An Exciting Morning

Had a really enjoyable morning, thanks to my varied interests in the natural world. I do like July, always have, autumn migration begins in the bird world, there's young birds all over the place (or should be - there wasn't last year!), and insects are out in force.

As this is a 'birding blog', I'll start with birds, and my second patch year tick of the month. Species number 178 to be precise - just 22 to go!

Whilst checking the contents of my moth trap this morning at Mum and Dad's (more on that later), a Crossbill flew west over chipping away. Last winter there were simply no Crossbills anywhere - so I was worried about getting this species on to my patch year list, thankfully though something of a mini-influx has taken place in the UK within the past few weeks. Interestingly, roughly half of my non-Morganhayes Woods patch Crossbills (i.e. vis mig birds) have been from Mum and Dad's. Couchill Woods is just over the hill, and the height makes it a good spot for vis mig in general. Most of them have been July/August too.   

I went down to Black Hole Marsh afterwards - to coincide with the high tide. Lots of Black-headed Gulls roosting, 380 to be precise(ish!). This included 18 juvs, along with one Med Gull. Sadly no Little or Bonaparte's yet, but I can feel it coming I really can.  Just for Laurie (and anyone else who wants to play) let's have a game of Spot the Med Gull...

There's three juv Black-heads in the photo too

Plenty of other juvenile birds about too, some locally born and others not so. Some of the locally hatched juvs included lots of Shelduck families, with most the ducklings looking like this...

But also a couple of new younger families like this...

The Oystercatcher chicks are no longer chicks. What a success story this is, one young raised in 2011, none in 2012 and THREE this year.  Here's one of the adults watching out so the rest of the family can rest...

Two juvenile Redshank (with ten adults) may have been locally grown, but the juv Little Ringed Plover certainly wasn't - my first of the autumn. Other waders here included three Dunlin (also my first of the autumn, all in smart summer plumage), three Lapwing, two Blackwits and at least six Common Sands.

Random I know, but here's a Goldfinch photo. I don't usually post photos of common birds, simly because I never take good pictures of them. With the exception of the grass head in front of its tail, I'm quite happy with this one...

They've got to be one of the flashiest of the resident common birds in the UK

Right, it's moth time now.

It was much cooler last night, with a bit of breeze at times too, so I wasn't surprised to have just 96 moths of 24 species in the trap. There were some excellent species amongst them though - some really nice variety.

Best of all was the garden's fifth Hawkmoth of the year, and only my second ever Small Elephant Hawkmoth...

I don't need to tell you which one it is. Clue is in the name :-)

A Dog's Tooth was a bit of a rarity for me to. They are a marshland/estuarine species really, and this is only the third one I've trapped in the garden...

Look at those sharp pointed 'teeth' at the end of the wing

Had another Crescent Dart in the trap too, my third of the year...

All three have been males

 And although not rare, new species for the year included these...

Light Arches (with a Dark Arches for comparison)

A Shark

To finish off the post, I always like to leave moths in a safe place when I've finished with them. But I even found this Buff-tip a mate...

Or so it thinks....

A Week Of Ringing

First of all, I'm going to get the negative part of this post out of the way...

Actually, I can't bring myself to write about it on here, so you will have to read about it here - would have been a patch tick!

I also dipped the Grey Plover today, looks like it departed the previous night. There was a Lesser Whitethroat though singing south of the track to Black Hole Marsh.

Ok, negativity over...

I have been an active C ringer for exactly a week now - though have restricted myself to my front garden just to see how it goes.

My front garden isn't that big, so I have only had one 20 foot net set...

The sun showing the net up nicely here - notice the 'cat scarer' on the lawn behind!

Out of the seven days, I've had a couple of full mornings with the net up, one half morning, and a couple of afternoon efforts. During this time I have trapped and ringed 57 birds - and this has included and shown some real surprises...

We've not seen a Marsh Tit in the garden for about a year, at least. So I was very surprised to be extracting one from the net at 10:10 this morning! The bird was a scuffy adult female, it had started its primary moult and had a brood patch which was just beginning to feather over. Be nice to think it had bred locally - and successfully...

What a treat!

Coal Tits have been rather scarce in the garden of late too, but I caught two within ten minutes of each other on the 6th! Both of these had also started their main moult - but these three Tits were the only adult birds I caught that had begun their post breeding moult.

For the past few months, most times I've looked out the front window there have been between one and three Bullfinches feeding on or under the feeders. So I was expecting to catch some - but I wasn't expecting to catch FIVE and still see at least THREE unringed birds still visiting the garden today! So what we thought were three birds, have actually been at least eight!!!

An adult male Bullfinch - stunning!

Goldfinch is another bird that we think there are only one or two of visiting our garden. I have only caught four, but there are still unringed birds coming in to our niger seed. I caught a pair together this morning, which offered a nice comparison of the two sexes...

Male on the left, female to the right

We haven't seen a Song Thrush in the garden since the winter. Yesterday afternoon out of the blue - I heard one, and at 07:05 this morning I caught one! She had a nice brood patch, so hopefully has some chicks in a nest somewhere near by.

So that's 13 of the birds that I've ringed, with the rest being a selection of the more usual garden critters. I just had to take a photo of this young female Greenfinch that I caught this morning....

With new ones growing!

This is a good example of how rather simple ageing techniques can become complicated! Tail shape is a good way of ageing most passerines, as young birds tend to have much more pointed tipped tail feathers than older birds. But when a young bird like this loses all its tail feathers, the feathers it grows in their place are blunt/rounded-tipped adult type feathers!

I am always impressed with the true picture that ringing shows. There arethe Bullfinches I've already mentioned, but it applies to the even commoner garden birds too.

How many people look out into their garden, see a Blackbird and think 'oh - there's the Blackbird collecting food for his/hers youngsters again'... I've caught two adult female Blackbirds in the front garden so far, and this afternoon there was an unringed female Blackbird picking around for food on the front lawn! Daily we grossly underestimate bird numbers - and ringing proves that so well.

Right I must go to sleep now, I have a Starling to look for in the morning....