Neds Lintie conservation goes wrong and thanks to South Manchester RG

 Nice gorse bank, 11 known lintie nests and probably blackbird, song thrush and dunnock (well I’d like to see you cold search through that lot) last weekend. Well photo actually taken last April when we did get a sunny morning. 

This weekend 6 known lintie nests and prob the others mentioned all torched.

After no burns last summer we’d been complimenting the Neds on their controlled gorse burnings, creating new vigorous growth for the linties and keeping it in nice accessible, nestable patches. Grrrrr.

 

On the brighter side we’ve retrapped/resighted over 40 adult linnets and 20 chicks returning from last summer so with us well over the RAS quota we can take the rest of the summer off!

Finally a big thank you very much to South Manchester RG for information on one of our pied wag chicks from last summer which they controlled on 18/12/11 wintering in Mobberley, Chester. Here’s the very nest site (hole in wall) it was ringed in (2^nd brood) and an adult (gnat in foreground) back last weekend, neither of the pair ringed unfortunately.

 

Raymond

Linnet breeders still at home

With the weather turning a bit colder now linnets are finally coming onto one of the bait sites. 2 catches have produced 99 linnets and a few goldfinch, chaffy and greenies. 12 retrap linnets have included 4 colour-ringed adults, 2 juveniles and 3 pullus from this summer’s ringing at Girdleness.

Males Orange/Orange and White/Yellow ringed as breeding males in May 2011 and retrapped December (Raymond Duncan)

Mind you, if the linnets sat in the trees above the catching site and looked through a telescope they could see their nest sites 6kms away to the south. Hopefully we can get a few more flocks onto bait sites this winter scattered a bit further around the region to see how far adults and juveniles disperse and see how many survive the winter. It’s amazing how many actually survived the previous 2 winters given the deep snow we had and how long it lay in freezing conditions. We actually watched weakened linnets drop from the air through starvation at one site in January 2010 and had to refrain from catching large numbers at the bait site along with 5 different bunting species (snow, corn, reed, yellow and lapland) as conditions were just too extreme

Finch/bunting flock and 4 bunting species (Hywel Maggs)

Some very fluffy linnets on bait at New Aberdour 9/1/10 (Hywel Maggs)

It would appear not all of our local bred birds remain for the winter. Breeding female retrap Yellow/Yellow photographed below at Girdleness on 15/5/11 by local birder Graham Ruthvin, had originally been ringed as a juvenile on passage at Portland Bill, Dorset on 5/10/10.

Please have a go for those lintie flocks if you can.

Raymond

Scarce passage migrant twitch ringing!

We had a scarce passage migrant visitor mid week in the shape of Richie Hearn from WWT Slimbridge, always a welcome addition to the year's list. Last bird he ringed was red breasted goose in Bulgaria (and probably Brazilian Merganser in Brazil before that) so it was no wonder he was looking a bit glum when he was given some juvy linnet rtps to look at!

His face brightened up a bit when he was told there was a linnet brood needing ringing though.......a pullus ringing tick for him!

He dipped on mipit pullus (already ringed) and goldfinch and whitethroat which were too wee to ring.

We are onto the last of first brood linnets now and building well underway for 2nd broods. We had a nice example of 'rabbit syndrome' typical of some of these carduellis finches last week. As we approached a gorse bush containing a nest with c10 day old chicks we noticed the female arriving with nest material closely followed by the male. Once the female disappeared into her new nest (about a metre from the 1st nest) the male nipped over to the first nest to feed the chicks and came back over with a faecal sack in beak just in time to accompany the female away for more nest material........TOTALS!


Raymond, Calum and Euan

More Girdleness-ting

Linties are now well on-stream with 11 broods ringed today, with our total now standing on 99 chicks. We have a similar number of titchy chicks that'll be for ringing next weekend. Few failures with their ring of gorse defence but same can’t be said for the ground nesting mipits and skylark with quite a few failures but 3 broods of mipos now ringed (below).
50th lintie nest was well found by Calum and appropriately marked with a Thornton’s Easter Bunny ribbon (see photos below).
We are used to finding goldfinch nests at the end of high sycamore branches in winter once the leaves are off the trees but at this site they have taken to using head high dog roses……..luvly (photo below). First brood ringed today and a further 2 on eggs. Some adults were clap netted as well as skylark and meadow pipits. We also got a control lintie……..L627288 Any takers?

Lintie nesting

Despite another cold snowy spell last winter our breeding linnet numbers seem to be buoyant and thriving, at least in their favourite habitat in the coastal gorse bushes. First 3 broods were ringed last weekend with another 30+ lined up for the next few weekends. Main threat is burning by vandals with one or two nests and favoured gorse clumps already gone. Our major stick twatting day to find all the nests we’d missed during building proved a bit disappointing with most female linnets sitting very tight in the cool and misty conditions (see photo above). Other nests included pied wagtail, blackbird chicks, a well sign posted goldfinch (see photo below), swallow building, a few meadow pipits and an early rock pipit with young chicks.

Top tip for finding meadow pipit nests: Stand in a group in the rough grass and yap for a few minutes……it eventually unnerves the sitting bird and it flutters off………2 found by this very skilful method!

Watch out for a photo of Rotti Man (The Viz ornithologist) next posting.

Raymond and team