Pinkies Galore

It has been some time since any significant numbers of pink-footed geese have been ringed in the UK, with the group's last catch being 20 birds at the Loch of Skene in 2008. However when we heard colleagues at the WWT had 2 GPS neck collars to fit on 2 pink-footed geese, we were keen to help out. With a stalwart group baiting and checking a site on the outskirts of Aberdeen with a mixture of tatties, carrots and grain a small catch looked imminent.

After weeks of dedication all things aligned and we were set to take a small cannon net catch of pink-footed geese. With the birds finally on the bait around lunch time, 30 were in the area and I gave Carl Mitchell from the WWT the "3.2.1. Fire" command  only to be met by "hold on a minute I need to just charge the firing box up first". Luck was on our side and as the box charged up, so did the geese. With the box charged we took a catch, with the net flying beautifully and catching an incredible 91 pink-footed geese - our second largest ever catch.

Pink-footed geese waiting to be extracted (Euan Ferguson)

With a good team of 12 we were able to quickly extract and process all birds, fitting each with a neck collar containing a unique 3 letter combination for reading in the field. Two special birds were fitted with incredibly light weight GPS neck collars to track their movements as part of a pilot project to gather information about feeding and roost site use in the UK.

High tech pink-foot (Euan Ferguson)

So far the birds have remained fairly local. We will bring you updates on their movements later in the winter and hopefully when they have safely arrived back in Iceland.

Ythan Estuary Attracts Foreigners

The food rich mud and the safety of sandbanks on the Ythan Estuary near Newburgh provide resident birds with a perfect larder and resting area. This location is also attractive to migrating birds as they pass on their journey south. Other visitors arrive as part of their post breeding dispersal. Among the tourists to the Ythan during the autumn of 2013 have been a number of colour-ringed and “darviced” birds.

Viking gull invasion?

August saw a number of Scandinavian Black-headed Gulls arrive. These included:

Green J054 – ringed Breiavatnet, Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway on 16 July 2013 and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

White J2CE – ringed Mølledammen, Time, Rogaland, Norway on 07 April 2012 and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

White J3UP - ringed Langvannet, Lørenskog, Akershus & Oslo, Norway on 08 April 2013 and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

White J3U5 – ringed Vågen, Stavanger sentrum, Stavanger, Rogaland, Norway on 16 February 2012 and seen on the Ythan on 29 August 2013.

White VM47 – ringed in Denmark and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

Other northern travellers included:

Lapwing - White J34C – ringed Hemnes, sør, Karmøy, Rogaland, Norway on 12 June 2013 and seen on the Ythan on 29 August 2013.

 Sandering  G5RGRY – ringed at Zackenberg, Greenland on 20 June 2012 and seen on the Ythan on 06 Auguat 2013.

Sanderling Y6YWWW – ringed Griend west, Netherlands on 16  August 2012 and seen on the Ythan on 28 August 2013.

Dunlin White CST – ringed near Gdansk, Poland on 25 July 13 and seen on the Ythan on 11 November 2013.

The maps below illustrate the above bird movements to the Ythan.

Red = Lapwing, Yellow = Black-headed Gulls

Green = Sanderling, Orange = Dunlin

If you are lucky enough to see a colour-ringed bird please report it through http://blx1.bto.org/euring/lang/pages/colour_rings.jsp

MS 

A spot of bad luck!

In the 35+ years since the formation of Grampian ringing group, only a handful of spotted redshanks (probably less than 10) have been ringed by the group. This autumn was quite remarkable for the group as one night while ringing greenshank and redshank a spotted redshank was caught - the first for over 5 years! Only a few days later another two were caught together - all three were juveniles. It is fantastic to see this species in the hand and really appreciate the differences with it's commoner cousins. We were very surprised when we saw the species appear in a recent batch of recoveries. The first of the Autumn, caught on the Ythan Estuary 31 August 2013 had been found dead on the 6th of November on a Nature Reserve near la Rochelle on the West coast of France. This is the first recovery of the species for the group and only the 14th recovery for the BTO ringing scheme.

The unlucky spotted redshank found, later found dead in France 1216km further on it's migration (Ewan Weston)

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)