2011 Totals Part I

 With 2011 behind us, it’s only fitting to have a quick squint of what we achieved last year; which was the Bull and Morgan Partnership processing 3504 captures! Not a bad years ringing it has to be said. We managed to add seven new species to the list, starting with Black Redstart at the beginning of the year and ending with Black-headed gull; in between there was Redshank, Dunlin, Herring Gull, Greylag and Canada Geese. We started colour ringing coots and Cetti’s Warblers and finally registered the swallow project as a RAS.

2011 was not without other milestones; we said good bye to one of our founders, Dave Bull, who taught most of us our trade and is sorely missed. But we also welcomed new members to the team; CJ, Thon, Wayne and Prince Albert. And of course not forgetting that Vaf was able to start on his long awaited PhD!

We’d like to extend a big thank you to all the other ringers and ringing groups that played host to us in 2011, in particular; Terry Coombs, Brian Bailey, Mike Hounsome, SCAN, Llangorse, Flat Holm, and of course our home away from home, The Radipole Ringing Group.

2012 is underway and we know for sure there will be some ringing adventures being had by the team.

2011 totals:   FG= full grown   R&R = retraps and recoveries

 

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.

A Bird in the Hand

As the winds have finally died down enough to allow for some mist netting, I put up a net for an hour before work. 14 birds later I was quite pleased to be holding a new species for the site:

A very tasty bird.

Two were caught at the same time but only one stuck. The rest of the session was typical for the site (retraps in brackets):

Blue Tit 2(8)*

Great Tit (2)
Reed Bunting 1
Woodpigeon 1

*two or three of these chaps were retraps from the very first sessions fopr the site, so are knocking on a bit now.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year All!

Our first outing of 2012 was to catch coots at Cosmeston and by close of play we had managed three of them, and two swans. Catch success was hindered not only the birds being wary but by the weather. An ominous black cloud formed over the lakes with a flash of lightning signalling that thunder would soon arrive. When it did it not only made us jump but also scattered the birds! After that the hail set in and things went down hill; processing coots in a hailstorm is not an enjoyable experience.

CJ and Dr O process coot in the hail.

A Whooper Swan has been hanging around the lakes recently and this morning was in the mix with the mutes. It was catchable but as it was wearing a bring orange Darvic there would not have been much purpose to that! Apparently ringed in Worcestershire in 2010. You can see a selection of images of it here.

We'll post our 2011 totals soon.

Habits and habitats

A bit of site maintenance in the rain at one of our woodland sites resulted in a new net ride and a load of sycamore cleared. The latter in the hope of creating some nice glades and regeneration of anything except, well sycamore.

On the way home, with hypothermia setting in and four loaves of bread in stock, we couldn't resist another attempt at gulls at Roath Park Lake. With no gulls about we turned our attention to the water fowl, finally breaking the RPL curse by catching and colour ringing our first coot there! Good work CJ. We've now used up a staggering... wait for it... 9 colour rings from the 100 we've been allocated. It is going to get cold soon isn't it...?

Three Canada Geese and a Greylag later we decided that dry clothes and a warm drink were in order so headed home.

A reused picture to add some colour. It is relevant; it was taken at RPL, shows a
Darvic ring, and is of a species we caught today. We also saw a Darvic wearing GREGO; FX6.

Gull : Bread Ratio

Yesterday we achieved a ratio of 1.2, that's six gulls caught for an expenditure of five loaves of Asda's 'Cheap n'Nasty' ® brand white sliced bread. Some scope for improvement remains, we feel.

Our tally was five Black-headed and one Lesser Black-backed.  Here's a sample:

Also present was this colour-ringed LBB, ringed as a second-year by the Severn Estuary Gull Group at Gloucester Landfill on 26-Nov-05:

Thinking of Summer

Christmas ringing so far has been rather unproductive* (Bah-bleedin'-humbug). So with wet and windy weather gripping much of the country, a bit of a look back to summer is needed to lighten the mood.

We've been looking at the swallows breeding at the Cardiff Riding School (red marker) since 2006, and this year proved to be the second most productive year since then. This year, 20 pairs made their homes in the stables, stalls and barn, with at least one other in the indoor school building (think massive metal shed; its a bugger to monitor, so we don't report on those). Each year we produce a poster about the swallows' season for the Riding School's staff and punters; it gives the headline news from this season and you'll find it at the end of this post for your perusal.

View Swallow Sites in a larger map

There were a further 3 and 2 pairs respectively at Blackweir Ambulance Station (blue marker) and at Bute Park Nurseries (green marker); giving us a total of 27 or so pairs; not a bad total for an inner city location. We didn't do much nest recording at these latter sites but they fledged around 25 youngsters – you can do the maths for the total number of fledglings produced in the parks as a whole.

These additional sites also mean we were able to register the project as a RAS, albeit RAS Lite compared to the number of pairs covered by some Swallow RAS project.

We think we have found all the swallow breeding sites within the parks but if any local birders are reading this and know of any other sites out there, then please let us know (either post a comment here or email us at cardiffringers@yahoo.co.uk.

As always we'd like to extend a big thank you to the staff of the Riding School, the Ambulance Station and the Nursery for allowing us access to the sites and putting up with us throughout the summer.

*e.g. yesterday; three potter traps, 6 hours, no birds...

J

Whoosh! Another new species for the stables.

Frustrating Friday

It was a simple plan; a quiet Friday morning coot catch at Cossie was bound to result in good numbers of the species. By now Vaf and Facey should know that such a simple plans are doomed to fail.

It didn't help that Facey was ten minutes late meaning the opportunity to catch in the presence of "Bread Man" was lost. Bread man is a gent that arrives at the lakes and literally empties bin bag loads of bread in to the water. He arrived, he emptied, he left. The birds, full of bread, weren't prepared to come That close.

While we watched crestfallen as the coots kept their distance, we did manage to secure these:

Voila! Le Tufted Duck fem



Pleased as punch, but no Facey, its not a coot...



Vaf and Facey were of course disadvantaged by a distinct paucity of coot... 

Fingers crossed and warmer socks, we'll be catching more coot in the next few weeks as the weather gets colder...

Here Cooty Cooty Cooty

Its been a while since our last post but don't worry we haven't left the country (yet). The weather hasn't been conducive to ringing of late; a tad on the windy and/or wet side. With the weather improving we decided to head to Cosmeston to ring Coots on Saturday.

During our several Coot ringing outings, CJ has steadfastly declined the opportunity to ring one (when one has been available), preferring his first to be one he'd caught himself. On Saturday the first Coot both caught and ringed was by CJ, affording him much quiet pleasure. It was also Wayne's first Coot ringing experience.

As the weather is getting colder the Coots are becoming slightly bolder, but still all we could muster was five, caught in quick succession. Given the time of year there aren't as many Coot as we'd expect, and without safety in numbers they are still a little bit too wary for a big morning's catch. There is, on the whole, a bit of a dearth of waterfowl on the lakes compared to most years. Either that or the last two winters have spoilt us.

With the Coot on to us, we broke camp for another part of the lake to try for what some would call "proper birds". Sadly, despite a myriad traps, all we could achieve was a retrapped Dunnock. But we did get some Mallards - important G closing practise for the assembled trainees. 

Finishing on five new Coot, three new Mallard, and a retrap Tufted Duck, plus the Dunnock, and covered in 'fowl crap, we headed for breakfast.



Ti did an excellent job of releasing the morning's customers.

With the morning's session complete, and breakfast consumed, the group dispersed. On the drive home CJ and Facey decided that a bit more ringing was in order, so headed to the Stables - adding a retrapped Robin and 13 new Long-tailed Tits to the day's totals. This brings the Stables' total for the year to 211 new birds; a bit of a milestone as it's the first time we've breached the 200 mark here. It might not sound a lot but for a site where once the nest boxes are empty and the Swallows have departed, all that is caught is the odd Blackbird, Dunnock or Robin and we are quite pleased. You never know, we might make the dizzy, dizzy heights of 250 before the year is out. You have to have dreams people, you have to have dreams.