again to Mr & Mrs Crellin for their generosity in letting us ring in their fabulous gardens!
Ffyn had a great time helping to let the birds go (apart from when a Blue Tit bit his finger!).

Ffyn checking my primary moult score and alula moult is correct on the Blue Tit

Thanks for a great day out ringing Sean!

Meteorites and a Manxie

Sean and I went out for the thrid night running last night, this time we were targeting Manx Shearwater.
We ended the night having caught 1 Manx Shearwater and 1 Storm Petrel.

Manx Shearwater

 

Storm Petrel

The Storm Petrel had a deformity to its right foot as shown in the picture above. We find that legs or feet missing is relatively common (c.15%) amongst the Storm Petrels we catch. Studies indicate that this is due to attacks by predatory fish biting the birds legs/feet as they feed on the surface of the sea.

Weighing the Storm Petrel - an apt container in this case!

Unfortunately the lack of cloud cover last night meant it never quite got as dark as it could have been even though there was no moon. This was the probable reason for the small catch.

There was one good thing to come from the clear skies though as we saw many meteorites, some travelling the full length of the sky, a fantastic sight!
Thanks to Sean for the great banter and for all the pictures shown above.

Givin' it the old Razzle Dazzle

I've had a great time dazzling shorebirds with Sean the last couple of nights. We even had some great cakes to eat, courtesy of 'Mrs. S', after the slog up and down the beach last night!
We managed to catch:

6 Oystercatcher (1 retrap)
8 Dunlin (1 retrap)
5 Ringed Plover (1 retrap)
1 Redshank

Dunlin & Ringed Plover - pictures by Ian Scott

See Sean's blog for some pictures of the birds we caught and a great couple of pictures of a Ringed Plover, first as a young chick when it was originally ringed and then a second picture of the same bird when we caught it the other night as a fully grown juvenile. A right 'bobby dazzler'!

The range of sizes within the Dunlins was amazing, some birds having bill lengths over twice as long as others and there was a large range within the body mass of the birds too, presumably the heavier birds had arrived several days previously and had been feeding well on the millions of sandhoppers that literally carpeted the sand around the tide line.

We also saw a large ginger cat on the beach both nights - I wonder how many Little Tern chicks that thing had despatched over the previous month?

A nice view of a Barn Owl drifting over the road near to the Curraghs Wildlife Park on the way home at 02:00am was great.

Thanks for the company Sean, makes a change to be able to talk to someone when out dazzling!

More Herring Gull colour ring sightings

Herring Gull 'T1TW' - photo by Janet Servante

I received the above picture of T1TW from Janet Servante who took it on the 27th July at Port St Mary, by the scallop factory at the base of the Albert Pier. A fantastic picture - thank you very much Janet!

It was one of the Herring Gulls I caught just offshore from Perwick, onboard Bob's boat 'Gemini' on the 21st July this year.

Sean also had a sighting of T7TV on the 02nd August at Laxey harbour. He had caught that Herring Gull on the 19th June this year in his garden at Port-e-Vullen so this one becomes our furthest moved Gull so far! It will be interesting to see just how far 'Manx' Gulls can travel during this exciting project!

A Mighty Manx 'Pecker

I met up with Chris and Kay this afternoon to do some ringing at a new garden site in the North of the Island. The site is fantastic with a very large area of well-shrubbed gardens, an orchard/vegetable patch and all backing onto a large area of Curragh (Manx name for an area of wet Willow scrub/swamp).
As if one was needed, there was an alterioir motive for selecting this particular garden as it has regular visits by Great Spotted Woodpeckers.
For those non-Manx residents amongst you you may be wondering "So what?" but GSW are 'national rarities' on the Isle of Man and this year has seen the first proven breeding records after several suspected breeding attempts over the last few years.
During the tour of the garden where we were chooisng where to put the nets, we were given great views of a juvenile GSW, a Manx tick for me (and they are rarer than hen's teeth these days!).
We set up two 40' nets and ended up catching 53 birds.
28 Blue Tit
15 Great Tit
6 Blackcap
2 Greenfinch
1 Song Thrush
1 Blackbird
No woodpecker amongst them, but hopefully next time! Many thanks to Mr & Mrs Crellin for allowing us to use their fabulous gardens.

Crowd-pulling Rockets

I met up with Sean the other morning and we went hunting for Rock Pipits with our array of spring traps, a tub of mealworms and an an mp3 player rigged up to a speaker system. We attracted a crowd of admirers at both sites we went to, but then who can blame the ladies for being attracted to such fine specimens?! (Yes, of course I'm talking about the Rock Pipits being attracted to the mealworms!!).

We ended the morning having "filled our boots" catching 18 Rock Pipits. 7 were caught at Fenella Beach at Peel and 11 caught at Niarbyl Beach. As a certain new mate of mine says, it was a real "Top day"!

Ghanaian Sanderling details

Today, I received the details of the colour ringed Sanderling seen by Pete Giovannini back in May this year.

The bird had been ringed on 23rd October 2009 at Asenko Village, Ghana, Africa and had not been resighted prior to Pete's sighting at Ballaghennie, Isle of Man on 28th May 2010.

That's a distance of approximately 5,500km as the 'Crow flies', but probably a lot further than that as the 'Sanderling flies'!

Thanks very much to Jeroen Reneerkens from the International Wader Study Group for the information.

Gull colour ring re-sightings

I got news of a Herring Gull colour ring re-sighting today.
Les Kneale had been passed a sighting by a friend who saw T3XB in the area of The Hibernian this morning.
That bird had been ringed by Sean in his garden on 22 July 2010.
It is the 4th of our colour ringed Herring Gulls to be reported to us, many thanks to Les and everyone else who has passed the details onto us.

Maps showing the re-sightings of the colour ringed Herring Gulls so far. The colour ring codes of the Gulls are shown beside where they have been seen.

Control Herring Gull

The Control Herring Gull that I caught using a 'fleyg net' yesterday on Bob Taylors charter boat 'Gemini' turned out to have been a bird originally ringed on the Calf of Man.

GA35605 was ringed as a chick on 17th June 2001 at Cow Harbour, Calf of Man.
That makes the Gull a little over 9 years old.

Hopefully we will learn more about the bird following the addition of the colour ring "T0TW" when we caught it yesterday.

The other Herring Gull we caught and ringed just off Port St Mary harbour was seen by Bob when he went out on his boat later that evening. He was able to read the colour ring as the Gull came back to the boat looking for more fish scraps! It just goes to show how the addition of colour rings results in a much higher reporting rate and we will hopefully learn some interesting information on the movements of Manx Gulls.

Remember, if you see one of the colour ringed Gulls, do please contact us with the following details:
Date, time, location (with grid reference if possible), what the bird was doing. You will be sent a full 'life history' of the bird with the original capture details and any other previous sightings.

Pelagic trip

My good old friend Jase is over on the IOM at the moment with his family and today he had booked a trip out on Bob Taylor's boat "Gemini".
The Manx BirdLife crew gathered for the trip and it turned out to be a fantastic day out on the sea with Bob and his crew, John and Peter.

We started with the obligatory stop at the Sugarloaf rock, it was great to see plenty of well grown Kittiwake pulli on the ledges and there were a few pulli Gullemots both on the ledges and also on the sea. Looks like they have both had a good breeding season for a change.

We then motored on through the Calf Sound and loacted a Basking Shark off the West coast. Bob expertly put the boat in the tidal stream, cut the engines and the shark came right alongside the boat several times. It was HUGE! Almost 30ft long and a good 6 or 7ft across!

A pot buoy was sighted drifting in the tidal stream and was recovered in the landing net for use by Bob. On bringing it aboard we found a Lumpsucker fish attached to the underside. A great little fish and one that looks like it belonged in some tropical sea, not several miles off the Isle of Man.

At this point Jase and I had a view of a Shearwater that got our attention as being brown above and 'smudgy' looking below. The contrast between it and the numerous Manx Shearwaters in the area was very noticeable. Unfortunately it was rapidly heading into the glare of the Sun and away form us. We both had thoughts of Balearic Shearwater but couldn't nail it down on the split second, poor view we had.

We then reached the wreck of the 'Ringwall', about 6 miles or so West of Port Erin and spent a while fishing.
Good numbers of Mackerel were brought aboard for bait and a few Spur Dogs were also caught. Other species caught included Whiting, Haddock and Grey Gurnard. A Minke Whale also gave a couple of brief views to the West of the wreck as it surfaced.

Jase and I then saw another brown shearwater come across the stern of the boat and this time there was no doubt as to its identification. Out went the shout for 'Balearic!'. It perfromed well during the brief view, banking several times to show its undersides and turned to show the head/breast too. Fantastic!!

On the trip back I used up some of the left over Mackerel bait to 'fleyg net' 2x Herring Gulls, one of which turned out to be a control! The control was given one of our colour rings as was the new bird.

A great day out with some really good friends. I just wish I had remembered my camera!!!

Storm Petrels

Sean and I went to Fort Island last night to 'tape lure' Storm Petrels.
We caught 9 in total, 6 new and 3 controls, a dissapointing total for what were fairly ideal conditions.
I will publish details of the controls when I get the information back from the BTO.

It was a good night though with plenty of banter and good company with Kay, Katie and my old mate Jase from Orkney coming along.

Jase and I processing Storm Petrels - picture courtesy of Sean

I didn't have my camera with me last night but here are some pictures from presvious nights.

Storm Petrels - pictures by Ian Scott

Colour ringing schemes used by Manx Ringing Group

I have added a link to a document giving details of the colour ringing schemes we are currently using to the Manx RG Links in the side menu.
The same document can be viewed by clicking here.

Pictures below from the top - Chough with colour rings, 'Black type' colour ring used on Herring & LBB Gulls, 'Orange type' colour ring used on Herring & LBB Gulls.

More Gulls

On Tuesday afternoon of this week I met up with Sean to access the landfill site at the Point of Ayre. We had seen a good few Gull chicks on there just a few days earlier but after searching the site all we could come up with was one Great Black-backed Gull chick. See Seans blog here for a picture.

Then this afternoon, having had my 'Moudry' large spring-trap repaired by the best seamstress on the Island, I got back up and running on the Herring Gulls in my garden again.

This one was given colour ring 'T8TY'.
We have colour ringed over 40 Herring Gulls so far this year, all having a Black colour ring on their Left leg with a combination of 4 letters/digits in Yellow.
Keep an eye out for these birds and we would really welcome any sightings of them.

More Pulli

Another few days ringing some cracking pulli.
My 'days off' started on Friday by meeting Adam from Manx BirdLife to go and ring the chicks from a Hen Harrier nest he had found.

Four well grown young 'FM' (Feathers medium) in the nest consisted of 3 big females and a smaller, though similarly well developed, male. The nest well very well situated - I'm still picking thorns from every tipe of throny plant species out of my legs!!

And today I met up with Sean to go and ring some Gull chicks near the Point of Ayre. Click here to see Sean's blog for some pictures of the Gulls.
We ringed 9 Lesser Black-backed Gull, 2 Great Black-backed Gull and a Herring Gull. All well developed 'FM' stage. The GBB Gulls were big bruisers and already had a strong bite on them!

We then took a trip down to Rue Point to check on the Terns and waders. We ringed a further 2 Oystercatcher chicks and another Little Tern chick.

Oystercatcher pulli playing hide and seek...

Little Tern pulli

A great couple of days ringing. Thanks to Adam and Sean, great company and good banter as always!

Oystercatcher pulli

After ringing another brood of Swallows at Eary Farm this morning I took a trip down to Derbyhaven to look for Oystercatcher chicks.

A total of 3 Oystercatcher pulli ringed from 3 different pairs in the Derbyhaven area bringing the total so far this year to 5.

Belgian Sedge Warbler

We finally got details of a Belgian ringed Sedge Warbler that had been caught in the reedbeds at Croit-e-Caley last Spring.

Ring number BLB.10830151 had originally been ringed on 16th August 2008 at Grembergen, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium age code 3 (first year bird).

It was controlled at Croit-e-Caley Reedbeds, Isle of Man on 31st May 2009 as a breeding Male.