Busman's Holiday

I'm back in Blighty after another successful season at Falsterbo. The last few days of the season were, in contact to last spring when we were catching single figures, quite productive; on the last day (10th June) we caught 33 birds in the standardised plus nine ‘extra catch’ including another second-year male Common Rosefinch.

There are no obvious in-the-field clues as to the sex of this bird — apart from the fact it was singing, of course. The bird was in breeding condition so, in the hand, the cloacal protuberance confirmed the sex as male. This bird, like several of the other second-year birds we've handled this year, showed an orangey wash to the marginal coverts; I wonder if this is a feature that can be used to sex second-year birds. I need to handle some confirmed second-year females to test this theory out.

As on all four of the second-year Common Rosefinches we've ringed this year, this bird had moulted some outer primaries. Compared to the other birds, the moult of this bird was rather extensive with the seven* outer primaries moulted. Interestingly it had also moulted the corresponding primary coverts plus PC1 (innermost), i.e. P1–3 and PC2–3 were unmoulted. It had also moulted the inner two secondaries on both wings.

The moult limit the primary coverts and the difference in feather quality between the new and old primaries was best detected by holding the wing at an oblique angle.

*Just about visible in this photograph is the unmoulted P10 (outermost) on the right wing; on the left wing this had been moulted.

Despite best laid plans, I spent my last few days in Sweden taking care of cleaning the station. I did get out to do the bird counts; a pair of two of Garganey, some returning Spotted Redshank and a pair of breeding Red-necked Grebes were the best sightings.

We also took care of ringing some nestlings in the lighthouse garden, like these Blue Tits:

Though with the late breeding season, some birds, like these Great Tits, were still too small to ring:

Back in Liverpool, in between having teeth ripped out [interesting fact: the roots on my wisdom tooth were bent through 90°. That, as the dentist pointed out, meant they were 'nicely lodged into the bone and needed a lot of effort to get them out'. Yes, thanks...], I've been ringing in my and in my nan's garden. I tried targeting one of my favourite species, House Sparrow, and succeeded in catching three (two males and a female).

And what else? In no particular order: this I thought was extremely funny and probably very useful.

For anyone interested in bumblebees, Bumblebees of Britain and Ireland, an app that we've been working on for a while now, has just been published — and it's great, though I would say that, wouldn't I?

And a request. This worked quite well last time so it's worth another go... I'm trying to get hold of this paper from Australian Field Ornithology but I'm too tight to shell out the AU$33 price-tag. Anyone?

That'll teach me

Marcel and I have been taking the ringing for the last couple of days so this morning Sophie took care of proceedings. I slept in. If I'm brutally honest, after several 02:30 starts, I was quite glad of the extra time in bed. Then my phone rang...

A phone call on your morning off is always met with a mix of excitement and dread. This time it wasn't too bad: a Common Crossbill. A really good bird in the nets and a species that would have been new in the hand for me but I made the decision to stay in bed and my head was back on the pillow within minutes. Then a second phone call: a Barred Warbler. Drat. So off I went to the lighthouse.

The bird was a second-year male with, for a Barred Warbler, relatively straightforward wing moult: P8–9 and the corresponding primary coverts, and S5 have been moulted pre-breeding. The new P5 was only on the right wing (accidental loss?) while on the left wing S6 was pre-breeding and S5 was old.

Back at the station this afternoon, we were sat in the garden chilling with the kids when Oscar shouted something. It was in Sweden so we had no idea what he was saying... but we looked up to see an adult Long-tailed Skua passing low overhead!

© Oscar Danielson

Not really something that was high on our list of expected things to see flying over the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon!

Gök

Quite a lot has happened over the last week or so and, despite it being June, we've been catching quite a few birds — somewhere in the high teens most days, compared to single figure catches this time last year. There have been a couple of Cuckoos (Gök — pronounced Jerk. Sort of.) around, a species that very rarely gets caught during the standardised ringing; so after the morning's ringing we set up a couple of nets north of the garden to specifically target them and soon caught one bird.

It's fair to say that both Marcel and I would have sexed this bird as a male; except that when we blew on its belly we found it was carrying an egg. Perhaps sexing Cuckoos using plumage isn't as straight forward as we thought?

Both age classes of Cuckoo undergo a more-or-less complete winter moult. Occasionally some secondaries are retained, which allow the bird to be aged, though in this case this individual had undergone a truly complete winter moult.

Consequently, it was aged as a 2+cy (EURING 4); however, it seems to be the case that second-year birds often show some brown markings to winter moulted feathers (i.e. a sort of immature plumage) — compare with the bird below from this time last year, which was also aged as a 2+cy but was probably a second-year.

The grey male-like plumage, combined with the rather clean yellow iris, makes me think that this week's bird was likely a 3+cy (EURING 6).

It's also worth taking a look at the identification of this week's bird. It's a Common Cuckoo, of course (at least I hope it is!), but the differences between Common Cuckoo and Oriental Cuckoo don't seem to be particularly clear. The vent, for example, is ochre-tinged right to the tip of the longest undertail coverts (a feature typically associated with Oriental Cuckoo) and crossed by clear heavy bars.

The underwing shows quite an obvious, extensive and perhaps rather square white panel at the base of the primaries, contrasting with the dark mid-area of the underwing. Thankfully the barred leading edge/underwing primary coverts are typical for Common Cuckoo and, if we faff about counting the bars on the underside of the primaries (Lindholm & Lindén, 2003), we find this bird shows something more than 40 (= Common). With a wing of 226 mm, it also falls outside the given range for Oriental.

Other odds and sods over the last 10 days or so have included a couple of Red-breasted Flycatchers, including this bird with diluted plumage:

A couple more Common Rosefinch:

And — thankfully with less of an attitude problem than the rosefinches — two Hawfinches. An adult female:

And a second-year male:

Yesterday and *that* sparrow

Tales of ringing discovery are usually pretty boring — “I walked up to the net and there it was” — so at least there's a prefix to the story of how the Spanish Sparrow came to be. I was in the ringing hut working on my laptop when Marcel stuck his head through the door and said, “I've just had a Spanish Sparrow fly in off the sea.” Huh, wtf? Then he was gone again. There was an element of bitter-sweet in his voice: he's just found a second* for Sweden but why couldn't have been something a little less... Spanish?

I followed Marcel out to north of the garden. Fully expecting the bird to have flown straight over and kept on going, I was surprised when Marcel told me it had dropped into the bushes north of the garden. He even had photographs to prove it! The bird didn't stay there for long, though; it soon flew over the golf club garage and dropped into the middle of the lighthouse garden. After a couple of hurried phone calls to say there was a Spanish Sparrow around, we went back into the lighthouse garden. And now comes the clichéd part were we walked up to the net and there is was.

A sight I'm not sure anyone expected they'd ever see — male Spanish Sparrow in front of Falsterbo lighthouse.

*It seems that the Falsterbo bird is the same individual that was originally seem in Småland the other week (the first record for Sweden). There's also a female currently on Gotland.

The bird was a male, of course, and was aged as a 2+cy (EURING 4). The species might be possible to age using e.g. covert pattern, but we haven't really got much experience with Spanish Sparrow(!); iris colour proved inconclusive.

The fun wasn't over just yet. As the sparrow was being shown to the crowds, we caught this:

Perhaps this is a stupid question, but wtf is it?! If this had been September we would have had no problems ringing this bird as a 1cy Barn Swallow... but it's May.

The tarsi were unfeathered, in case you were wondering.

At least we knew what the next good bird we caught was:

This Greenish Warbler was it bottom shelf of the southwest corner net on the last net round of the morning. It's the first time I've handled this species and the thing that struck me most, oddly, was the broad square-tipped shape of the primaries.

As seems to be the normal pattern of events these days, today was much better for numbers but with nothing quite so notable ringed: the best of 52 birds was a second-year Common Rosefinch, our first of the season.

As is reported to be quite usual, this bird has moulted P6–10 (outermost), most obviously visible on the closed wing.

Even if the ringing failed to catch anything that set the phones buzzing, we managed a couple of notable field sightings while we were doing the net rounds: first, two Spoonbills flew north over (very rare birds here) and later in the morning a Bee-eater flew south over the lighthouse garden.

That was kinda unexpected

Can't stay too long. I've been in the field all day and now I'm ready for bed. But in short:

28 birds ringed. One Spanish Sparrow.

One Greenish Warbler.

26 other things.

And a nice migration of 8,000+ Dark-bellied Brent Geese this evening.

Autumn already

It's been raining for the last two days so there's been no ringing. The few days prior, however, have been quite good. On Friday night we headed back to the Malmö River Warbler, a bit earlier in the evening this time. It paid off and, although the bird wasn't singing as much as last time, we managed to see it as it sat and sang for a minute or so in a dead elder tree.

We've had a couple of odd recoveries this week: first, we caught a Robin with a Finnish ring that had been ringed this spring at Lågskär Bird Observatory (thanks to Roni for the info) and then we found out that one of our Chaffinches from this spring was recovered at Gedser, Denmark. What's going on with all these birds moving south? Is it autumn already?!

As seems to be typical in the third week of May, following the end of the main passage of Common Chiffchaffs, we've been catching a few chiffchaff that (to a varying degree) approach tristis in plumage and measurements. In increasing order of tristisness:

The last bird should be a good tristis with plumage, wing formula and call all being spot-on. Only bare parts were a bit off for a 'classic' tristis — if a classic tristis even exists these days. The middle bird could be tristis but there are a few things wrong with it; and as for the top bird, well, that's anyone's guess. There's a bag of feather samples on its way to Aberdeen University so hopefully we've be able to pair some genotypes up with some phenotypes soon.

Actually, I'm really glad we caught the middle bird because it's exactly like the sort of bird that's been bugging me for a while (see e.g. this from last year). This bird didn't call but it looked a lot like last year's bird — worryingly tristis-like but with enough wrong about it to give you strong doubts. I've no idea where these birds come from or even what they might be the product of.

Here's a comparison underwing shot of the third bird and an abietinus we caught at the same time. As well as the colour difference, not also the difference in length and particularly breadth of P10 (outermost):

For comparison, here's the underwing of the middle bird in the series of three. Notice how the length of P10 is much closer to that of the above abietinus:

We haven't caught many shrikes this year — perhaps this has something to do with it? Two female Red-backed Shrikes we have caught give a nice hint at potential plumage differences between the age classes. Both of these birds were aged using iris colour (it seems to work well in shrikes; at least the birds fall neatly into two categories) and, on all the birds we've caught this spring, plumage has corresponded well with iris colour. The bird aged as a 3+cy using iris colour shows a grey head and rump and a blacker mask, while the bird aged as a 2cy using iris colour is browner overall.

After two days stuck in the house, we needed to get out and do some birding so this afternoon we headed up to Ängsnäset lagoon. Five Broad-billed Sandpipers were present yesterday; we were pleased to find they were still there, with the addition of one more individual.

A Common Crane and a White-tailed Eagle were over the heath.

Finally, I survived the London riots (remember when everyone said they would never reach Ealing?) but will I survive the Stockholm riots? Have they reached leafy Falsterbo?

Cuties and the beast

Ringing this morning was much busier then yesterday but without the high-impact species. We did, however, catch a first for the lighthouse garden: a Great Reed Warbler. This species is regular in the reed bed at Flommen, so it's not that exciting on a wider scale, but still always a nice species to get in hand.

In the afternoon we joined Peter Olsson at Vellinge to help with his wader monitoring/ringing project. The afternoon was a success with three Lapwing chicks (first photo), five Dunlin chicks (second photo), an adult male Dunlin (third photo), an second-year female Ringed Plover (fourth photo), and a Ringed Plover chick.

We also watched first-hand one of the dangers to the nesting waders, a hungry fox. We found two predated Oystercatcher nests and Peter's nest camera showed that at least one of them had been predated by a (the) fox.

Many thanks to Peter for letting us come along.