Spring in to Summer in the Bann Estuary

Early summer is normally a quiet period for us at our regular ringing sites with the majority of the birds still on eggs or feeding their chicks, resulting in small catches.
The main feature of June each year is usually the first visit to the Sand Martin colonies in mid-June and our visits to the Sandwich Tern colony in Donegal. July marks the return to the nocturnal ringing of Storm Petrels and the first trip to Lough Neagh for acro warblers.

After some promising weather at the start of June we got stuck in a rut of rain and showers with the Jet Stream stuck to the west and south of the UK and it stayed there for almost two weeks. This meant that dry days were few and far between, particularly at the weekend. Through spring and summer it was just myself over the six morning visits between Kilcranny and Portstewart Strand.

John has been putting in a greater ringing effort at the River Site at Ulster University Coleraine just up river but I don't have his ringing records to hand.

Whitethroat

The combined totals, not including the waders, Swallows and Sand Martin were:

                                          New     Retrap

Blackbird                             8            2                      

Blackcap                              7            1

Blue Tit                                7            1                 

Bullfinch                              4            7

Chaffinch                             3            3

Chiffchaff                            5            1

Dunnock                              5            5           
Goldcrest                             2              
Grasshopper Warbler          3            1                              
Linnet                                 30           2

Long-tailed Tit                    1
Meadow Pipit                      9            3

Reed Bunting                      1            1
Robin                                                 1
Sedge Warbler                   18           7
Song Thrush                        1
Starling                               10
Stonechat                            1
Tree Sparrow                       1
Wheatear                             1
Whitethroat                          1           1
Willow Warbler                    27          1
Wren                                   11          6

              

Total                                159          41             

Grasshopper Warbler

Long-tailed Tit is a common bird in most areas but not one we get around the outer Bann Estuary sites. For my year patch birding, I'm usually reliant on finding some in Kilcranny Wood and one was added to the ringing list for the estuary. A couple more Grasshopper Warblers were great as we usually only catch a couple each year. Starlings are very common locally, as everywhere, but we don't normally catch (or attempt to) many. In fact in the last four years we have only caught one Starling per year at Portstewart Strand, in the same net set, in June and all juveniles - we've now bucked this trend with catches of three and seven. We seem to catch one single Wheatear each spring and 2019 was no different.

Starling

I managed two weekend stays at Copeland Bird Observatory at the end of April and mid-May. The weather was pretty unkind for both, with Storm Hannah hitting on the first and prolonged northerly winds for the second, so migration was almost non-existent. We did get a few Greenland Wheatears, Swallows etc. but nothing out of the ordinary. On the second visit, with a team of 9 visiting ringers, we put more of a focus on breeding birds ringing female Eider ducks, Herring Gulls, Lesser Black-backed Gulls and also a Mallard. A Stock Dove was a nice catch and CBO is probably the only place in NI any have been ringed this century.

Stock Dove

Herring Gull

Lesser Black-backed Gull

Eider

Portstewart Strand Dunes Autumn 2019

Autumn at Portstewart has been ticking a long with reasonable catches but no stand out birds or large catches as yet. Effort has been down quite a bit as I've been running solo at the dunes up until the middle of October and I have otherwise been distracted getting married in mid-September then heading off for a few weeks to South Africa & Dubai.

Fieldfare

In total since August there have been 11 visits, 3 in August, 5 in September and 3 in October with 254 new birds caught. The most productive visit was on the 18th of September with 68 birds trapped, made up of a big catch of Linnets. I've been making more of an effort to catch Linnets this autumn in the hopes of getting some retraps and build a better of picture of where the birds come from. At the moment, the only retraps I generally get are during the breeding season when a couple of pairs seem to nest very close to a couple of the gorse nets. Otherwise, the flocks of birds passing through seem to be new.

Linnet

We added another new species for the Bann Estuary with the capture of a Grey Wagtail using a tape lure early morning, a further two were attracted in on the same morning but not caught. The Fieldfare caught on the last visit on the 21st of October was a first for the dunes at Portstewart Strand. That makes it 59 different species trapped in the estuary since autumn 2014, with 43 species trapped at Portstewart Strand.

Underside of a Grey Wagtail

                                         New     Retrap

Blackbird                            4            3
Blackcap                            4            

Blue Tit                               1            1                

Bullfinch                             8            2

Chaffinch                            4            2    
Dunnock                            16           8
Fieldfare                              1
Goldcrest                           11          3              
Goldfinch                           31
Great Tit                              2           4
Grey Wagtail                       1
Linnet                                 85
Meadow Pipit                     30
Redwing                              2
Reed Bunting                     1
Robin                                  11          6
Song Thrush                       5

Stonechat                          11          

Swallow                              1  

Whitethroat                         1      

Willow Warbler                   5                 

Wren                                   19        10

              

Total                                  254       40          

Willow Warbler

At the moment it's looking to be a very poor year for Blackcaps and Reed Buntings, effort on catching Meadow Pipits has been down and Blackbird, Song Thrush and Chaffinch numbers are lower but generally October and early November are the best period for those. Willow Warbler has done quite well since the drastic habitat loss but still less than half the number caught in 2015.

The remnant scrub is very patchy and undoubtedly we have lost a large population of breeding birds. My hope is that the migrants passing through will still remain consistent but with much fewer ideal net rides and with those remaining more susceptible to the wind, it makes it more challenging.

What remains of my favourite former net ride, which used to measure 90 metres, now only fits a 9 metre net - it was great for Blackcaps and chipped in with Garden Warbler & Lesser Whitethroat.

One thing that has remained consistent is the continual flow of litter down the river. My new pet hate are shotgun cartridges and wads which are never ending both here and at Lough Foyle and I've gathered 200+ this year. Every little bit I can do as I walk between nets does build up to be quite substantial.

Sand Martins 2019

On the 20th of June I was joined by Nathan for the first visit to the Grangemore Sand Martin colony. I had been keeping an eye on it earlier in the year and had noticed 100+ Sand Martins and lots of fresh holes. We arrived bright and early and got the nets up but the result was disastrous with just three new birds caught and two retraps from previous years one from 22/07/2017 & the other from 14/07/2018. With first catches normally ranging from 56-147 birds, it was looking like a poor year. A new Sedge Warbler, a retrap from July 2017 and a new Meadow Pipit were also caught.

Sand Martin (old picture)

A few more visual visits were made to the site and there were still far too few birds around to warrant any further ringing visits. It is presumed that mammalian predation may have led to the abandonment of the colony - Fox or Badger most likely.

Something that may go in some way to explain where they have all disappeared to is that two of our birds are now breeding in Scotland. The first of these is one of last years juveniles that has opted for a sand quarry in Argyll and Bute, Scotland, 7 kilometres from Campbelltown. The bird was recaptured in Scotland on the 21st of June, 342 days after originally being ringed. The distance between the sites is only 73km but this bird will have migrated to Arica and back in between.

The second bird was also one of our 2018 juveniles and it has moved even further north. It was captured on the 28th of June along the River Lochy to the north-east of Fort William, Highland, Scotland. This site is 218 kilometres to the north east of us, 349 days between ringing and recapture.

Sand Martins have also recolonised the southern side of the Portstewart Strand spit tip and a few have taken up home in Castlerock Golf Club, so, although our main bank is down, they are still doing well in the estuary - but certainly lower numbers.

Bann Estuary Waders 2019

As usual we've struggled to match up the ideal tides that fall over a couple of days every two weeks after sunset, with some ideal weather and availability of a suitable team (some of the older guys play bowls 😅) but we did succeed twice.
The first of these visits was on the 7th of August with myself, John, Abbie, Rich K and John S. The catch was steady over the few hours of darkness in the three nets and produced a new species for us - Greenshank.
In the end we managed to catch 3 Greenshank, 18 Dunlin and 14 Redshank plus a BTO control.

Greenshank

In 2018 there were only 18 Greenshank caught across the UK and Ireland and between 1952-2018 there were just 53 trapped across Ireland, 12 in Northern Ireland since 1977, so a very good catch indeed. Interestingly there were 7/8 present and we did try a range of their own calls but they only came into the mixed tape to roost.

Knot

The next session was two weeks later on the 21st of August, again with help from Abbie & Rich supported by Ken. We reduced the number of nets down to a single 12mx12m V net set and had to work with higher water levels in the shallow pools.
The catch wasn't quite as large as two weeks previous but we did get slightly more diversity with four species. We added a new species for the Bann Estuary with a Knot which are normally scarce here but there were up to 46 present over a few weeks this August.

Black-tailed Godwit

The final catch was 15 Redshank, 8 Dunlin, 2 Black-tailed Godwits and the single Knot. Before the waders I set a single net along a thin strip of phragmites reeds and managed to catch 10 Swallows with a number of others attracted in as we took the net down.

Barn Swallow

The controlled Redshank was originally ringed in Kent in the south-east of England on the 30th of August in 2018. Going by the wing length of the bird we presumed it to be Icelandic and it may well have been on route to the south-east of England or further south for the winter once again.

We're now approaching the end of October so it is unlikely we will do much more wader ringing in the estuary but we may get out along the Causeway Coast.

Donegal Sandwich Terns June 2019

Continuing our long term monitoring of breeding Sandwich Terns in Donegal, which began back in 1986 (before I was born), we returned to Inch Island Wildfowl Reserve in Donegal for two visits this summer.

The first visit took place on the 4th of June with a team of Ken Perry, James McDowell, Gary Platt and myself with Lee and Martin from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS). 

Keep your eyes peeled for these Blue darvic rings with 3 numbers in white

Our plan was to finally kick off our Sandwich Tern colour ringing programme after last years delay but being so early in the season we weren't too optimistic. We managed to metal ring 193 Sandwich Terns and also added colour rings to the eight largest chicks we could find. We limit ourselves to a maximum of one hour on the breeding islet to minimise disturbance so time is a very limiting factor. There were still plenty of very small chicks that we did not ring and also lots of eggs.

Gary Platt accompanied us on the trip and his main focus was on the breeding Black-headed Gulls. Gary runs colour ringing schemes on both Black-headed Gulls and Common Gulls in the north of Ireland and is one the most dedicated ring readers in Ireland. Gary managed to colour ring 28 new Black-headed Gull chicks. He also sighted two colour ringed Black-headed Gulls from 2017 but without his gear he was unable to read the rings - great to see them back though. 

Gary is also using blue darvic rings with white ringing on this current cohort but a four digit code starting with the number 2 with three letters after.

Katherine and I colour ringing a Sandwich Tern

The second visit took place on the 19th if June, this time Ken, Gary and I were joined by John Clarke, Katherine Booth Jones and Abbie Maiden as well as Lee, Martin & Ger from the NPWS. 

The heavens opened up on our way out across the lagoon in the small boat but thankfully it just stopped as we arrived on the islet. The rain started again just as we were leaving, so we got very lucky indeed.

Ken, John and the ladies focused on metal ringing Sandwich Terns and added another 68, taking us to a year total of 257 for the year.

This is a decent total compared to visits in the past 10 years

2018 -100

2017 -  139

2016 - 357

2015 - 189

2014 - 270

2013 - 251

2012 - 410

2011 - 94

2010 - 387

My focus was on colour ringing the largest Sandwich Tern chicks from the previous visit and I was able to add a further 22 chicks, giving us a total of 30 colour ringed Sandwich Terns - roll on the recoveries. We are particularly keen for recoveries in Ireland, as, if you check out the Tern & Gull tab above, we have more from 5/6 countries in Arica than we do in Ireland. 

The Common Terns breed in much smaller numbers and are always a few weeks later so just 14 were ringed. A further 4 large Black-headed Gull chicks were metal ringed for training.

Gary was again focused on colour ringing Black-headed Gulls and discovered two of the marked birds from the 4th had perished so the colour rings were reused. 26 more chicks were colour ringed giving a total of 52. You can check out Gary's blog on the link below

http://birdingatantrimmarina.blogspot.com/

One of the returning birds from 2017 (Gary Platt)

We have identified some habitat works to be carried out on the islet post breeding season to boost the breeding population. Originally the islet was open shingle and sand but overtime the vegetation has increased. The Terns prefer to nest on the bare ground and are being forced off the high of the island towards the lower edges and a number of nests have been lost in the last few years to higher waters. This is often the reason the Common Terns do not do too well here.

A big thank you as always to the NPWS for making supplying the boat, rings and maintaining the breeding islet. 

Reed Warbler Recovery

News fresh in from the BTO last night that one of our Blackers Rock, Lough Neagh Reed Warblers has been trapped on return migration north.

The bird was originally ringed as a juvenile on the 13th of August 2017 and hadn't been seen since before it turned up in a mist net on Lundy Island in SW England 10 days ago. The time elapsed between ringing and recapture is 631 days. The distance between the two sites is 404km but in reality this bird will have migrated to sub-Saharan Africa, back to NI, back to sub-Saharan Africa before returning to the UK. All being well, the bird will be back in a reedbed around the Lough ready to breed. 

This is just our second Reed Warbler control/recovery and even better, just the seventh for Northern Ireland, the third NI ringed bird to be found outside the country. With more and more birds being ringed every year we are expecting these recoveries to become more regular and paint a better picture of Reed Warbler migration into NI. 

By chance, our friend and ringer Dean Jones from Coleraine is based on Lundy Island as a warden and may well have handled this very bird! 

More Warblers

Last July I tested out a new site that I had been eyeing up for quite a while. The reedbed at Kilcranny is the largest in the estuary and it backs onto a fantastic Ash wood with marginal wet grassland habitats and Willow scrub. Access had previously been the main hold up with a walk of a few kilometres down farm lanes, barbed wire fences to hurdle, an overgrown understory of brambles to traverse and then crossing of the fenced railway line plus the risk of high tides. With a bit of investigatory work, I found a much simpler access route on the nearside of the railway with some fantastic habitat. 

On the tester on the 29th of July utilising some temporary net rides for three nets in existing gaps I caught 12 Sedge Warblers and a single Willow Warbler. The site contains six species of breeding warbler and on my visits in recent weeks I have heard five back on site including 3 reeling Grasshopper Warbler - still waiting for the Whitethroats in the estuary but they aren't particularly common here. 

Grasshopper Warbler

I visited the site on Bank holiday Monday (6th May) & put up a 3 nets once again although I avoided the main reedbed as the water was a little high and rain was forecast to appear mid-morning. The site has loads of breeding birds and warblers although distributed over a wide area, many away from the nets. I managed a nice diverse catch including the five warbler species present with a Grasshopper Warbler the best of the bunch.

 

                                          New     Retrap

Blackcap                             3

Bullfinch                             2

Chiffchaff                           1

Grasshopper Warbler         1

Sedge Warbler                   5

Willow Warbler                 3

Total                                  15                         

Sedge Warbler

 

I'm looking forward to trying the site properly in late summer/early autumn once the breeding birds begin to disperse and move around the site. 

 

John has made a few visits to his ringing site along the river at the Ulster University Coleraine Campus. The range of sites we use in the wider Bann Estuary are actually quite well connected now that we have opened up Kilcranny to plug the formerly large gap up to the university. We have had birds move between Portstewart and the Uni River site and Portstewart to Castlerock but it will be interesting to record any other further movements between all the sites.

 

The river site has chipped in with a number of warblers and had a particularly good movement of Blackcaps passing through the scrubby woodland with 10 trapped on the 23rd of April.

                                          New     Retrap

Blackbird                             4             2
Blackcap                             15            2

Blue Tit                                1             1                  

Chiffchaff                            1

Coal Tit                                1
Dunnock                              3             1
Goldcrest                                            1
Great Tit                              2             2
Long-tailed Tit                    2
Robin                                   2             1
Sedge Warbler                     1
Song Thrush                        2

Willow Warbler                   8             2   

Wren                                    3             3

Total                                   45           15             

 

A male Whinchat on territory in Antrim Hills on Sunday. A bird I'd love to see in the Bann Estuary