SCAN Curlew catch

The first two wader canon netting sessions of the ‘autumn’ are a highlight of the SCAN season. Primarily because they target Curlew & Ringed Plover both of which are beautiful, if not contrasting, species close up. Secondly because the weather in August is generally better than later autumn & winter catches. Even so I wasn’t expecting be wearing shorts & tee-shirt on what was forecast to be one of the hottest days of the current mini heatwave we’re experiencing in the UK.

Steve informed everyone attending that it was likely to be a dry catch so I opted for wellies and a pair of waterproof over trousers just in case we caught at a slightly later time than planned where we might get a bit wet. Far better than neoprene waders in this heat!

Unfortunately things didn’t go quite to plan and after meeting up with the rest of the team & parking up I went to change my footwear only to find I’d inadvertently thrown one of my wife’s diminutive size 5’s in with my size 9’s. Worse than that they were both for the right foot! Trainers and wet feet it was then! 

Crossing a small ford as we carried the gear to the designated net set point my trainers soon filled with a mixture of sand, black estuarine mud and salt water. Not unpleasant but after a while the heat being generated made if feel like my feet were being gently poached.

Setting the nets and digging the canons into a pebbly beach is sweaty work. The outline of the furled nets has to be broken up with tideline debris to make it look more natural. In this case sand infested rotting seaweed. 

Nets set we settled down out of site in the dunes, waiting for the tide to push the birds into the catching area, for the next couple of hours during which it got hotter and hotter and my feet slowly began to resemble boiled hams. The water proof trousers came in handy as I unzipped them to spread across my rapidly reddening legs. 

We could hear birds moving and radio messages from Steve & Lizzie, watching from a hide with the firing box, kept us informed of what was going on. Dozing in the sunshine I wasn’t expecting the sudden ‘boom’ as the canons fired. We normally get a 3,2,1 countdown but the approach of a plane that had previously caused the birds to lift resulted in a split second decision to take the catch.

Once the canons fired it’s a sudden change from inactivity to sprinting to the net to make sure the birds are  covered and kept safe & secure before extracting them and placing them gently in specially designed Curlew holding cages where they can stand up to avoid cramp. Curlews are easily stressed so all this takes place with the minimum amount of noise and ensuring the birds welfare.

A good catch of 67 Curlew was made along with a single Oystercatcher. A  number of retraps from previous years provided valuable data on adult survival rates. Birds were quickly ringed and then processed - aged, moult score recorded, wing length measured, bill length measured and finally weighed before releasing.

Holly and Anya demonstrating the correct way to hold waders with the legs allowed to dangle free so they don't end up getting cramp and /or damaged legs. Holding waders by the legs is a definite no, no.

Bill measurement

Wing measurement

Will weighing Curlew

Recording moult score. Three outermost primaries are old. One about 2/3 grown and inner ones new.

Moult is recorded from the inside out meaning the moult score of the inner primaries are recorded first. 

Biometrics help identify male and female Curlew with the females being larger with longer bills. They can also help us identify Scandinavian birds as they are bigger again - especially the females. 

Processing complete we packed the gear up and hand balled it to a point where it could be loaded into Steve’s truck. A sweaty squelch across the marsh. By this time my sodden, sweaty socks had been joined by equally sweaty shorts & teeshirt mingled with the aroma of rotting seaweed and Curlew poop. 

Arriving home, desperate for a cold drink and a shower, I was greeted by our two youngest granddaughters who’d come to play in our garden along with Indy the Labrador. The dog, having a more acute sense of smell, came towards me wagging her tail before wrinkling her nose and abruptly veering off to sniff something slightly more pleasant. The two girls came towards give me a hug, as I knelt down to greet, them before the youngest said, ‘Pooh, grandad you stink’ and ran off to say goodbye to their sweeter smelling nanny. Four year olds are nothing if not brutally honest. A great day and good to see some familiar faces and some new ones. 

Just to cap off a good day I was absently mindedly collecting the bins from the front verge when  I heard a familiar call overhead. It took a few seconds to register as, along with my iphone, my brain wasn't quite functioning as it should due to overheating - a migrating Curlew flying over heading towards the Dee Estuary. A good local record. 

Puffin Island seabird ringing

I've already written a blog post about our last trip of the season where we had a successful day ringing both adult and young Kittiwakes - see here

The first trip of the season was to ring Shag and Razorbill chicks as well as catching and ringing as many adult Razorbills as a we can - always an interesting experience for those unused to their fearless aggression. Handled correctly they can't really hurt you but be wary of relaxing your hold as they're just biding their time! The next trip concentrated on Cormorants and Guillemots whilst the third trip was primarily Guillemots.

Puffin Island from Penmon Point on a dull July morning

The chicks are more docile and many of them were almost ready to fledge. As with other alcid species young Razorbills fledge before they're fully grown and are known as 'jumplings' as they make there way down to the water jumping  (often from great height) to the parent waiting on the water.

Razorbill 'jumpling'

Although most of the Razorbill chicks were well grown there were still some smaller chicks around and some were to small to take a conventional ring. Steve & Rachel are licensed to use 'waxed' rings. These have a layer of wax on the inside of the ring that wears away as the birds leg grows. This needs special care to ensure the ring isn't too tight once the wax wears away.

Razorbill chick with waxed ring

The Cormorant colony is always fun to work in a masochistic way - as long you don't mind the smell and getting covered in guano and cormorant vomit. This consists of large identifiable pieces of fish and smells, understandably, rather fishy. Along with the stink of guano and the noise its a unique experience. It's difficult terrain to work in as the Cormorants nest on rocky outcrops along the cliff edge. As usual we colour ringed a sample of 200 young birds and ringed a total of 250. We only  go through the colony once to avoid to much disturbance and approach birds from below so they're not driven down hill and potentially over the cliff.

We ring only the chicks with well grown primaries, as in the photo above, as these have a better survival rate. There have been some interesting resightings of colour ringed birds over the years including birds in Spain and we've even seen a few off Hilbre.

In contrast to the solitary nesting Razorbills, Guillemots nest on tightly packed ledges. This usually involves crawling along fetid ledges but this year we were lucky as the dry weather had made the ledges much more hospitable. Groups of Guillemot chicks are held in folding mesh 'creches' before ringing and returning back to the exact spot they were retrieved from. As usual we tried to catch as many adults in an area first before ringing the chicks and this year we were lucky enough to catch an adult 'bridled' Guillemot. This form gets commoner the further north you get but are relatively rare on Puffin Island. Its a  genetic polymorphism rather than a separate species and thought to be influenced by a single gene. The reason why its commoner further north (up to 60% of Icelandic Guillemots are of this bridled form) is unclear. There has been some historic surveys done to determine the proportion of bridled Guillemots n UK colonies  - see here

The team ringing Guillemot chicks. Due to my recently dislocated shoulder I didn't feel confident I could climb back up so watched from above!

Rock Pipits are common around Puffin Island but, even though we run a colour ringing project for them on Hilbre, I've never seen a nest. Tom found a nest on Puffin Island but we didn't have any A2 rings. We took some with us on the next trip and the chicks were the perfect age to ring. A first for me! 

Eiders also nest on Puffin Island and we occasionally find the nests when ringing other species.

This was my 13th year ringing seabirds on Puffin Island and for me its a real highlight of the year. My first trip was in 2012 and I'm hoping to do a few more before I feel its getting physically to much for me! 

Hilbre Rock Pipit colour ringing project

Two years ago we decided to register a Rock Pipit colour ringing scheme for Rock Pipits on Hilbre. The main objectives of the project was to try and determine where our breeding Rock Pipits disappeared to in the winter, where the juveniles dispersed to and map the breeding territories of birds nesting on Hilbre & Middle Eye. In a good year Rock Pipits can have three broods of young and the islands can only support 4-6 breeding pairs. As with all passerines lots of young birds don't survive their first winter and older birds obviously die and we knew that there must be some new recruitment into the breeding population and colour ringing provides an ideal opportunity for us to study the small Hilbre population. 

Colour ringing means we can identify individual birds without having to recapture them. It also allows non-ringers to assist in identifying individuals. We also knew we get passage Scandinavian  'littoralis'  race birds as we'd 'controlled a Norwegian colour ringed bird on the 10th October 2016 so we were also hoping to catch and ring some of these birds. See here for information on that bird.

Once we'd got agreement from the BTO for  a colour marking scheme with the defined colour combination of blue darvic with three whiter letters on the right leg and a red colour ring above the metal on the left leg it was a case of waiting until we could get the colour rings made.  We consulted with the lead on a similar project in Scotland so we could ensure our rings were of the same size to ensure we could get approval and ordered the rings from AvianID in Cornwall. We eventually got the rings a few months later and started the project in June 2023.

We'd previously caught Rock Pipits using Potter traps baited with mealworms and, occasionally, caught them in our heligoland traps. It soon became apparent that spring traps would be more succesfull and a concerted effort was made to catch Rock Pipits. Between 2004 and 2023 Hilbre ringed 50 new Rock Pipits. Since the colour ringing project started in June 2023 we've caught and colour ringed 32 birds and have generated nearly 200 sightings both from Hilbre Observatory members and members of the public.

What has become apparent is that many of our Rock Pipits winter on the mainland with a whole host of sightings between Hoylake & Meols. One bird was even photographed on Hilbre and then photographed the next day at Meols before returning to Hilbre the following day before spending most of the winter on the mainland. Most of these movements have been between 5-7 km in a straight line.

We've also shown number of young birds returning to breed on Hilbre in subsequent years after fledging. of the 32 birds colour ringed only 6 were subsequently not seen again and these were all juvenile birds. The fate of these birds is open to speculation but a tantalising clue came in March this year. A juvenile was colour ringed with darvic CBF on the 9th of August 2024 and subsequently recaptured on 19th August on Hilbre. It wasn't seen again to I was tagged in a photograph on "X" taken at Bispham Prom near Blackpool  where Dave had photographed it! A movement of 85 km in a straight line.

Intriguingly we'd also had a report and a photo of a colour ringed bird at Egremont on the Mersey. This is 14.5 km in a straight line but unfortunately the code couldn't be read on the darvic

Hopefully the project will continue to give good results and, who knows, we may even get one of our birds seen even further afield than Blackpool.