Greenshank double resighting at Rutland Water‏

Thanks very much to Peter Hill, Jonathan Lloyd, Steve Lister and Andy MacKay for a great, recent double sighting of colour-ringed Greenshanks at Rutland Water in Leicestershire. Right leg: red/blue - left leg: light green/light green (see great photograph by Peter Hill at Rutland) was ringed on the Ythan Estuary, 10kms north of Aberdeen, on 31/8/13 and was first reported at Rutland on 26/9/13, still there on 6/10/13. Right leg: dark green/blue – left leg: orange/red was ringed on the Ythan on 1/9/13 and also turned up at Rutland on 26/9/13 but wasn’t seen again.

 We don’t get many inland sightings of the birds we ring on autumn passage in NE Scotland and few are seldom reported together after they have departed the Ythan. Ringing has shown many of these birds are heading for Ireland for the winter whilst others head south to France and Spain and sometimes even further into North Africa with one site faithful bird wintering on the Cape Verde Islands, well who wouldn't?!

Fascinating Sandwich Tern pre-migration movements

The North Sea population of Sandwich Terns is highly mobile after breeding with birds remaining in the vicinity for several months post-breeding. It has long been known and indeed our ringing has also shown that Sandwich terns from other parts of the North Sea Population arrive on our coats in late autumn prior to migrating south for the winter. Although this is a phenomena we know occurs it is still poorly understood. Hopefully some of the efforts we and Dutch researchers are undertaking will shed some light but for now little or no information exists on the inter-annual movements of individuals. As the study is no reaching its 3rd year we are now starting to gather some intriguing evidence. Today I received several sightings from a local researcher that had spotted 8 colour ringed sandwich terns while reading shag colour rings on the local coastline. One of the birds was a real gem of a sighting having first been caught and colour ringed in late August 2010 and subsequently located breeding in the Netherlands in both 2012 and 2013 (see photo). That information alone is interesting but in 2012 I observed it in early September again in north-east Scotland. So we know that this individual that breeds in the Netherlands has returned in late autumn to the same stretch of coast in Scotland at least 3 of the last 4 years prior to migrating south. Fantastic information that we would never have been able to get without the use of colour rings and the dedication of international observers! Hopefully with further ringers using colour rings in the UK and a lot more sightings we can shed some light on this fascinating behaviour.

Sandwich tern EKA breeding in the Netherlands (Fred Visscher)

EKA on a pre-migration trip up to Peterhead (Jenny Sturgeon)

A really old one!

The only member of GRG to have their own Wikipedia page has just turned 50. Raymond Duncan is a born and raised Aberdonian, and is also the cornerstone of Grampian Ringing Group having capably led the group for well over a decade. His enthusiasm for bird ringing was kindled as a young lad and he has been an avid bird ringer and nester since; spending almost any conceivable moment carrying out some sort of bird ringing related project. During his ringing career he has been recognised for his services to the BTO in being awarded the BTO’s Tucker Medal for outstanding service in 2008. Raymond has not just given his time to furthering our understanding of birds through his countless projects; he has also trained dozens of ringers over the years, providing them with a hugely diverse skills base to build on as they develop under his encouragement and enthusiasm.

Although he is perhaps best known for his waxwing studies which have seen the colour ringing of thousands for birds to allow their irruptions to be followed through the movement of individuals, he is best known to us for his love of coke, chocolate, sweeties and the Beano. So Happy Birthday Raymond (aka “Big nose”, “Ramie wrecker” etc)! 

Up a Christmas tree for LEO's

Always a nester

 Raymie wrecker in action with a gull darvic.

On the cliffs for seabirds

Raymond's invented holder for when we catch loadsa finches

Keeping an eye on trainees with Clunie

A big twite catch c2002

5 Terns of 5 Countries

As I blogged about a single tern of 4 countries last time I thought this time I’d give an update of our tern ringing season so far. On still nights at the weekend with favourable tides we have been attempting to catch terns at night. Our main target is sandwich terns and we are steadily amassing a really interesting dataset. Sandwich Tern numbers during a lot of August on our catch sites tends to be fairly low as many of our local breeders move round into the Moray Firth – and a recent deluge of excellent sightings from Findhorn bay indicates this is the case this year. So august can be a relatively quiet period for Sandwich Terns while the local breeders are further north and the mass of continental and British birds still to arrive (hopefully!).

Two of our colour ringed sandwich terns in Findhorn Bay (Richard Somerscocks)

During this lull in Sandwich Tern activity we have been focussing our efforts on Arctic Terns with over 1000 caught so far this Autumn (over double the total number ever caught in a year in the UK previously) and with these good numbers has come excellent information from ringed birds. Although we will have to wait for the recovery details of the ringed birds we have caught we can get a reasonable idea where they are from as 12 of the 41 ringed Arctic Terns caught this autumn have been ringed abroad.

Juvenile Arctic tern (Harry Scott)

Before the end of July we caught 2 Swedish ringed juvenile Arctic Terns, surprising as they had crossed the North Sea so quickly. 5 other juveniles have since been caught with Finnish rings, with 3 on the same night in mid-August. Alongside these Baltic juveniles have been adults from Finland, Estonia and Denmark and it is interesting to see that so many Baltic breeders arrive in the East Coast each autumn. We also caught a Belgian ringed Sandwich tern earlier in the season so we have had 13 foreigners from 5 countries so far this year!

Adult and juvenile little tern (Euan Fergusson)

Alongside the fantastic number of Arctic and reasonable numbers of Sandwich tern we have also caught 3 other species of terns. As well as Common Terns we have caught a small number of Little Terns and a single Black Tern. The latter being the first for Grampian ringing group.

Juvenile Black Tern (Jenny Lennon)

A tern of 4 countries

It has been a while since we have posted anything on the blog about our sandwich tern study, but this is not due to lack of activity. Our dataset is growing rapidly with the many sightings that we and the birding community have sent to us. Through our tern work we keep in close touch with a number of tern ringers elsewhere in Europe and in particular we have good contact with the Netherlands. A massive population of sandwich terns breed in the Netherlands and each year a significant portion end up venturing up to Scotland in the autumn prior to migrating south. Generally these birds arrive during August and into September, so a portion of the birds we are colour ringing on the Ythan Estuary in autumn breed in these colonies.

Blue EBA at a breeding colony in the Netherlands (Pim Wolf)

 

This summer we have had a steady stream of sightings from several observers in the Netherlands including one partial sighting of a colour ring that looked like ELV but as it was at a breeding colony and we could not be 100% certain. Pim Wolf, who had managed to photograph the bird continued to look out to confirm the combination but was unfortunately unable to relocate it in the colony of 3800 pairs.

A tantalising glimpse of red ELV in the Netherlands (Pim Wolf)

 

The trail went cold for a while until yesterday when Pim and myself both received emails from Lee Collins with a sighting of 2 colour ringed birds associating together on Dawlish Nature Reserve in Devon. We were both emailed as the sighting related to one of my birds (an adult -red ELV) and one of Pim’s (a juvenile - white NL1). This chick was ringed at the colony where ELV had been possibly sighted during the breeding season and the close association suggested it was likely to be its fledged juvenile. A further twist to the tail is that when I colour ringed red ELV it already had a metal ring that showed it had been ringed in BELGIUM as an adult in July 2007!

7T61672 during processing - it was 672 days before we heard from it again (Ewan Weston)

 

Ewan Weston

 

 



Aberdeenshire Osprey in Spain

Since 1993, Grampian Ringing Group has ringed over 160 young Ospreys in tree nests, fitting coloured darvic rings supplied by Roy Dennis as part of the Scottish scheme. At least 11 of these have been recovered or resighted abroad, in Spain, Portugal, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Ghana. Increasingly, resightings are coming from birdwatchers using digital cameras.

Crouching in the nest, playing dead (Photo: Ewan Weston)

One such bird was a single youngster, ringed near Monymusk in Aberdeenshire on 17 July near Aberdeen, Scotland.  It was raised in a nest in a forest plantation – one that has been there for many years and has fledged many young. 2012 had very bad weather during the summer and many Ospreys found it hard to rear chicks. It was very pleasing that the birds were successful! Usually, we try to ring young Ospreys at a good large size, but sometimes they have to be ringed at a younger age. This chick was a late, small bird, lagging distinctly behind other nests in the area.

Ringed and ready to go (Photo: Guy Anderson)

Once the birds have left the nests, often they are not seen again and their fate remains unknown. However, we received news a few days ago that this young bird - ringed on the left leg with a blue ring with the white digits 89, had been present at the Urdaibai estuary near Bilbao in northern Spain from March 15th to 8th April. It had been photographed and the ring read.

The Urdaibai estuary, north-east of Bilbao



Blue 89 at the estuary (Photo: Gari Bilbao)


We don't know where else the bird has been, nor whether it is likely to return to Scotland this year, as many young birds don't come back in their first year, but it is always nice to receive reports and photographs, and doubly so as it shows that late, small chicks can successfully fledge, migrate and survive the winter.
 
Ian Francis

When do the Waxwings go and richt braw Scottish Waxwing bird table

Many people ask when do the Waxwings leave.

The graphs below of numbers on fruit in gardens in Aberdeen in previous invasions gives some idea.

Timings differ between invasions but it’s not uncommon to have a large number (100+) during April when they start to fatten up and depart.

Double figures remain into May. The sudden increase and decrease in early May 2005 was accompanied by a bird caught which had been ringed earlier in the winter in Bristol, suggesting a surge of birds heading back north. However this appears to be very unusual. The number of birds returning back north is very, very small in comparison to the number which pass through earlier in the winter. Of probably over 1,000 colour-ring sightings in England, Wales and Ireland over the years none of these birds have been recorded back with us in NE Scotland on return spring migration. Most appear to depart from where they have settled earlier in the winter.

Finally thank you very much to Wendy Anderson for sending us a photograph of one of our colour-ringed birds from Aberdeen feeding in her garden in Culloden, near Inverness, 128km NW of Aberdeen. Their Waxwing “Scottish bird table” gave us all a richt guid chuckle. The colour-ringed bird can be seen top left. Hugh Insley and co. made a fine catch the following day, catching all 38 in a oner with a whoosh net.

Raymond