Shifting Shores

The time has come again when we shift shores from the east (north) shore of the Bann Estuary to the west shore at Castlerock Golf Club. As usual the focus here are the nets set amongst the millions of Sea Buckthorn berries which support a nice mix of finches and thrushes.
This year we have finally set up a feeding station with mixed seed and nyjer on offer.
The first two visits were only sample catches whilst we prepared the net rides and set up the feeding station, with the later two visits being more focused on ringing. We have still got two of the net rides to clear but the catches have been steady that we haven't found the time as yet.

Snow Bunting

The star bird so far was a Snow Bunting which was caught at first light not far from the feeders. This is the first to be ringed in Northern Ireland since 1998 with possibly as few as 13 ringed in all of Ireland since 1952. 

Snipe

There is a fantastic small marsh close by which I've recorded as holding up to 69 Common Snipe and 5 Jack Snipe. On one of the visits we set some nets along the edge of the pool in the dark hoping to catch some of the Snipe on return to the pool after feeding in the nearby fields at night. We only caught a single Snipe and flushed another 7/8. There were at least 3 Jack Snipe present also and with a little net rejig, we have more luck next time. 

Fieldfare

The other catches have been healthy with lots of Bullfinches and good numbers of Song Thrushes present. What has been noticeable in their absence are the Fieldfares with just one seen and caught when the wintering population can number up to 600 and is normally around 100 birds daily. Chaffinches too are absent with one caught and not many more present, usually there are 30-40 and regularly caught.

The feeders have attracted in some Goldfinches and Linnets with a few caught and they will hopefully continue to attract more birds into the spring - perhaps not too many tit species! 

Castlerock Golf Club - November - 1st December 2019

                      New      Retrap

Blackbird          6           2

Blue Tit             3           1

Bullfinch          15          6              

Chaffinch          1

Dunnock           4           1

Fieldfare            1

Goldcrest           2

Goldfinch         12          1

Greenfinch        6

Linnet               10

Robin                 4           1

Snipe                  1

Snow Bunting    1

Song Thrush      9

Wren                   3

Total                  78        12                

Late December 2018

Following on from the work done on the visit on the 16th (just below in this post) we were able to set up the two new 18 metre net rides along with the usual three. The new nets worked with the one in the top patch of scrub catching a Fieldfare, Starling, 2 Blackbirds and best of all a Mistle Thrush. Mistle Thrushes are very difficult to catch and we've only caught 2 fledged birds in the past 5/6 years.

John and I were joined by Ken and his trainee James, who was able to add three new species which is always a good day. One of the three Fieldfares caught was released unringed but it happens!
We are really noticing the drop off in Chaffinch numbers, or should I say, the number that we are catching - perhaps the ones present are all ringed!

Mistle Thrush

Castlerock Golf Club - Saturday 24th December 2018
                      New      Retrap
Blackbird        3            
Bullfinch         1             1             
Fieldfare          2
Goldfinch         1
Greenfinch      6
Mistle Thrush  1
Robin                             3
Song Thrush   1
Starling           1
Wren               1

Total              17              4                

Starling

16th December 2018

This morning the focus was more so on preparing the new net rides and together we have cut two new 18 metre net rides and a 6m dog leg off once of these. We are eyeing up another 12m ride also but we will see how these new ones work and see if we can increase the catch of the Fieldfare!

We had the three usual nets open and caught a few birds and again another single Fieldfare, caught in the same net. I did have another in the nets but it flipped out on approach. We will probably use 19x19mm 4 shelf nets in these new rides which are better for catching larger birds as the finer mesh 15x15mm 5 shelf nets have cost us at least 3 Fieldfares so far this season (but do catch the smaller passerines better).

Fieldfare

Castlerock Golf Club - Saturday 16th December 2018
                      New      Retrap
Blue Tit           3             1
Bullfinch         3             3             
Fieldfare          1
Greenfinch                    1
Linnet             1
Robin              1
Song Thrush   1
Wren               1

Total              11              5                

A Merlin made an appearance mid morning and made a kill over the river which appeared to be a Fieldfare. The bird was certainly very heavy as the bird made a sharpish landing on the rocks before slipping into the Marram Grass.

The local Otter family also gave us a bit of a show with three feeding right along the rock armour and it looks as though they had been running about the shoreline before I arrived.

One of three Otters present

Otter tracks

Castlerock Golf Club 24/11/2018 & Scottish Chaffinch

On Saturday morning John and I shifted out attentions to the west shore of the Bann Estuary and made our first visit to Castlerock Golf Club of the winter. As you regular readers will know, this is somewhat similar habitat to that of Portstewart Strand but much smaller in area and all the Sea Buckthorn plants are female meaning they produce millions of berries and attract some large numbers of thrushes and finches, but generally in late winter.

As we hadn't been to the site since the 7th of January at the start of the year the net rides needed to be cleared of the brambles, nettles and quite a bit of cutting back of fallen bushes and branches. We tackled the easy ride first and had the first 18 metres net up and catching within 20 minutes and had the second 12m ride up and running in another 20 minutes. The nets started to catch a few birds so our progress in the other rides was slowed and we didn't quite get finished but did get another 24m cleared with another 18m to go. The session was cut short because of a very unfortunate discovery  on the receding tide.

The location of our nets generally follow the bottom of the hollow of the main stand of Sea Buckthorn but this tends not to be the best place to intercept the thrushes which stick to the higher bushes on the slopes - we had up to 600 Fieldfare feeding amongst the scrub last winter and we only caught one! At the same time we probably had a mixed flock of up to 175 Redwing, Blackbirds & Song Thrush and again only caught three, six and seven respectively. We are eyeing up new potential net rides which might rectify this a bit but working with the steep slopes and avoiding flying golf balls isn't easy!

A net full of Chaffinches & a couple of Blue Tits

From the two nets in a couple of hours we caught 18 new birds and controlled a female Chaffinch with a BTO ring. There were only 6 Fieldfare present and again they avoided the nets.

Castlerock Golf Club 24th November 2018

                          New          Control
Blue Tit               2
Bullfinch             4
Chaffinch            8                   1
Dunnock             1
Robin                  1
Song Thrush       2

Total                 18                   1         


The new BTO system means that you receive details of controls within a few days, subject to them being uploaded by the other ringer.
This controlled Chaffinch was ringed at Drummond, Inverness on the 17th of September 2018 and controlled by us 68 days later at a minimum distance of 298km. This is our second control Chaffinch for the Bann Estuary with the last bird also coming from the Highlands of Scotland near Shielfoot (marked below) in a very similar movement. She was quite a large winged lady so possibly a Scandinavian moving through Scotland.

Chaffinch from Inverness to Castlerock

Representing Copeland Bird Observatory

I'm playing catch up as per usual so just some quick fire updates. There have been a couple more Copeland Bird Observatory winter training events at the usual spot. Numbers were pretty normal with the usual feeder species mix plus a bit of colour with some Bullfinches.

We were also present at a province wide nature day in Ballynure to help promote the Observatory. It was a great event with lots of people in attendance and hopefully what will turn out to be new visitors and supporters of the Observatory.

 

 

Portstewart Strand 06th & 8th October 2017

On Friday (06th) John, Ken and I were joined by a couple from France who had last ringed with us back in 2015 when they were studying at the University of Ulster. They have both since gone on to complete their undergrad degrees and now a masters in Ecology & Water Chemistry and are enjoying a bit of time touring around Ireland. The conditions were perfect with hardly a breath of wind and good cloud cover.

We set most of the nets pre dawn and had one 'WinterWoozle' tape playing in the hopes of some winter thrushes. On checking the first net, we had caught couple of thrushes and normally I extract the biggest birds out of the net first but an interesting Sylvia warbler caught my eye in the top corner. As I lowered the net I could see that the bird was certainly not a Blackcap and was in fact the first ever Garden Warbler I have seen in Northern Ireland, so unsurprisingly a new species for the site. The only other one that we have caught in NI was a bird at the River Site at the Uni by Rick some four/five years previous.

Garden Warbler

Bird numbers were more numerous this morning but a little less diverse including 300+ Meadow Pipit, 100+ Skylarks, c20 Reed Bunting, another half dozen new Stonechats, 10+ Song Thrush and 20+ Chaffinch. Other birds around included the ever present hunting Peregrine, the first Little Grebe of the autumn, a second Great Crested Grebe and 24 Whooper Swans.

Reed Bunting

The nets amongst the gorse did well, chipping in with two more new Stonechats, five Reed Buntings and five Meadow Pipits. We did attempt to catch some Skylarks as the small flocks passed mid-morning but we need a proper net set on the open ground and a bit of luck.


Portstewart Strand 06/10/2017                            
                              New         Retrap
Blackbird               3
Blue Tit                  1                  2
Bullfinch                1                  2
Chaffinch               7          
Dunnock                1                  1
Garden Warbler    1
Goldcrest               2                  1             
Meadow Pipit         5
Reed Bunting         5
Robin                      1            
Song Thrush          3                 1 
Stonechat               2
Wren                       3                  1  

Totals                    34                 8     



The forecast for this morning (8th) was looking like a no go and I hummed and haad with the idea when my alarm went off but I decided to go for it after a short snooze on the alarm. As I set off from home there was light drizzle and I was regretting getting out of bed but by the time I got to the coast there was no rain in sight and it remained that way all morning. The sky was very dark and heavy and suppressed the bird activity until mid morning when things got moving. With the risk of rain I went for just the two nets in the deepest cover in the scrub and then after an hour put up one of the nets amongst the gorse and a two shelf over the saltmarsh.

The ringing was really slow to start with just a retrap Blackbird and two new Robins until around 9am. Things visibly picked up as it brightened with many more birds flitting about and a few more in the nets. A couple of the other net rides might have caught well had I erected them! There was apparently nothing uncommon around and no sign of any warblers but I was pleased enough with the catch after the poor start.

Chaffinch

Portstewart Strand 08/10/2017                            
                              New         Retrap
Blackbird                                  1
Bullfinch                3                  1
Chaffinch               6                  1                          
Linnet                     7
Meadow Pipit         6
Robin                      2                 
Stonechat               2

Totals                    26                 3    


That afternoon, John went for a stroll through the dunes and picked up the first Redwings of the autumn and heard a Phylloscopus warbler calling in the scrub but it remained unidentified. We rarely ring past 11 and don't think we have ever gone beyond midday but we could be missing plenty in the afternoons!

Slow start to the year

Apologies for the lack of updates but things have been rather quiet up north.  Snow, rain and a bit of wind have limited our activities but we haven't been totally idle.


Castlerock has still been the focus of our attentions although we have only visited twice in the past three weeks.  The first visit was back on the 28th of December and the second on the 4th of January.  The flocks of birds are still present feeding on the seemingly endless Sea Buckthorn berries with the exception of the Chaffinches which appear to have moved on.

Fieldfare

The quantity of birds trapped still isn't huge but there have been some nice captures with another wintering Blackcap, a Fieldfare and 9 new Bullfinches! 

Bullfinch

Castlerock Golf Club 28/12/2016+04/01/2017  
                                New      Retrap
Blackbird                  1              1          
Blackcap                  1
Bullfinch                   9              2
Dunnock                                   1
Fieldfare                   1
Greenfinch              11
Song Thrush            1          
Wren                         1              1 
Total                         25            5            

Blackcap

On Sunday the 8th John, Dean and I visited a few of the local streams to catch some of the local river species.  I always find river ringing quite entertaining and it didn't take long before out first couple of Dippers appeared.  They were quite crafty and both managed to slip under the net but were caught on their return pass downstream with a third bird, which was a retrap, five minutes later.  We moved on to our next spot only around 1 mile upstream and caught another new dipper with it's partner bouncing from the nets.  We hadn't seen any of the other river species so we moved to a new stream where it connects to the River Bann.  This spot has been good for Kingfishers in the past and again we did see a Kingfisher continually return to sit at the mouth of the stream but it did venture the extra ten metres to the net.  We added another two Dippers giving us a total of five new birds and the retrap, first caught in December 2015. 

Dippers

One of the 20+ Dipper boxes dotted around the streams surrounding Coleraine

Steve had his last ringing session of 2016 down home at his Drumlegh site also on the 28th of December.  Blue Tits dominated the catch with 8 new birds and the best of the bunch was a smart male Goldcrest. 

 Goldcrest

Castlerock Golf Club 28/12/2016  
                                New      Retrap
Blue Tit                     8              1                          
Chaffinch                  5              
Coal Tit                     1      
Goldcrest                  1      
Goldfinch                  1
Great Tit                    4   

Total                         20            1            


With the turn of the year the Patchwork Challenge starts up once again and so begins the challenge to better the previous year.  I did this in 2016 with a total of 123 species, up 10 species on the previous year.  I failed to pick up any rarities but Black Tern, Garganey and Spotted Redshank were patch ticks and are nice records for Northern Ireland.  This year I'm up to 60 species so far and hoping for a good spring.  I will also be taking on Copeland Bird Observatory as a second patch and hope to better my total of 77 species in 2016. 



We still need to finish off the final group totals for the year and I should hopefully have those by the weekend.  We also have news of an Oystercatcher than has wound up in Dublin Bay and I will post the details next time out.  

Quick Start to Winter

The Sea Buckthorn bushes at Castlerock Golf Course are still drooping from the weight of the millions of bright orange berries and attracting good numbers of birds.  The first frosts seem to have trigged the fermentation of the berries and they are beginning to ooze with an aroma of what I'd imagine an alcoholic Balsamic Vinegar would smell like. 
There are good numbers of Blackbird, Song Thrush, Chaffinch, Greenfinch and Bullfinch gorging on the berries but the hoped for winter thrushes are lacking with only a couple of Fieldfare floating by and a single Redwing overhead.
On the first visit last Saturday David, Dean and I spent half an hour clearing the brambles etc. from the net rides but we were up and running fairly quickly.  We trapped a total of 35 new birds including the first Greenfinches I've caught this year (hard to come by these days) plus our first fledged House Sparrow for the year and the first for the estuary.

Greenfinches

Dean and I were down again this morning with another decent catch of 27 new birds and 6 retraps from the previous week.  The best of the birds was a female Blackcap which are always special birds in winter.  The nice morning was boosted with the sightings of Harbour Porpoises, Grey Seal and 54 species of birds including 1500+ Lapwing, Peregrine, Red-throated Diver, Gannet, Goldeneye and a patch tick in the form of a female Pheasant - species 122 for the patch this year!           

Blackcap

PSS Ringing Totals 26/11/2016 + 03/12/2016
                                New      Retrap
Blackbird                   4                          
Blackcap                   1
Blue Tit                    13              3
Bullfinch                    4
Chaffinch                 15             
Dunnock                   1            
Goldcrest                  1
Goldfinch                  1
Greenfinch                8
House Sparrow         1
Reed Bunting            1  
Robin                        7              3
Song Thrush             5          

Total                        62             6            

Sea Buckthorn

We didn't visit the site until the end of December last year (when we also set it up) and we anticipate the berries to last at least March, so that should keep is busy until the return of spring.

Dean and David with the ringing buggy (handy for the walk to get to the site)

In my traipsing's across the Bann Estuary I have found a few great pools which hold good numbers of Snipe and the odd Jack Snipe.  I visited one of these pools 3/4 weeks and flushed 69 Snipe in a relatively small area.  Before the first visit to Castlerock we thought we would put up a couple of nets and see if we could catch any before dawn. It didn't go quite as planned and the c20 Snipe we flushed all swung left and flushed out over the estuary rather than going straight towards the nets.  We devised a new plan and gave it a quick attempt a few evenings later, this time with a line of 58 metres of net parallel with the shore and 18m at 90 degrees on the end.  Unfortunately while setting the nets before darkness we managed to flush 16 Snipe even though we were trying to be as quiet as possible.  There were only 2 birds left in the pool as we splashed through and again they missed.
We will probably give it one last attempt but set the nets in complete darkness early morning to see if that does the trick! 


You may remember that we had sighted a couple of Long-eared Owls roosting in the scrub at Portstewart Strand during the ringing attempts in October so we thought it would be worth a go at catching them.  We have had a bit of luck in the past at mist netting the birds in darkness at the University but the success rate, is of course, very low.
John and Dean gave it a first attempt at PSS last week and managed to attract three LEO's in the vicinity of the nets and one bird was very close to being trapped but unfortunately it veered to the side of the net.
We gave it another attempt last night with the net placement tweaked a little but to no avail.  We may have glimpsed a bird ghost behind us but that was about the height of it.
We did strike with two Redshanks, caught in a net placed along the mudflats in the low tide. 

A few weeks back I joined David and Phil from Copeland Bird Observatory to help run the first of this winters ringing training programme in Antrim.  We had a full quota of 5 trainees and had a pretty good morning, although we were restricted to around 3 hours.  The site has a fantastic supply of berries, a small orchard, a wild bird seed cover field and a couple of feeders, so plenty to work with.  There were a large number of Linnets, House Sparrow and Chaffinch feeding in the 'wild bird table' and we managed to catch a small fraction, including 20 Linnet and 2 House Sparrow.  The small orchard was rammed with Blackbirds on arrival but only 6 were caught.  We can only access the site after 08.30, so we miss the opportunity to get the nets up before first light but a catch of 72 new birds was still great!

CBO Winter Training - Antrim 19/11/2016
                                New      Retrap
Blackbird                   6              1            
Blue Tit                      5              1
Bullfinch                    1   
Chaffinch                  11             2
Coal Tit                      2
Dunnock                     1          
Goldcrest                    2
Great Tit                    13            1           
House Sparrow           2
Lesser Redpoll           1
Linnet                        20
Long-tailed Tit            5
Robin                         2              1
Song Thrush              1           

Total                          72             6            

House Sparrow

There will be a further 4 training events from now to March, with one a month, then it's back to the Observatory for the 2017 season. 


Our ringing attempts for the rest of the year will probably be more of the same, although we may return to the university to try and catch some LEO at the traditional site.  When down and around Portstewart Strand in the dark we heard pretty big numbers of waders roosting on the far side so we may return to Grangemore for another attempt or two. 

The Blog has hit a new milestone in the last few days topping the 25k mark, sitting on over 25700 this evening.  The reading rate has certainly increased as time has gone on and the next 25k should hopefully come much faster!