28/12/16 Difficult wren day

I'm posting this quite late, I know. I forgot to bring my laptop back home with me after visiting Mum's for Christmas.. D'oh!

Since it's not fresh in my mind I may have forgotten a few bits, but from what I remember it was a bloody cold morning! Very foggy. The Gundry and Ecotone nets were up in the same places as normal but we tried a slightly new angle with the NR net - it didn't catch anything lol.

The first catch included a very awkwardly caught Wren. I spent ages trying to work out which side of the net it had gone in from, which shelf of the net it was in (it was that bad), how many times it had spun, how many layers of net were around its body, I couldn't tell you how many times I had to untangle it's feet to get a better look at possible ways to get it out (I could see no ways)... it was an absolute nightmare. I feel like a failure for doing so, but I cut the net to get it out. When I consider the amount of time spent trying to get it out, the low temperature and the stress on the poor little thing, I'm sure I made the right decision to cut the net.

We caught 5 birds in each of the first two net rounds and after that it was quite slow, with 3 birds being caught for the rest of the morning. The fog was so thick over the lake that we could only see the Coots and Mallards at the bank just in front of us and nothing further than that, so we didn't have much to entertain us at all 😋 

I got 2 speakers for Christmas (thank you Simon and Hayley 💞) and bought myself a cheap MP3 player, but these aren't nearly as loud as Ian's CD player/speaker, so we used that instead..! (sorry guys... thank you all the same love you😓💓) It called the Long-Tailed Tit's in on the first round, and the Blue Tits and Great Tits on the second round.

Oh I noticed that I'd ringed a Blackbird on a previous session with the last ring on the string instead of the first... I noticed this when we caught a Blackbird on this session and hoped that it wouldn't be a problem when entering my data into IPMR. It did let me know that I'd made the mistake, but I think it's okay..? I hope it doesn't mess things up for the NRG or the BTO.. 😢

Throughout the morning we'd had to shake some condensation off of the nets, but when we took them in we noticed that some water had FROZEN onto the nets!!! Mental! My hands were numb as I was taking the nets in and the nets were absolutely soaking and they lived on the radiator for a day afterwards...

 Left: Juvenile Great Tit showing short old greater coverts and longer new greater coverts

Middle: Coot and fog!

Right: Juvenile male Blackbird

23/12/16 It's Christmas Eve Eve!

This is the last time we'll be ringing before Christmas Day, so Merry Christmas to all blog readers! We arrived at 7:30, nets up by 8. BBC weather said that it was due to get windy around 11, so we had plenty of time to try to catch some birds beforehand. We put the Gundry net in the usual place, further away from the gate than last time. We put the 6 metre North Ronaldsey net up by the children's seating area and we put the 9 metre Ecotone net in the left near corner of the Reserve.

It was a very slow morning ringing wise, with only two birds caught, both retraps. The weather was being a bit weird, too, getting windy and then settling down, raining a bit and then stopping. We heard a lot of tits calling, so we used Ian's CD/speaker to try to call them in, but no luck. After seeing about 8 Chaffinches in the reserve, we tried playing their call. The next few times we checked the nets, we heard one Chaffinch calling back to the recording, but we didn't catch any. Finally, as we were about to take the last net down, we saw a Bullfinch. We played Bullfinch calls for 5 minutes while we put the other equipment back in the car, but no luck.

20/12/2016 Retraps and a CD Player

We arrived at 7:30, nets up by 8. With nearly every ringing session here so far we've set the nets up in slightly different places. Today we set the Gundry net a little closer to the gate and my 9 meter Ecotone net was on the same length of walkway as last time but again a bit closer to the gate. We later found that the new placing of the nets didn't work as well as previous places because the trees and scrub around were slightly taller, so birds were flying over the nets. Live and learn 😅 The last net, my 6 meter NR net, we put up near the children's seating area of the reserve, as for the past few sessions we've seen a 1st year male Blackbird hopping around that area and we thought we might catch him (we didn't - lil smarty pants)!

All in all it was a slow morning. Out of the total of 8 birds, 6 of them were retraps, including the Robin that I caught on my very first solo session! 😊 I remember debating in my head whether I'd aged it properly but when Simon said he thought it was an age code 4 (born last year or before) I had more confidence that I'd aged it right. Later on, though, we caught a new Robin which was a very obvious adult - very dark inside the bill and no tips on the Greater Coverts whatsoever, so I'm back to doubting myself about the first one 😖 heh..

We used the CD and speaker combo that Ian lent to us (Thank you Ian! 😁) and at first played Blue Tit sounds, which called in two. After checking the nets twice more and not catching any more, Simon suggested trying Bullfinch because he'd seen one while walking down the path towards the Nature Discovery Centre. It didn't bring any in, so we changed it to Long Tailed Tit and we caught two. If it wasn't for the tape luring I don't think we'd have caught much at all this morning. I feel I'm getting confident enough to think about putting a feeder up soon, but I want to go out once more completely on my own without Simon as a helper to make sure.

The overall totals for this morning:

This Wren had 11 "splodges" (I think that's the scientific term.. yes) on its fourth primary feather, which suggests adult. Out of curiosity we looked in the French identification book to see if there are any other ageing methods that it could tell us, and it said that white tips on the under tail feather suggests juvenile, which this Wren also has... hmm... See pics below.

Simon and I had a debate about what the French identification book means when it says "postjuvenile" when it doesn't mention moult. Does it mean anytime after it being a juvenile (so basically adult - 1 year or older)? Or does it mean anytime after postjuvenile moult? The latter means that it could still be a juvenile in it's first year.

We also got a couple of photos of a Long Tailed Tit. The first one had a car in the background so I asked Simon to take another picture with a better background, but the Lotti pooped in my hand for that one... so now I can't decide which photo is better. Anyway, here's both of them 😜

15/12/16 Jay day

We got to the reserve a bit later this morning at about 7:40 and it was starting to get quite light when we arrived. We put the nets up in the same place as last time and a Dunnock flew into my 9 metre net as we were putting it up. We didn't catch anything after that for an hour and a half and some tree workers turned up from about 9am and were using chainsaws in the reedbed area behind the reserve, so we didn't feel very hopeful to catch much more.

At 9:45, a Goldcrest. We decided to use Xeno Canto, leaving Simon's phone next to a net playing Blue Tit calls. It called in two Blue Tits and we had another Goldcrest and a Wren in that round, too.

By 10:30 we were thinking of bringing the nets in. We checked the nets one last time. There was a Robin who's tongue was caught in the net, but I managed to get it out without the Quick Unpick and without injury. Walking back to the gate, Simon noticed what he thought was a Pigeon in the net and ran over to it... but it was a Jay!

It was a particularly easy Jay, really - it only tried to crush my finger with its beak 3 times and it happily held onto a pen (see pic below) and onto my jumper rather than my fingers! The first Primary Covert had 6 black bars (plus one really small one at the top) which means that this Jay is a juvenile.

😁🐦🐤

And here are the totals for today:

08/12/2016 Butterfly Reserve with Simon

I've been checking this mornings weather forecast for the past few days with fingers crossed for okay ringing weather. It kept saying it was going to rain, and then that it wasn't and vice versa, and wind was forecast to be between 9-11mph. We went for it since Jan and Duncan had reassured me that the wind speed should be okay (15mph is the limit).

We had the nets up by 8am - we put Ian's Gundry net in the same place as last time, but the other two nets we set on the other side of the reserve (turning left as you enter the gate). Our first catch was a flock of 6 Long-Tailed Tits (new), a Blackbird (new) and a Robin (retrap). At 8:30am we caught another 3 Long-Tailed Tits (2 new, 1 retrap).

The catches after that were slow. We had our eyes peeled for Firecrests because they had been seen in the area the week before. We did see some very small Goldcrest/Firecrest sized birds but we didn't get a good enough view through binoculars to determine whether they had an eye stripe or not. We caught a Goldcrest at 9:30am (new).

At 9:55 there were 3 Long-Tailed Tits and a Dunnock in my 6 metre net. 2 of the Lotti's were ringed this morning. Our last catch while we were packing up was a Wren, which we aged as a 4. IPMR shouted at me when I submitted it saying I'd submitted it as an age code 3 on the 3rd... Looking back in my notebook we did cross out 4 to change it to a 3. Maybe this is a sign to trust my gut and not overthink things!

Seems we packed up at the perfect time as well because as we were leaving the rain started coming down 😄☂🌂⛆

A very obviously juvenile male Blackbird 😄

3/12/16 Round Two

Putting up nets was sooo much easier with pegs (and a helper - thanks Simon 😁). The guy ropes didn't seem too short at all today! We put up three nets - my 6 metre North Ronaldsay net, 9 metre Ecotone net and Ian has lent me Gundry nets (thank you Ian 😄), so I used one of those too. I was intrigued to see what the hype was about - apparently Gundry nets are gold dust because birds are so easy to extract from them but they've been discontinued (Jan told us that they were discontinued because the manufacturers put the price up to £3. Apparently that was too expensive!! Crazy how times change!).

The Gundry net was set on the straight length of footpath just ahead as you walk through the gate, the other two were set just around the corner, the Ecotone net over a boggy bit, so we set the bottom net shelf quite high. We finished setting up and walked back the rest of the circular footpath to the gate. Just as we were saying we'd go have a quick coffee and some breakfast we saw the Gundry net full of Long Tailed Tit's... no breakfast for us! And yes, we can confirm that these nets are very easy to extract birds from! We caught birds in all three nets that round and in total we had 8 Long Tailed Tits, 3 Wrens, a Blue Tit and a Blackbird. I must admit I panicked a bit - it was a bit of a contrast to last time's catch..!

We did end up getting our breakfast, though, because after that round it slowed down. We caught 3 Dunnocks - all in separate net rounds and all in different nets. We watched the birds on the lake and uploaded our sightings into BirdTrack, then Jan came to see us. While we were chatting a Robin was sitting on the gate teasing us. While we took my two nets down I wondered if we would catch it in the last net. We didn't, but we did catch one last Wren. 😊

Below is a table showing which species we ringed, whether they were new birds or retraps and the age codes of each individual:

RTYPE	SPEC	AGE
N	LOTTI	2
N	LOTTI	2
N	LOTTI	2
N	LOTTI	2
N	LOTTI	2
R	LOTTI	2
R	LOTTI	2
N	WREN	3
N	LOTTI	2
N	BLUTI	3
R	WREN	3
N	WREN	3
R	BLABI	4
N	DUNNO	4
N	DUNNO	3
R	DUNNO	4
N	WREN	3

We caught 2 adult and a juvenile Dunnock. Dunnock's are sometimes hard to age, because they vary so much between individuals and methods of ageing sometimes aren't 100% reliable. Luckily the Dunnock's we caught today were clear examples. A juvenile, as shown below, has chocolate or muddy-brown coloured eyes, and the pale "splodges" on the greater coverts are large, bold and cream coloured:

Adults, on the other hand, have a red-brown coloured eye and the splodges are much smaller and duller:

Look at the alignment of the bars on this Wren's wing! OCD = satisfied.

And Simon likes to take action shots 😛

1/12/16 My first solo ringing session!

It was crispy cold and dark when I turned up at the Butterfly Reserve. I got there so early because I wanted to make the most of the time I had (I needed to be out by 10am because BBOWT run school trips here). Setting up nets started off quite slowly - it was so dark I couldn't really see where I was putting my guy ropes but it soon lightened up so I thought it would get easier.

Wrong...

Schoolboy error no. 1: I cut my guy ropes last night in preparation for this morning and I found they were too short... thankfully I managed to shuffle around and find trees that were close enough together to reach the poles. (Jan later reminded me that I had tent pegs in my car so I should have used them... d'oh).

This was closely followed by schoolboy error no. 2!: I overestimated how long (or should I say short) a 6 metre net would actually be.. One guy would just about reach and I tied it onto the pole, balanced it at a slant and prayed it wouldn't just fall over while I moved the second guy.. (it didn't, yay!)

The second net I put up was 9 metres long and I had the same issue with the guys but I judged the length of the net just right (good job as well because there was a fallen tree just behind where I judged the net would go to)... All in all it took me 35 minutes to get two nets up... shameful!! Haha.

The first time I checked my nets I'd not caught anything. I watched some birds on the lake while I waited to check the nets again. There were Tufted Ducks, Coots, a Great Crested Grebe, a pair of Muscovy Ducks (I think - the red faced ones), Black Headed Gulls, Herring Gulls, 1 Lesser Blackbacked Gull, Cormorants. Note to self: download an app to submit my sightings.

I predicted last night that the first bird I catch while ringing solo would be a Robin... and it was! It was in the bottom shelf of my 9 metre net and, as I had predicted I would on my first session, I worried that I would do something wrong.. I inevitably panicked about the age of this bird for the rest of the morning. So here's my thought process at the time:

The inside of it's beak was grey, suggesting adult. I've taken a photo of the wing to show the greater coverts. The "blobs" of ginger aren't the typical rose-thorn shape of a juvenile but some of the greater coverts have blobs and some don't. This made me think that the ones with blobs might have been retained (old), which would make it a juvenile, but given that the inside of the beak was dark and the blobs were relatively small, I aged it as a "4" (born last year or earlier). Please do comment if you think I'm wrong! :-)

This was the only bird I caught all morning and Jan came over for half an hour or so to see how I was getting on and to talk a bit about setting up IPMR (the database in which ringing data is submitted), how I could have set my guys a bit better and places where I could have put my nets that might have caught more birds.

I'm thinking of going out and ringing again on Saturday. I'll try putting my nets up in different areas of the Butterfly Reserve, use the tent pegs for my guy ropes (and maybe cut some longer ones..!) and maybe set 3 nets rather than 2. Simon will be coming with me on Saturday (if I can drag him out of bed hehe) so if I get a bigger catch then at least I'll have a bit of help all morning :-)