WeBS; migrants

I spent a while today covering someone's Wetland Bird Survey count on Dawlish Warren - an hour-long snapshot of the waterbirds present on the site, my contribution to the network of surveyors looking at the Exe today, themselves a contribution to the national WeBS survey data collected each month for the British Trust for Ornithology, who use it in part to gauge trends in waterbird populations.

Being a sunny day and a mid-afternoon count in mid-March, I wasn't expecting a great deal out of the survey, and add to the mix the fact that today was Mothering Sunday - and you can see that there was plenty of potential for people to be out and about on the beach. Sure enough, when I arrived the beach was packed to the gills; a few hardy souls even in the water. The northerly wind was keeping the swell down to nothing though, so checking the sea was a cinch - and there were only just more birds than waves. A measly half-dozen Great Crested Grebes was it...

On down to the pond beside the visitor centre, where in addition to a fine drake Teal with three females, a Chiffchaff sang lustily from the high willows, whilst another called quietly in the willows just in front of me. Buoyed by this sign of a rapidly-turning season I headed on to the main wader roost. Nothing much along the seafront - two Knot roosting on a groyne the best of it - and plenty of people walking the beach even this far up. The tide was still some way off the bight, so after a rapid scan of the waders there I headed off to check the end of the sandspit.

Here was another sign of spring arriving: a fine male Wheatear flipped off ahead of me, from behind a mix of stone-grey, black and white, then a rich apricot-buff when he turned to check whether I was still walking his way. The point proved as enduringly birdless as the rest of the beach, and so I headed back towards the main roost along the riverside. An immediate reward came in the shape of a small flock of Sanderling, still in their silver-grey plumage and without any hint of the freckly ginger-rust they will develop soon for their summer plumage, who skimmed along the waterline and landed within a couple of metres of me. Heads bobbing with initial alarm, they soon settled down and began trotting along the water's edge, dipping erratically to grab small invertebrates as the waves washed across the sand.

Sanderling, trotting gently along the sands. Perhaps having wintered in South Africa, and on the way to the high Arctic to breed.

On to check the bight again, where the main wader roost usually occurs on the Warren. Not many birds, as most of them have headed off towards their breeding grounds - but there was a massed pack of Oystercatchers, all black backs spiked through with orange bills, a couple of Curlew sauntering impassively along the edge of the water in search of a tasty crab, and a fringe group of small waders - Knot and Dunlin - silver-grey, picking daintily into the shallow water for crustaceans and molluscs. Lurking on the fringes were a trio of Ringed Plover, all black bands laid across white and brown, a huddle of Turnstone on a fishing boat and a lingering group of Brent Geese - another of the species which has pretty much gone for the summer now.

Brent Geese - the last few lingering on the Exe will soon be heading off to the tundra of Arctic Russia, via the Waddensee - a massive area of intertidal mud between Germany and Denmark.

Most of the waders and almost all the wildfowl have now gone north, perhaps to Scotland and northern England or to staging posts on their way to the Arctic, but for a month or six weeks yet we'll see a gradual turnover of birds which wintered further south still: Ringed Plover, Turnstone and Sanderling, Bar-tailed Godwit and Whimbrel which have avoided our gloomy winter and lived it up on the sandy beaches of western and southern Africa.


True to spring weather form, the rain began as I headed back to the car, so only a cursory check for interesting plants on the way back - one day I will spend  little more time looking through the dune grassland to see what I can find lurking...

A Badgerlicious, Hobbytastic, Ottercamposity kinda day

Well, who'd have thought it? We started out at a quarter to five of the Saturday morning clock, and wound our way smoothly to Somerset, in order to run the second of three wader surveys. We arrived safely, sorted the paperwork, and set off in our separate directions...

A short while later I was staring down the muzzle of a loaded badger; primed and ready to strike. We faced each other. The tension was palpable. Gingerly, it reached forwards, snuffed delicately at my ankles, then turned and ran like hell. The danger passed, I heaved a sigh of relief and began my survey.

The badger, on it's approach run...

and again, just prior to ankle-sniffing activity

Anything after that would be an anticlimax, but having confirmed the presence of at least two and perhaps three pairs of Lapwing on site, and the wholly scientific 'shedload' of Yellow Wagtails (a bit more than a fair number, but fewer than a whack), we left with pleasure to explore the marvels of Shapwick Heath, part of the Avalon Marshes project. The weather was better than forecast, and the birds were carolling their usual abuse at each other; we rapidly picked off a selection of migrants, including some very smart Garden Warblers. The dragonflies were also emerging: Four-spotted Chaser, Hairy Hawker (not a street trader, though it should be), Large Red, Blue-tailed, Azure and Variable Damselfly, and Banded Demoiselle all on show, and in the background, the introduced green frogs - whatever they are, be it pool, edible or marsh frog - were doing their level best to deafen us. The show belonged to the Hobbies, however. Everywhere we looked, there was a Hobby. And another. Another beyond that... and so on - we finally cracked when we looked up and saw a flock of 39 Hobby hawking for insects above our heads, with another 6-10 easily visible in a quick scan of the surrounding countryside - it just couldn't get any better than that...

Yellow Wagtail. A male. Just part of the consignment.

Shapwick Heath. It's Hobbytastic.

Finally, Otters. Shapwick is now well known as a site to see otters, so there's reference aplenty to otter-watching in the logbooks in the hides. This, however, deserves special mention...:

Oh yes...

Top notch, whoever you are...!

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?

Popping in - popping out...

Gap post...

Just back from 2 months' contract on the Isle of Man - some pictures on http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff168/jerbarker/Isle%20of%20Man/ - and a week seawatching in Cornwall for Seawatch SW (www.seawatch-sw.org) and now off to Austria with N for a couple of weeks: catching up with some friends from the zoo, helping at the ringing station and showing N round some of my old haunts!

Work on the IoM was grand; breeding bird surveys, a wee bit of ringing and learning some new skills (boat-handling, mackerel-fishing, moth identification, for instance). The week in Cornwall was nice as well, with one or both large shearwater species seen most days and a healthy number of Balearics passing through. Also had 3 of the season's 11 Basking Sharks - a far cry from last year, when my co-worker and I had a peak count of 72 one day! Must be something to do with the weather...

A pic or two below for ye all...

(Red-billed) Chough Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax

Juvenile Peregrine Falco peregrinus

Black Guillemots Cepphus grylle in Peel harbour

One of numerous Hen Harriers Circus cyaneus attempting to behead me

Basking Shark Cetorhinus maximus

There's a few more at http://picasaweb.google.com/jerebarker/IsleOfMan as well, if you're interested.

And from Cornwall, a good bit of Cornish seawatching weather, as viewed fromthe watchpoint at Gwennap Head!:

More when I get back from Austria...

Surveys and sun

A bit of a change in the weather allowed me to do some surveys this last week: both tetrads for the bird atlas and roosting gulls on the Exe. The atlas squares were unremarkable in the main, though it was great to hear Woodlark singing so early in the year on the first tetrad. The better weather also allowed me to get some ringing going in the garden, with a control Greenfinch as a very pleasant surprise to kick the year off with! (For those who don't know and want to, a control is a bird ringed by someone else that you've caught. The general rule is that it has to have travelled more than 5km to count as a control, to factor out the local movements that our birds potter through as a matter of course - in this case, none of my neighbouring ringers are admitting to having ringed this bird, so it should be the first proper control for the garden!)

Pre-survey birding on Saturday produced about 10 colour-ringed Brents on the estuary, although one of those had lost one colour ring, so is no longer individually identifiable. Pity... The others were mainly birds I've seen earlier in the winter, although one of them I hadn't seen since 2004, so it's good to know it's been lurking somewhere! The sour note of the day came later, when something went wrong with the steering on the car... Nothing obviously broken, and nothing leaking, but I bet it costs a pretty penny to fix!

The gull survey involved lurking at the confluence of the Clyst and Exe, counting the gulls coming from the northeast to roost overnight on the Exe. Not a great number of birds on our section; only a few hundreds, in fact, but those watching the Exe must have had a busy time of it - a fair stream of birds was passing downriver behind us for about an hour and a half. Will be interesting to see the combined results eventually. The evening was made by one of those sunsets that looks as if it's been photographed through one of those Cadbury's Roses red cellophane chocolate wrappers:

Looking from the end of the Clyst down the Exe towards Dawlish Warren

Sunday was, in it's own minor way, a quite exciting day: a ringing tick in the form of Siskin (yes, I know...) and a very pleasant wander along Exminster Marshes to Turf Locks. A colour-ringed Avocet (not the bird below, that's just an example of an Avocet) was nice, but judging by past results, I'll never hear anything about its origins. Bloody ringers...! The two Cattle Egrets were showing nicely in the sunshine, but not really worthy of photographs. Not much else of note on the river, although a flyby Peacock butterfly was pleasant to see. First butterfly for the year, and all that malarkey...

Male Siskin Carduelis spinus.

(Pied) Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta from Turf Locks Hotel, through the telescope

WeBS, ringing and birding

An interesting weekend in all... Dog-sitting for a colleague meant I had chance to trot round a fairly unwatched part of Devon in search of some birds for the Atlas - no great excitement, but a handful of typical woodland species including Marsh Tit and Nuthatch, with Redwing much in evidence in the evening.

The afternoon was spent in a largely bird-free Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) count on the Exe, where the main excitement was finding a nice juvenile Great Northern Diver on the estuary - unfortunately outside our count area. A sprinkling of waders included a very few Black-tailed Godwit, handful of Turnstone and a nice quartet of Greenshank. Best of the wildfowl were about 70 dark-bellied Brent Geese, travellers from the area round the Taimyr peninsula in Russia which winter in quite reasonable numbers on the Exe.

After dropping the dog back at its home, I then hoicked up a substantial amount of netting in the orchard at the end of our road to try and catch some of the thrushes which have been gorging on the windfalls...

Toady (Sunday) saw me up and out by 6.45 to open the nets, in order to leave the site as quiet as possible for the arrival of the thrushes. The first check was just about what I'd hoped for: half a dozen each of Blackbird and Fieldfare, followed up by a rather mixed bag of parids, finches and a Song Thrush - first I've ringed in the village. Now just hoping to get a decent recovery or control from one or more of these wintering birds!

Fieldfare gets it's own back... The unfortunate hands belong to Judith. This was the one adult male we caught; the rest being an adult female, 2 juvenile males, a juvenile female and an unaged female which was probably an adult. Really interesting to see a bird we don't often have chance to catch - lucky to have an orchard that could almost be tailored for ringing!