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.

Ring in the new...

A milestone today - our first ringing session of the year (non-garden) and somehow there's a need to include Sabina in this experience. I set off early with David and Peter, opening the nets early enough to make it worthwhile, whilst Na brought the youngest member of the group along at about 10 (bang-on 10 in fact: German punctuality strikes again!).

It was a typical day for this time of year: a couple of feeders are occasionally topped up by one or another of us so that there is some focus to the birds during the winter, and consequently much of the catch is Blue, Coal and Great Tits. However, we continue to accrue some useful information about the number of Poecile tits on site: three Willow Tits caught, two recaptures and one new bird; all of them last year's juveniles.

Willow Tit (Poecile montana kleinschmidti). A rather small and neat bib on this bird, but you can see many of the key features which indicate Willow rather than Marsh: clean white cheeks, strong bill (and longer than Marsh) with no clear white spot at the base of the upper mandible, a rather dull and extensive black cap, a hint of a pale panel in the wing - and if you look carefully, a very different tail pattern than you'll see on Marsh.

A closer look at that tail - notice that the outermost feathers are rather shorter than the innermost, and that there is a clear view of most of the feather tips at regular intervals between the extremes. On Marsh, this would not be the case; almost all the feathers being similar in length except for the outermost pair, which are rather shorter.

A bit overexposed, but here you can see that nice pale panel in the wing... as well as seeing how long the cap is.

We also caught two new Marsh Tits, a female Reed Bunting and an unusually-marked male Great Spotted Woodpecker. The woodpecker appeared to be one of last year's young as well, with new glossy black greater coverts and mantle feathers contrasting very strongly with a set of unusually pale outer greater coverts and primary coverts. You might also be able to pick out in the picture that the secondaries also appear rather washed-out.

Young male Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major). Those pale wing feathers stand out a mile in the hand, but would be almost impossible to see in the field, I think. Would be fascinating to catch him again after the next moult and see what's happened there.

Female Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus). The amount of wear on the tail in particular suggested to us that this was a bird born last year.

Fuer Denise...

It's been a fun couple of weeks! The autumn ringing season's started up, so summer's out the way and we can concentrate on the fun of migration again - only semi-joking. Slapton started up last week, with a good first day - 133 new birds and another 20-odd retraps from previous years. Included within this total were about 25 new Ceti's Warblers - they seem to have had a decent year to put it mildly. Not included was this little baby: a Garden Warbler which could barely flutter along the path ahead of us. Carefully put into the scrub and left to call it's parents in, it was last seen chirping its way towards the sea, along the line of willow beside the road.

Juvenile Garden Warbler 

Female Reed Bunting. An old bird which is beginning to develop male patterns and colours in it's head markings

We were also pleased to see a brood of no fewer than 9 very young Tufted Duck heading down the channel with their mother. At the edge of the open ley, the whole family began to learn how to take the business of being a Tufted Duck very seriously indeed: nine fuzzy little ducklings attempting to dive for perhaps the first time was highly entertaining! Several managed to get the hang of getting under quite rapidly, but had problems staying under - their down must trap a lot of air - so would resurface with so much speed that they left the water entirely. Others struggled with the concept of diving: they would take the proper Tufted Duck leap into the water, but misjudge their strength and do something of a half-somersault, going under on their backs instead of headfirst...

Tufted Duck brood

Midweek I helped lead a Nightjar walk on the edge of Dartmoor. We met up at 9:30 p.m. and strolled across the heath at a birder's pace, making all of 200metres per hour. After a diminishing chorus of Mistle Thrush and Blackbird, with a smattering of Willow Warbler and Redpoll, the light drew out into a fine sunset and the first Nightjar began singing from some distance down the valley - sounding rather like a faint two-stroke engine, churring up and down in tone. As usual with the first of the evening, he soon petered out into silence, but then a male appeared from below us and slowly sauntered past us, wings flicking like some giant tropical swallowtail butterfly. He circled round us at about 50m distance in the fading light, then disappeared back into the valley in the same silent fashion. After a little while, two more appeared from above us, chasing each other around and about in near-darkness. A third bird briefly joined in and we were treated to a spectacular display of nocturnal aerobatics and the rather treefrog-like 'gwoink' flightcalls, with accompanying song from a couple of more distant males.

Green 'unripe tomato' spider, found along the edge of the heath

Sunset over Trendlebere Down

Today was spent on a speculative attempt to confirm the presence of breeding Willow Tit on Dartmoor. Several of the group met up at a site where a couple of the survey group had heard birds earlier in the year and put up a couple of nets to ring. Bizarrely we managed to catch a single juvenile Willow Tit, as well as seeing/hearing at least three others in the same area. By far the best result yet on any site, and finally proof-positive that they still cling on on the edge of the moors. A very instructive bird to see in the hand too!

Juvenile Willow Tit. Note particularly the bull-neck, the long black cap reaching far down the nape, the lack of a pale spot on the bill and the chunkiness of the bill as well.

Finally, some pictures of the garden, as the title goes. (Cue music)

Surveying Willow Tits...

Sunday last (1st Feb) we were out en masse to make sure we're all of one mind, one purpose, when it comes to surveying Willow Tit in the fringes of Dartmoor. Six of the seven assembled bright and pretty much on time at the designated woodland, whence we began our search. Here's how it went:

So where are these Willow Tits anyway? Perhaps it's a bit open in here...

...this looks a bit better. Everyone pay attention, now...



...no, none here either. Next patch of wet woodland (which NVC is this, anyway?!)...

...over this quite nice Rhos pasture...

...no, none in here either. Pay attention, Nik...

...and Tim leads the Willow Tit conga out of the woods...

The final result was surveyors 6:Willow Tits 0. We've a couple of hypotheses so far: either it was way too bleedin' cold and manky for any self-respecting Willow Tit to be out responding to playback, or Willow Tit records are scarce and sporadic in the county because they're not there. I know which one I think might be the truth, but I remain optimistic nonetheless.

A bit of background for you: Willow Tit Poecile montana is a very scarce bird in Devon, with just a couple of well-known sites providing the vast majority of records. It may or may not have undergone a range contraction, it may or may not still exist in a viable population here. Most of the more reliable evidence comes from the north and centre of the county, primarily north of Dartmoor, but there are a number of not-too-distant records from the eastern side of the moors, as well as the traditional site on the moors. The aim of the project is to begin to work out the status and distribution of the species on the north and eastern parts of the moors; mainly because that's where the vast majority of recent records have come from.

Watch this space?