Ringing on the Rock & Northern Irish Acrocephalus Warblers

I've finished putting together a report on the first two years of ringing at Blackers Rock, a little bit on the Reed Warbler in NI and also the migration of Reed Warbler and Sedge Warbler to/from Northern Ireland.

The report can be accessed in the link below or drop me an email and I can send by PDF

https://1drv.ms/b/s!ApJre-YC-2PrxhXxQ4yNlvVwde_m 


Below is just a snippit of the 43 page report.

Enjoy! 

New Recoveries including a first movement for NI!

We've had a three more of our birds recovered outside of Northern Ireland and received details of a colour ringed bird in the Bann Estuary.

The details of the star bird came through last night from the BTO and it was a very pleasant surprise. One of our juvenile Stonechats which we ringed on the 13th of July, fresh out of the nest at Portstewart Strand was controlled at the Calf of Man Bird Observatory on the Isle of Man on the 23rd of March this year. A minimum distance of  176km and 253 days in between. It is very likely that the distance was much further and that this bird actually spent the winter further south and was captured at the Calf on its way back north - hopefully to the Bann Estuary once more. This is at least our 9th exchange with the observatory having had two of our Goldfinches trapped there and exchanged 6+ Storm Petrels. 

On checking the other Northern Irish recoveries for Stonechat into/out of the country, it turns out that this is the first! For the Republic of Ireland there have only been two but they were impressive movements to Spain from the south coast one in 1960's and the other in early 1970's. 

Next up was another of our Sedge Warblers from Blackers Rock, Lough Neagh, ringed as a juvenile on the 22nd of July 2018. It was a fast mover being trapped 15 days later at Sant-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu, Loire-Atlantique, France, 897km away, on its way south to sub-Saharan Africa. The movement might have been even quicker as the bird hasn't necessarily left Lough Neagh straight after ringing and could have spent another week along the lough shore. 

The third recovery was a Siskin which has moved up to Cromdale in the Highlands of Scotland. The bird was ringed in Kens garden on the 12th of April 2018 before been recaptured 311k away on the 19th of March this year. This is the third Siskin control/recovery in Kens garden in 2018 following another Scottish bird and the Cape Clear bird. 

The colour ringed bird was a Black-tailed Godwit which has appeared with hundreds of others in the Bann Estuary in recent weeks. The bird seemed familiar at the time and it turns out I have seen it twice before. The bird was ringed as an adult male in northern Iceland and has been sighted eight times since including England, Republic of Ireland and back in Iceland. 

River Tripple Crown

With the persistent weekend winds keeping the nets down at the Bann Estuary I decided to try a little river ringing. In recent years we have kept much of the river ringing for training purposes plus the continuation of Ken's study of the Irish Dipper.

I headed over to the River Rhee on Saturday the 23rd of March which is our regular hotspot for Dipper, Grey Wagtail and Kingfisher where we have caught a number of the years.

Dipper

I had an instant capture of a retrap Dipper which I had originally ringed on the 26th of March 2016 before another bird bounced out of the net twice- I  keep the bottom shelf quite tight to ensure the bag of the net doesn't droop into the water with the weight of a bird but at the same not too high to allow the birds to fly under easily.

Kingfishers (female top - male bottom)

Next up was a pair of Kingfishers in the net, again one slipped out but the male came back down and was captured on the second pass.

Grey Wagtail

A always find Grey Wagtails the most difficult to capture and today was no different as they always notice the net - flying over, around, walking under it and evading capture. I got lucky with one towards the end of the session but it's partner wouldn't join it.

Wood Anemone

Slow Start to 2019

The first three months of 2019 have been a slow one on the ringing front with seemingly continually bad weather any time we have some availability. Ringing at exposed coastal sites presents lots of problems with wind, usually some 10+ mph stronger than in Coleraine.

We haven't been totally idle and did manage three visits to Castlerock Golf Club and a single session at my work place in Magilligan.

Blackcap

The visits at Castlerock took place on the 5th Jan, 19th Jan and 24th Feb producing 41 new birds and eight retraps.

Species	New	Retrap	Total
Blackbird	5	1	3
Blackcap	1		1
Blue Tit	5	2	7
Bullfinch	7	4	11
Chaffinch	4		4
Dunnock	2	1	3
Fieldfare	5		5
Greenfinch	4		4
Robin	1		1
Song Thrush	6	1	5
Wren	1		1
Totals	41	9	45

Fieldfare

The run of Fieldfares continued with another five, taking us to nine for the winter at the site. I still reckon we could up this substantially with a bit more tweaking and effort but certainly a big improvement. Another wintering Blackcap is always nice and it continued to a bumper winter for Song Thrushes.

Song Thrush

Magilligan Field Centre

I haven't touched on my work place previously but I work at the Magilligan Field Centre where I had been feeding the birds through the early winter. The facility is set amongst improved farmland on the flat lands of Magilligan and has a decent number of trees and hedges around the perimeter.

The main lure is the wintering flock of Tree Sparrows which also breed here in sealed nest boxes around the small nature garden.

Tree Sparrow

I have been doing the odd bit of ringing here and there through the autumn/winter up until the 4th of January catching 166 new birds and 48 retraps.

	New	Retrap
Blackbird	7	2
Blue Tit	14	12
Chaffinch	41	4
Coal Tit	2	4
Dunnock	1	1
Goldcrest	3
Goldfinch	37	4
Great Tit	8	8
Greenfinch	5	1
HouseSparrow	18	3
Pied Wagtail	1
Robin	7	3
Song Thrush	1
Starling	1
Tree Sparrow	17	3
Wren	3	3
	166	48

Greenfinch

I was particularly pleased with the number of Tree Sparrows and also the House Sparrows, a species I don't ring all that often. I had intended to continue feeding in to the mid-late winter but I let it slip. I did have the odd Lesser Redpoll and Siskin begin to visit but once the nyjer disappeared so did they. In the snowy conditions we had Fieldfare, Redwing, Skylark and Snipe all appear in the grounds but no attempts were made to catch them.

House Sparrow

Pied Wagtail

Spring looks to have arrived finally and so too has our drive to get out ringing (I hope). With the loss of our main site at Portstewart Strand we will need to do a bit of testing out to get a proper migration site up and running.

Bann Estuary 2018 Bird and Ringing Report

The Bird and Ringing Report for 2019 in the Bann Estuary is now available - if you'd rather view it as a PDF, click the link below - probably easier to read as a PDF with more clarity.

https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=EB63FB02E67B6B92&id=EB63FB02E67B6B92%218970&parId=EB63FB02E67B6B92%218953&o=OneUp