Getting more from your birding

Here at the BTO we engage with countless local birders as well as ringers and nest recorders. A lot of important work is undertaken by birders across the length and breadth of Britain & Ireland. One such birder is Lee Collins who writes:

My local patch at Dawlish Warren NNR in South Devon has, over the last three years, achieved some amazing success in generating large numbers of field reads of gulls, terns and waders; my efforts over 2014 were summarized on the Demog blog in May 2015. I am not a ringer, in fact no ringing is currently done on the site (although some ringing was done previously), yet with a positive mind-set, high on-site attendance accompanied with bundles of enthusiasm, anyone can achieve amazing results with ring reading.

Dawlish Warren NNR is a coastal reserve with a  long and rich history in birding terms and I'm proud to have called this my local patch since 1984. On-site breeding of gulls, terns and waders is non-existent and thus ring reads are generally confined to the winter months, although the months of July and August do also provide a bumper opportunity with the onset of post breeding dispersal.

I have just finished writing a detailed 38 page article on my efforts over 2015. In total I've record 429 field reads, comprising 16 species and involving 219 different individuals. Here’s a brief resume of the highlights.



Dawlish Warren. Taken by Lee Collins

The standout single read was in securing my second ever Roseate Tern ring. This bird was ringed at Rockabill, Ireland in 2013 and the read may be the only recovery of this species in the Britain & Ireland during 2015 away from their breeding colonies. Terns are of particular interest to me and although no breeding occurs, I see good numbers of 200+ Sandwich Terns present during July and August. During this periods it is a hive of activity, with birds coming and going as they feed offshore and drop back in to roost or to feed their fledged young in front of the hide.

I made 61 reads during this nine week period, securing positive reads on 35 different individuals (30 adults and five juveniles). The reads were a combination of colour rings (15) and the more difficult to read metal ringed birds (20).

Frustratingly, not a single bird recorded on the site was to provide information on where they bred during 2015, although most probably nested several hundred kilometres away. Importantly, there is a good rate of multi-year observations of several individual birds recorded on-site during 2013 and 2014. The results suggest the Warren plays an important role as a staging and feeding area during post breeding dispersal.

Sandwich Tern taken by Lee Collins

The majority of Sandwich Tern ringing locations were in Scotland (750+ km away) and the Netherlands (600 km away), although others also range from Poland to Ireland. The Polish-ringed Sandwich Tern is particularly noteworthy as it looks to be the first recorded in Britain & Ireland.

Sanderling taken by Lee Collins

Waders are of particular importance and are abundant on the reserve. Sanderling in particular are of interest due to their long-distance migratory pattern and I found ten different colour ringed individuals during 2015. Most birds were seen during the month of May as they headed north to breeding grounds in Greenland. These birds were ringed in Greenland, Iceland or Mauritania.

Ringed Plover taken by Lee Collins

Ringed Plover is an abundant species in Devon, yet with a poor recovery history. I recorded seven in 2015, which is almost double the entire recovery history for the county. These were found during the autumn, presumably passage migrants dropping in to refuel. Unsurprisingly, a few were from Iceland, but several were from Norway and a one was from Germany.

Despite these impressive recoveries, my most important work is in fact dedicated to a species that receives little attention from practically all the birders that visit the site, the Oystercatcher. Over a three year period I have made almost 270 positive metal ring reads involving 116 different individuals, with 77 different birds recorded during 2015 alone.

The vast majority (91%) of these were ringed on-site, as part of a study programme undertaken between 1976 and 2004. The movements recorded may not be very far but this provides invaluable data on longevity and survival of this species, especially as it is now amber listed. I have recorded over a dozen individuals that were at least 25 years old, plus another that was ringed in 1983, making it at least 32 years old!

If you wish to read more, you can read Lee's full article on the Dawlish Warren blog.

Spring encounters of the bird kind

You will be glad to hear that we are now reaching the 'tail end' of the auk wreck that has effected thousands of Puffins, Guillemots and Razorbills up and down the country (posted previously). We are still however receiving reports from the various ringing schemes involved, showing the great distances these birds can travel during the winter.

Collared Doves have been known to make large movements occasionally and one such bird travelled south from Fair Isle, Shetland all the way to Halkirk, Caithness (238km) to end up being killed by a cat on the 06 April. Reports of interesting movements of Chaffinch include two Norwegian ringed birds, one killed by a cat in Powys and one to be found fresh dead in Wiltshire both found in mid March. At a very similar time a BTO ringed Chaffinch from Lincolnshire met his end in Norway after not seeing a window in time.

Chaffinch - John Harding

Windows were also responsible for 2 BTO ringed Dunnock recoveries of note. One was the 11th record to Norway (again ringed in Lincolnshire - 1721km) and the other was the 2nd ever Dunnock to be found in Denmark (ringed in Suffolk - 744km).

The BTO migration blog and BirdTrack is currently showing a good influx of spring migrants at the moment with species like Chiffchaff, Blackcap and Swallow, and with this comes encounters with ringed migrants. A Sussex ringed Chiffchaff for example (ringed in September 2013) met its end on its return migration when it was found dead in someone's kitchen in Spain (928km).

BirdTrack reporting rate of Chiffchaff

We have also received our first report of a returning Osprey, to the Glaslyn Osprey Centre near Porthmadog, Gwynedd. This bird was identified by a video camera placed near the nest during the winter. It was originally ringed as a chick at Rutland Water in 1998 in a brood of three.

A window was the likely cause of a Lincolnshire ringed Oystercatcher death in Norway (733km) but more positively, several Irish ringed Oystercatchers have been seen in their breeding grounds in Iceland (1519km).

Adopted Avocet suffers identity crisis

BirdTrack Organiser Nick Moran was surprised to find an interloper in the Oystercatcher roost at Snettisham RSPB reserve in late September.

Avocet M8 seemed happy enough with it's equally pied roost mates and interestingly the story took a much stranger turn when we heard back from the ringer.

M8 was ringed as a chick at Dunkirk, near Ely, in Cambridgeshire earlier in the year and had already featured on the inside back cover of BirdWatching magazine (September 2013). Here it was seen being fed a leatherjacket by one of its apparently adopted parents; an Oystercatcher! Once M8 had made the switch from natural parents to adoptive parents, it remained with them exclusively before fledging and departing.

So whether Avocet M8 now thinks it's an Oystercatcher is an intriguing question, and we wonder if it now feeds side-to-side sweeping (as an Avocet should) or is trying to probe (as an Oystercatcher would). It might also make finding a mate later in life an interesting proposition!

A long life for an Oystercatcher

Adding to the recent run of longevity records being broken, an Oystercatcher is being put in the hall of fame after it had been caught by the Wash Wader Ringing Group this summer.

The previous longevity record for an Oystercatcher was 36 years, 8 months and 16 days, which was put on Oystercatcher SS88071 back in 1969 and was then found dead in Norway in 2006.

The new record belongs to Oystercatcher SS58540 which was ringed by Adrian Blackburn at Friskney Marsh (TF4650) as a chick on 14 June 1970 and we now know it's still going strong. As this bird has lived unusually long, its ring has had to be replaced a couple of times to keep it in tip top shape. Because of this, Oystercatcher SS58540 is also known as FC15938 and FP99170. Amazingly after all this time it hasn't been caught or seen away from the site where it was first ringed.

The record now stands at 40 years, 1 month and 2 days!

Thanks to John Harding for the photo and all the ringers involved.

The Welsh / Scottish connection

We have just heard from the Norwegian Ringing Scheme, who have told us that one of their ringers has read the rings of 2 Oystercatchers that were breeding together in Norway, amazingly they were both wearing BTO rings.


View Oystercatchers move to Norway in a larger map

One of the birds was ringed on Anglesey, Wales by SCAN Ringing Group (an adult, at least 3 years old, ringed on 10/02/2008) and the other on the Eden Estuary, Scotland by Tay Ringing Group (hatched in 2003 and ringed on 21/08/2004) .

Eagle Owls and Oysercatchers

Its not uncommon for rings to turn up at plucking posts or in/under raptor nests, but occasionally the species are rather more interesting than normal. In the past we've mentioned Peregrines vs Hobby and Peregrine vs Quail but one that came in today was most unusual.

This was a record of just a metal ring (SS14393) and black colour ring found in an Eagle Owl nest in Sor-Trondelag in central Norway! The species was a bit surprising (Oystercatcher) but even more so was that it had been ringed in 1963! OK, so it was only the rings that were found, with no bird, so they could have been in the nest for a while... It was originally ringed at Gronant in NE Wales on 15 November 1963, and the finders did mention that the ring looked rather worn!

We have over 160 records of ringed Oystercatchers killed by birds of prey, mostly Peregrines, but also Sparrowhawks and Goshawks and even a Merlin!. Interestingly, we do also have three previous records from Eagle Owl nests, two records from White-tailed Eagle nests and one from a Gyr Falcon nest. All of these were in Norway, which is where our winter birds spend their summers.

Oystercatcher goes off the rails!

An Oystercatcher has been spotted nesting between the railway tracks of a busy train station in Cumbria. An email was sent to the BTO yesterday morning detailing that the track is used by commuter trains, freight trains and nuclear flask trains from Sellafield!

The Oystercatcher is incubating three eggs and presumably it sits tight and tucks its head down whenever a train comes! Only a few hundred yards away from the railway is a far more suitable breeding habitat of coastal sand dunes and riparian land. What a silly bird!