Back to Halifax and full of cold. It never fails to interest me that when you look at your feeders in the garden and you see 3 Goldfinch on the nyger, you think oh nice 3 Goldfinch the next time you look you see 2 and you think oh 2 Goldfinch. Today ringed 20 Goldfinch coming into feeder no re traps and no birds seen with rings on either. So just goes to show you never know how many different comings and goings there are to one little feeding station.
Headed out to the north coast this morning for a dawn(ish) raid on Burnham Overy Dunes. Got there at about 7.30 and bird the dunes, into the west end of Holkham Pines until 14.30. I was pretty knackered by the end of it, having kicked and booted every likely looking bush from Gun Hill to Holkham. The highlights of the day was a fly-over Lapland Bunting and a nice Snow Bunting (perhaps my earliest Norfolk record ever?) on the boardwalk which decided to fly off just as I got my camera on it. There were quite a few migrants in the dunes, although nothing to get exited about: 8 Redstarts, 5 Lesser Whitethroats, 6 Northern Wheatears and 2 Pied Flycatchers (in the pines), as well as about 1000 Pink-footed Geese over Holkham freshmarsh. Still plenty of hirundines about, with roughly 200 Barn Swallows over the staithe on the high tide.
What determines a birds activities, where it goes, what it does, Do Birds Think?I sometimes wonder as I look at my garden birds, do they have a conscious mind, are they capable of thought processes like we humans, or are they merely living automatons following a set of inbuilt complex instructions.When they awake each morning do they think "Ooh what a lovely morning, nice to see the sun again,
A few days ago this young WoodPigeon visited our garden, making good use of the feeder tray that still held some grains of seed. I managed to capture a few Young Wood Pigeon Pictures before he flew away.This is the second youngster of this species that we have seen in the garden recently. How many actually survive to this age I do not know though I am sure many perish before attaining this
This morning spent at Rishworth with another 38 Twite caught.
Since Sunday i have caught 55 Twite here with only one retrap today from Sunday.
36 new birds ringed and 16 of Nicks Pulli .
and 3 birds i ring at whiteholme in August.
I Text Nick as i re caught his birds and the phone rang straight away, T627937 was of a brood he thought had been predated over at Wessenden so some good news .
as i packed up i caught 5 more birds and the last one was T627938 so at least two of the brood made it.
Also i caught a bird Nick Carter had seen at Flyflats 3 days ago. These magic little birds travel around our moors so frequently. 70 odd Twite seen still feeding in the quarry at Rochdale yesterday and a flock of 40 at Cant Clough. Also the weight of the birds is improving majority of the birds ringed in August were around 14.5 grams Septembers birds now up to 15.8 and some over 16 so feeding up for the cold of winter and the migration down south.
On Sunday Andy and i re caught a colour ringed Meadow Pipit from 2007 at Kex Gill re caught at the same site and only a day away from the same date.
What the Vismigers had to say
"Speaking to Andy J last night. He says that yesterday they re-caught a mipit at Kex Gill N Yorks which they had originally colour ringed exactly two years ago (all but a day!) at the same site.... suggests at least that mipits might use the same migration routes at the same time of year!..... interesting! !"
"For a Meadow Pipit, I think that's an amazing result! All the more so since adult Mipits are so much harder to catch than 1y birds. Nice one Andy. "
More Pipits this week bringing my total for Meadow Pipits to 382
Out with Andy yesterday Morning at Kex Gill with another 86 Mipits ringed his total so far is 263
also 17 Twite caught at Rishworth Quarry yesterday thanks to Tim for all the information and feeding the site. 10 Unringed birds 4 of Nick Wilkensons pulli from this year. And 3 birds i ringed at Whiteholme reservoir in August.
Photo by Tim { he has sent it to crime watch}
Also this week a little bit of garden ringing, My back Garden in Stainland is small about 30ft by 40ft i have 1 large weeping Birch in it which takes up most of the room. The views i have are great i look onto an old grave yard and then right across the valleys to The Windmills at Flyflatts.
Back Garden with one 3 metre net up
This week a few Goldfinch ringed coming into the feeding station with Starlings and Tits and a nice movement of Chiff Chaffs today with 3 ringed
Here we are, half way through September ( the time seems to fly much faster than any bird, where has this year gone) and My Garden Birds are starting The Return as I knew they would.From late July and throughout August we have very little bird activity in the garden apart from the regular Woodpigeons and Doves. The Blackbirds and Robins are absent for a much longer period than this, seeming to
Columba Palumbas to give the true Latin name, identifies the bird referred to variously as the Wood Pigeon, Woodpigeon and occasionally as the Ring Dove. I had always written this birds name as Woodpigeon, but my spell checker tells me I am wrong to do so. It says I should write it as two words, namely Wood and Pigeon. I looked it up on Wikipedia, the online dictionary, and it too infers that I
What have a good joke and seawatching got in common? Timing! And my awful timing whilst on a family holiday in Cornwall last week means that the joke is well and truly on me. My first bit of bad timing is excusable, I suppose. We couldn't move into our self-catering cottage at Pendeen until 4pm on 28 Aug, so by the time I arrived at Pendeen Watch, I'd already missed a Little Shearwater, Wilson's Petrel, Yelkouan Shearwater, Cory's Shearwater, 6 Great Shearwaters and 5 Sabine's Gulls. Anyway, I did manage to see 2 Great Shearwaters, 5+ Grey Phalaropes, Red-necked Phalarope (a real mega in Cornwall), 2 adult Sabine's Gulls plus lots of Balearic and Sooty Shearwaters. I also managed to miss a Wilson's Petrel that when passed whilst I was there through a combination of having a rather narrow field of view in my 20-60 zoom eyepiece and pretty bad directions from the finder of the bird. My next bit of bad timing came two days later at Porthgwarra. I'd been seawatching from dawn, but had to leave at about 10.00 to get back for breakfast. Anyway, at 11.27, one of THREE Fea's Petrels that I was unknowingly about to miss over the next 4 days, passed PG that morning. I can accept missing these birds as they were all fairly well in the middle of the day and being on a family holiday meant that I really was never going to be there long enough to witness any of these sightings. The last bit of bad timing is really inexcusable though. The wind had been strong SW for 3 days and was due to turn NW on 3 Sep, classic conditions for a great Pendeen seawatch. Due to the inclement weather, Angela and Matthew said they didn't mind me spending the day at Pendeen, so I headed out at dawn to join the 30 or so other birders that had gathered, anticipating a good days seawatching. Although the Manx Shearwaters were passing at a rate of about 4000 per hour, the morning started badly for me, failing to get onto 2 different Wilson's Petrels, but after seawatching for 12 hours I'd notched up a decent list, having seen 1 Great Shearwater, 2 Cory's, Sabine's Gulls, 3 Grey Phalaropes, a few Storm Petrels, plus lots of Balearic and Sooty Shearwaters and Great and Arctic Skuas. Things had really tailed off by 6.30 pm, so at 6.50 I headed off back home to buy fish and chips for the family as a 'thank you' for not complaining about me spending nearly the whole day birding. But, 30 minutes later, I found myself gazing in wretched anguish at the message on my pager: "Cornwall MADEIRAN PETREL flew west past Pendeen at 7.08pm". The bird had taken a few minutes to go past and Mark Golley had tried to call me to let me know, but the phone reception was pretty week in the cottage and it had gone straight to voicemail. Oh well! That's birding for you. If you don't stay until the end, or don't check that last bush, or wait for that small wader to turn around, you don't know what you're going to miss.
Anyway, I did see some good birds during the holiday other than the seabirds listed above. The juvenile Citrine Wagtail at Marazion Marsh RSPB was nice and provided some good video (see below) as was the Baird's Sand which showed well on the beach at Marazion.
Back at Rodley this morning with Andy we started at 6:30 put 6 60ft nets up in a mild breeze
1 hour later 3 of them took down due to wind getting up and no birds. After the compulsory bacon sarnies we decided to call it a morning. We had a good recce of the site and have some ideas for Ducks and Snipe this winter.
On the way back home decided to call in at Cooper Bridge. It was a bit more sheltered there and i caught 3 more Chiffchaffs plus Tits and Greenfinches.
A Greenfinch TJ98372 Ringed on 30-Dec-08 as a 4F at Elland Gravel Pits was a Road Casualty in Brighouse on the 7 May 2009 a huge distance of 2km and 128 days after ringing
Also
Oystercatcher FP02951 ringed as a chick 1 (1/1) on 13-May-04 at Kex Gill
Found
5-Aug-08 Cherriux ile-et-villane, France 599 km 1545 days Dead, Hunted
Can not believe these people are still shooting Oystercatchers and everything else in 2008 and beyond
I may have mentioned previously, a pair of Wood Pigeons that I look upon as being Extraordinary Pigeons. Extraordinary in the sense that they seem almost human at times and seem to have more personality than one would associate with the normal Wild Wood Pigeon.This pair of birds that I often refer to as a couple, have been regular visitors to our garden for over three years and have stayed
