30 Days Wild | Day 16 - my first Greenish Warbler

This morning just before I was about to have breakfast I bumped into Mark, one of the assistant wardens at the Observatory, who said he’d just trapped a Greenish Warbler in the Heligoland trap and they were about to ring it. I grabbed my camera and whizzed straight over there! Steve the warden told us it was incredibly the fourth Greenish Warbler they’d had at Bardsey this year – and in the same time period there’d only been ten records of this species in the whole of the UK so Bardsey was really getting the Greenish Warbler monopoly. It was a life tick for me of course! It looked very like a Chiffchaff, but with perhaps a slightly greener tinge, a longer pale supercilium and a narrow pale wingbar.

My first Greenish Warbler.

My first Greenish Warbler.

 A couple more HDR scenes from today:

When I showed Chris this photo, his comment was 'Craggy Island!'.

Down by the harbour.

Swallow painting for Brewood Ringers

A few months ago, Ben from Brewood Ringers got in touch with me via this blog to ask whether I would donate a painting to the ringing group, for them to raffle off to raise money for their activities. I was happy to oblige - a nice excuse to do something a bit different from my usual paintings for this blog (sorry about the lack of these lately!). I was given free rein but asked Ben if there were any species in particular that might be particularly relevent to the group; he suggested a few and from those I chose Swallow. I hadn't yet painted anything with similar colouration to a Swallow so was looking forward to working in this pallette; also I hoped that this would be a nice subject for a painting that someone would be happy to win in a raffle - everyone likes Swallows! I painted in my usual medium of watercolours; here's the finished painting:

Swallow watercolour painting.

And here it is in its frame:

Framed Swallow painting.

I delivered the painting to Brewood Ringers at the weekend, at one of their ringing demonstrations at Ashwood Nurseries near Kingstanding. It was great to meet them and catch the end of their demo; I got to release a Greenfinch :o) Afterwards we headed over to nearby Wall Heath to catch up with the Hoopoe that has been there all winter. There were a few birders there and it wasn't long before one of them found the Hoopoe, feeding and bumbling around in some long scrubby grass. This habitat didn't make for the best photos but we enjoyed some nice close views through binoculars; see if you can pick out the Hoopoe in my dreadful record shots below!

Greenfinch.

Me about to release the Greenfinch.

View full size to find the Hoopoe!

View full size to find the Hoopoe!

View full size to find the Hoopoe!

I hope the raffle ticket sales raise lots of money for the group, and that whoever ends up winning my painting likes their prize!

Introduction to bird ringing course

Yesterday I attended a one-day BTO course held (very conveniently for me!) at RSPB Sandwell Valley, 'Introduction to bird ringing'. The course did what it said on the tin - it was a great introduction to bird ringing - what, why, how, when and who! There were just 6 of us so we had plenty of opportunity to all have a go at handling the birds, putting rings on them and recording the data. Here are some photos from the day!

Holding a Song Thrush in ringer's grip - the easiest and most comfortable hold for both the bird and the person. I got to hold a Song Thrush and also to put a ring on its leg (while someone else held it!) :o)

Ageing a male Bullfinch by looking at the moult limit on the coverts, this seemed to be easier for some species than others! The paler coloured feathers to the left are juvenile feathers which have partially been replaced by adult feathers (darker coloured to the right) so we can tell this Bullfinch hatched last year.

A nice male Great Tit!

A lovely Wren! Birds can also be held by their thighs.

Hehe this is a great photo of a male Blackcap which I got to hold and release, I think the Blackcaps were my favourite.

The nets which we checked every 10-15 minutes for birds. Extracting birds from the nets is the hardest part and as such was only done by the experienced ringers present!

We caught so many Bullfinches! Sandwell Valley is a great spot for them. They are amongst the most flighty and easily stressed birds of all so they have to be ringed and released as quickly as possible to minimise stress.

The data sheet upon which information about the birds caught is recorded. There are codes for some categories e.g. species, age, body fat, muscle. Weight and wing length are also measured.

Rings are colour-coded by size. Depending on the species (and sometimes the sex within species if there is marked sexual dimorphism) different ring sizes are used.

Putting a ring on a male Chaffinch's leg. Maybe some of the skills learnt on my first degree (Jewellery & Silversmithing) will come in handy....

Measuring the male Chaffinch's wing.

Another way to hold some larger birds, the bunch of flowers grip - around the feet and over the tail and wings.

A Chiffchaff's wing showing how you can conclusively tell it apart from a Willow Warbler (I'm a little hazy on the actual details though!)

 I also had time to spot a couple more new plants to try and identify!

No flowers yet on this one so I will probably have to go back and double check when it is in flower. But for now I think it may be Smooth Tare (Vicia tetrasperma). Maybe it could be Slender Tare (Vicia parviflora) but it seems that that is much less widespread so less likely.

Actually I spotted this on Friday morning when we did the breeding bird survey, but didn't get a chance to photograph it. I think it is Shining Cranesbill (Geranium lucidum).

At the end of the day we spotted these two watching us from the horses' paddock by the railway bridge. What a great end to a super day :o)

Foxes!

Sandwell Valley - December

On Sunday I was once again volunteering at RSPB Sandwell Valley. Upon arrival in the car park the first thing we noticed was REDWINGS, they were everywhere, wolfing down the Rowan berries on a tree by the gate and making a racket in the trees behind the temporary visitor centre - some were quietly burbling an almost-song which I hadn't heard before, nice. For the rest of the day, we saw Redwings everywhere we went, there must have been hundreds on the reserve!

As there were plenty of volunteers for the hide in the morning, Alf and I went for a wander around the reserve. We had a good start seeing three Little Grebe together on the River Tame.

The River Tame.

I managed to get better views of Siskin and Lesser Redpoll than on my last visit, although they were still very mobile - we were able to sneak up on some in Alders by the marsh screen, in the poor light it took us a while to see what was what!

The unreliable light at least made for some nice views.

The island in the middle of Forge Mill Lake has been reprofiled and is now islands! It was pretty exciting to see the changes, the islands have been created to make more shoreline which will hopefully attract more waders, and they've been profiled so that they fan out from the hide - which means you get a great view down the channels between islands. So hopefully we will get better views of more birds, will be great to see how this develops over the coming months! These pictures aren't great, and unfortunately I wasn't able to find any good photos of how it was before, but hopefully they give an idea.

Looking towards the hide from the opposite bank.

View from the hide.

View from the hide.

The islands were mostly bare mud but we managed to find a few Snipe in or near some remaining vegetation. The Lapwings and Black-headed Gulls seemed to have adjusted to their new arrangements with no problems!

Before we went down to the hide for the afternoon, we stopped by the old visitor centre where a couple of ringers were working. While we were there they caught a Reed Bunting and a Magpie, a beautiful bird when seen close-up! Magpies are great, if they were rarer people would love them, they are dead handsome and charismatic!

Magpie in the hand.

Down in the hide, things were fairly quiet bird-wise - some of the usual ducks weren't around, we didn't find any Shoveler or Wigeon for some reason. I still haven't seen a Goldeneye at Sandwell yet this autumn, sure I've usually had one by now - I think they have been seen intermittently but not regularly. Maybe when it gets colder....... Still plenty of noisy Water Rail action, we didn't see any this time but they were fairly vocal.

Here are my drawings from the afternoon!

I overdid it on the Teal, don't like that one very much. So I decided to go the other way with the minimal Gadwall which I much prefer! Mostly happy with those Lapwings too although the middle one's body is a bit weird.

The gulls for the most part kept quite still which made it easier to draw them. For the most part so far, as a beginner, I have been sticking to more stationary birds, occasionally though I am attempting more active ones too - I tried to draw this Magpie really quickly as it foraged around next to the hide.

After closing the hide, we saw one of the ringers again on the way back to the visitor centre - this time with an awesome female Bullfinch which he kindly allowed me to take a few photos of:

Female Bullfinch in the hand.

Brilliant!

As it had been a while since I'd bought an RSPB pin badge I thought I'd treat myself! There were some great new designs that I hadn't seen before, there was a nice Barnacle Goose and a Reindeer. I always wonder who designs the badges, I think that would be a really fun job :o) Anyway, I liked the look of the Long-eared Owl, and when I looked more closely and noticed that it appeared to be slightly cross-eyed, my mind was made up!

My new cross-eyed Long-eared Owl! I guess its eyes should really be orange too....