Waders in the Mist - Updated

Sunday night being still, dry, moonless and hightide-ish, an expedition to the shores of the Severn appeared to be in order. A crack team of three duly assembled, and spent a thoroughly entertaining evening processing 66 Redshank, a Dunlin and a Knot. Four of the Redshank were recoveries, three being colour ringed, probably at RGW a few years ago (we wait for details), the other being ringed by us in the bay back in January.

And it got very misty, by the way, so driving back to the road over the fields was quite interesting.

Update:

 The Redshank in the picture above was ringed at Rumney Great Wharf in March 2009. The other two colour ringed birds we caught were both ringed on the River Taff in October 1999.  BTO Birdfacts tells us that the typical lifespan is 4 years and the maximum recorded age a little over 20 years, so these two are well ahead of the game.

Weekend endeavours

This weekend's ringing here in Cardiff was a bit of a mixed bag. Saturday we were at the bay, a little mob handed for the meagre 10 birds that graced our nets (1.4 birds each…). For a change for this time of year, we only caught one blue tit.

Sunday morning saw CJ and Facey trying for gulls at Roath Park, with their gull to bread ration being 0:5. The gulls were just not interested, with even the swans and geese apathetic to the feast on offer. Lessons learnt:

1)     Don’t try catching gulls at Roath park after a glorious Saturday

2)     Spar bread is far more expensive than ASDA…

Sunday evening saw a return to the bay for a starling roost catch. Over the last month or so between 1000-1500 of them have been roosting at the bay. The spectacle of murmurating starlings was enjoyed with a mixture of awe and gut wrenching anxiety as around 1500 starlings dropped in on the net ride. We caught 17. Some may say a meagre offering considering the numbers at roost; these would be people who have not had to extract more than one starling.

Go on, you know you want to count them...

 We also had a net up for roosting waterfowl/wader types. While we extracted the starlings near by, Ti gave us reports on the other nets contents and displayed excellent initiative (which he proceed to recount for most of the evening); he’ll make a good ringer that one. Three Redshank were bagged and as we processed our wader and starling catch a mallard dropped in to round off proceedings. Both species new for the site.


One of three - no not a Borg designation, its a redshank



Billy Wizz process his redshank



Quackers: Technically we took a picture of the starlings.
They were just in bags...

By the end of play Sunday the weekend’s totals stand at:

Blackbirds – 4

Dunnock – 3

Blue tit - 1

Lesser Redpoll – 1

Long tailed-tit – 1

Starling – 17

Redshank – 3

Mallard – 1

On a more personal note we said farewell to Dr O who moved to Northumberland to work with rusty tree rats.

The weekend for the Cardiff Ringers

Saturday saw JOV at the Bay successfully kicking off one of the projects for his PhD by colour-ringing a Cetti’s Warbler. This particular project aims to look at the role of diet on body mass regulation in wintering insectivores, using CETWA as a model. Although the actual study doesn’t rely on “traditional” sightings of colour ringed birds, should you see any of these birds then do let us know at cardiffringers@yahoo.co.uk

Meanwhile Facey and Dr O were at “The Woods” dealing with a catch dominated by Great Tits; although two new Goldcrest and a new Coal Tit brightened things up. A The Re-trap Treecreeper also made an appearance. It’s been caught four times in two years, all at different net locations. Although several Treecreepers (minus rings) are regularly seen at the Woods, only one has been ringed at this site, which does beg the question; why only the one?

Sunday morning saw CJ, JOV and Facey heading to the Bay with the intention of adding more Cetti’s to JOV’s study. Success came in the form of two more birds.

Among the 44 bird catch were 10 Lesser Redpolls, providing a great opportunity for a bit of “compare and contrast” of age and sexing criteria on a species we don’t catch all that often in numbers. Bird of the day, however, went to a Water Rail – a superb bird in the hand or field, and whose piggy calls are regularly heard at the Bay at this time of year.

Clown to the left of me, joker to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you...

Sunday evening saw a second outing to have a bash at waders by CJ, Facey and Dr O (minus baked bean sausage rolls). Arriving rather early, there was a three hour wait before high tide during which time little happened. A Dunlin was caught (partnership first), it rained, and a steady stream of Redwing called overhead.

As the tide rose, four Redshank arrived. Three left. One was ringed. Approaching high tide, a flock of Redshank came down to the pool, of which seven were caught, while others bounced or flew over. While this catch was being extracted another party arrived, for a moment being silhouetted against the light spill from Cardiff. Although it was a brief sight, it was exhilarating; a definite Kodak moment! The birds were not prepared to land while three primates gathered their kin out of the nets, of course, and so departed.

Once these seven birds were safely at the ringing area, Facey was dispatched back to the nets in case any more had arrived. Arrived they had. In the two minutes it had taken to walk from the nets to the ringing site, approximately 15 more birds had landed in the nets; with more arriving! Facey is known for his ability to bellow, which he did, bringing immediate assistance. While these birds were being extracted, more were coming in.

The night ended on 29 Redshank and 1 Dunlin – although we could have stayed and caught more, a persistent drizzle, empty stomachs and thoughts of a takeaway had us heading back to the car.

Monday Morning proved successful in adding two Greylag Geese (also new to the partnership) to our waterfowl study.

Redshank at Night, Ringers Delight

Last night, with the faint but distinct odour of landfill in the air and up the nostrils, two of us headed out into the wilds of the Severn Estuary to ring waders. Conditions were perfect; a high tide, cloud, and no wind. And we were armed with an ample supply of coffee and snacks* for a night full of waders.

The night was deemed a success even before we’d finished putting the nets up. A little premature you might say? You may even be concerned that we have come up with an even more dubious definition of success? But fear not; unless you don’t class a Redshank landing in a net while it’s still being put up as success? In which case, yes our definition has become more dubious.

Success in wader form.

It didn’t stop at one Redshank though. Oh no. We even bagged two birds at once. It looked like it was going to be a mega evening. Yeah, crazy talk, but you should have been there.

However, it was not to be. Not knowing our site particularly well, we weren’t entirely aware how much a 13.2m tide would affect our endeavour. As we extracted our fourth, and ultimately final, Redshank of the evening we became increasingly aware of how large some of the pools were becoming. By the time Facey had finished processing the final redshank, CJ was taking down nets in what had been one smallish pool, but now appeared to encompass most of the foreshore.

It would be over egging the soggy pudding to paint a picture of CJ and Facey struggling to take down nets, waist deep in what passes as water in the Severn. Cut to a low angle view of something swimming toward one of the intrepid ringers. A fin disappears under the water before the aforementioned ringer is dragged under to cries of "Hold the net up you [expletive deleted]! They cost money!" Fortunately the water barely got half way up our wellies, and the only danger that either faced was Facey tripping over his own feet.

Having to pack up early was slightly frustrating but we had caught four birds! That’s four more than Facey expected and four more than previously ringed on the group’s rings!

*A quick note on wader catching snacks – ASDA’s baked bean sausage roll may sound appealing. It may look appealing. But that's as far as it goes. Even a normally unfussy Andrew McSkimming had nothing but derisive comments** to make about the left-over brought home for him. Yeah, they are That Bad.

** Judging by his pained tortured expression we believe they were derisive; it's difficult to tell what someone is saying with a mouth full of ASDA’s let-down sausage roll in his gob- but he didn’t look happy.