Oldcrest and carr

Back out to do some ringing - it seems like forever since the last session, though in fact it's only (only!) a month. My glamorous assistant cried off late on Saturday evening, so I had the site to myself - and as wife and child are living it up in Germany for a couple of days, I had the luxury of no guilty conscience at work by the end of the session...

Having only filled feeders the morning before, I had little expectation of being overrun by birds and this proved to be the case. Sure, Blue Tit and Coal Tit made up the bulk of the catch, but there was plenty to appreciate. For instance: a Song Thrush. We only catch one or two each year on site, and have as yet had no recaptures or recoveries. The site is very edge-of-range - on the fringe of the high moors - but there are always a few pairs breeding in the adjacent conifers. What will happen when the conifers are felled and replaced by (presumably) native broadleaves? That will be interesting!

Old Coal Tit. Given the text in the Helm family guide (Tits, Nuthatches and Treecreepers), this ought to be a male, with such an extensive bib. We just don't catch them in the breeding season to be able to confirm!

For the first time, a Sparrowhawk managed to stay in the net. We've had a couple of near-misses with this species in the past: a male low in the net last autumn managed to extricate himself before we could reach the net, and the year before that one left its dinner in the bottom of a net, in the shape of a freshly-plucked and trimmed Woodpigeon pullus. Yesterday, however, I turned the corner to a net and there was a male Sparrowhawk, neatly cushioned in the bottom shelf and glaring balefully up at me. I carefully disentangled him and took him back to the car to be ringed, measured and weighed - I wonder if he's the same bird as previously escaped?

Sparrowhawk. Talons safely the other side of my mitt.

The Willow Tits at the southern end of the site appear to have paired up. Both were in the net together and flew off together when weighed and released. It would be nice if they managed to breed successfully this year - last year's nest failed. The male was originally caught in October 2010, so is now a very experienced bird within his territory.

Yesterday produced a handful of experienced individuals: two Coal Tits which were originally caught in January 2011 and a Goldcrest first caught in September 2011. The latter is always somewhat impressive: that a bird which weighs in the same as a sheet of A4 paper, or a 2p piece should survive year-round on Dartmoor is somewhat admirable. The longevity record for Goldcrest in the UK is a whole 4 years, 2 months 24 days, so this one's got a while to go before he reaches the record, but he's doing well nonetheless!

With it being a quiet day, there was also opportunity to admire the lichens and mosses on the trees around the car, to seek out the tiny red stars of Hazel flowers and to relish the willow carr - such an under-appreciated habitat. There are patches of carr woodland on site which are breathtakingly rainforest-like. Walk into them and the air is redolent with the fresh damp greenness of the carr. Old fallen willow stems snake across the ground, starring out from the original tree's base with linear thickets of young poles growing vertically from them. The old stems are felted with a luxuriance of mosses and lichens, whilst the young stems remain grey and smooth. The boggy ground between the wood is a verdant carpet of plants bewildering in its complexity of form and colour so that the eye just sees green at first, but has to then pull back, refocus and concentrate to appreciate the subtle beauty. Drips and drops fall all around and everything seems to pulse with moistness: whatever you touch, wherever you step, wherever your hand lands...

Hazel flower.

Masses of elf-cups, Cladonia pyxidata (I think) reach up from old willow stems in the carr

Another Cladonia lichen, this time coniocraea amidst a mat of Hypnum mosses

Drips and drops - decomposition is rife within the carr. This seemed a better picture than the remains of the frog.

Peltigera lichens and the moss Kindbergia praelonga grow over one another on the ground.

Sparrowhawks and butterflies

Here we are again. More outside work, more plants and more invertebrates. Some ringing at Slapton again at the weekend - nearly 200 birds caught and ringed, of which only 20 were retraps from previous ringing: autumn's well on the way now. Pick of the bunch were the first Grasshopper Warbler of the season and a superb male Sparrowhawk, who posed briefly for a few pictures. An evening bat-detectoring by the bridge produced a few Daubenton's and an abundance of both 'normal' and Soprano Pipistrelle, as well as what was probably an Otter swimming directly below us down the channel to the lower ley. By that stage of the evening it was well dark, so outline was all we had to go on, but it seemed a little big for Mink... A probable, it remains.

Second-year male Sparrowhawk

Juvenile Sedge Warbler

Magpie Moth

Beyond that, I've been out surveying recently - rain seems to be more abundant than anything else at the moment. Oh well...

A nice patch of mire...

Upper end of a mire on the pebblebeds. The rushy-looking stuff is actually a mix of rushes and Black Bog-rush

Rhynchospora alba White Beak-sedge

Some interesting lichens today: Roccella species on some coastal rock crevices, as well as Long-headed Clover and some of the more expected species (Golden Samphire, Madder, Sheep's-bit for instance). Then we were rained off - drenched off, really.

Trifolium incarnatum Long-headed Clover

Roccella fuciformis and fucoides

Some very bedraggled Six-spot Burnet moths

Serratula tinctoria Saw-wort

Marbled White

We also made it to Basti & Laura's birthday do on Sunday, after ringing, which was a bit of a laugh. Fortunately some protection from the weather

Arturo, Jo, Basti, self, Antje and Michael...

Autumn days & fungi...

Hm. Been busy since the last post. Wednesday was spent on a bat-finding course; all very interesting and a quartet of nice species seen in the various roosts visited: Whiskered, Brown Long-eared, Lesser Horseshoe and Common Pipistrelle. Not a lot to say about the day, beyond the fact that it was fascinating. Future visits and future updates on bat work will follow...

Quick visit to Cambridge for some work (and good GRIEF it's boring driving up and back) - enlivened by a Red Kite en route...

Today I met Na for a wander in the woods (not a euphemism, I hasten to add). Her friend Kim accompanied. A saunter around the Bovey valley woodlands produced few interesting birds, although our first Redwing (Turdus iliacus) of the autumn were pleasant sounds: always nice to hear them tseer-ing overhead. Warm enough for some inverts to still be in flight, with a colony of mining bees a pleasant diversion for a short while. The highlight of the walk, though, was the variety of fungi on the stumps, branches and soil - well into the double figures for variety of shape and form - presuming all were different species. Some photos of them below; all mercifully unidentified! We also saw another of the leaf-type lichens, similar to that from Rifton the other day...

The lichen first: had to climb the bridge over the Bovey and cling to the relevant tree to get near enough for even this shot. If you care to scroll to the Rifton picture, you can see the difference in the shape of the spore capsules - I assume this means they're different species...

The final fungus of the day, shown first - I'm being contrary. 

A bracket fungus on a treestump...

On the trunk of said tree, these were growing...

...as were these.

Cleaning nestboxes - niiice...

Spent today cleaning out the nestboxes in mid-Devon, which are up as a Pied Flycatcher 'RAS' project. RAS (Retrapping Adults for Survival) basically involves long-term monitoring, of Pied Flycatcher nestboxes in this case, over several years. Young birds are ringed and adults retrapped each year to monitor their survival and movements both within and between sites over the years. Interesting stuff, but the end of the year is the grim bit - cleaning out the nestboxes and checking for the chicks which failed to make it. This summer seemed to be fairly good, as we found just a handful of decomposed corpses in the boxes, as well as a couple of nests with unhatched eggs. However, it's also the most important bit - now we know the boxes are clean and ready for whoever wishes to roost there over winter - including dormice! The day was enlivened by the constant squeakings of Long-tailed Tits and Goldcrests, with the odd Raven 'gronking' overhead.

Best find of the day was this rather fine lichen, fruiting away on a fallen tree:



I'll name it when I can!

I've also finally managed to upload a few more pictures from the Isle of Man work this summer on www.jerbarker.co.uk - feel free to have a wander over!