North Wales Bird Ringing - Duck luck at last

Again, apologies for the lack of posting lately. Life mainly consists of uni work at the moment, and no-one wants to read about that. 

I have managed to squeeze in some birding and ringing here and there though. This weekend has been the most fun. 

On Friday night we went out wader netting, and although the catch rate was slow, we did get a nice range of species. Curlews, Bar-tailed Godwits, Redshanks, Dunlin, Snipe, Oystercatchers, Mallards and a Shelduck all managed to find their way into the nets. My night extraction skills are improving well now, just need the opportunity to practise some more. 

I've never had luck with ringing ducks. Over the last 2 years I haven't ringed a single species, despite SCAN making quite a few decent catches. They've always been caught on the sessions I've had to miss. Fortunately, I got to ring both of the mallards (nice adult male and female) and the shelduck on this occasion! My bad duck luck was well and truly broken. 

Saturday was spent doing a bit more uni work and then preparing for my Tenerife field course. I did manage to fit in some nice birding in the afternoon though. Zac, Conor and I headed out to Llanfairfechan reserve and notched up 27 species, with good numbers of Wigeon, and singing skylark and chiffchaff being the highlights. We then headed up onto Conwy mountain to try and see Chough. We didn't see any, but there were plenty I smart looking stonechats and we did bump into 5 other North West birders, including Rob Sandham and Rob Hughes which was nice. Finally we headed to Pensarn to try and see the surf scoter. Although there were the impressively large scoter rafts (Conor not seen these before), no surfies were found and I had to cut the search short as I needed to get back for climbing. All in all a very fun afternoon, and it felt enormously good to be out in the sunshine rather than stuck in the windowless computer room! 

I'm a little bit amazed at how early spring is this year. Hawthorn leaves are coming out, there's lots of blossom and daffodils around and I'm regularly seeing bees, butterflies and good insect numbers now. Plus all the birds are starting breeding. I've seen house sparrow and blackbird nest building, coot sitting on eggs and all the males have their summer song now. Great tits, chaffinches and song thrush are really making it sound like spring! I really hope we don't get a cold snap like last year, that might cause all kinds of problems for these early breeders. 

The next week will be taken up with a university field trip to Tenerife. I'm very excited and looking forward to learning about all the many and varied habitats and ecosystems on the island. 

Happy birding to all and I'll update again at some point before the end of March :-P

Weekend roundup

This weekend was typically busy and involved a lot of travelling. After a busy day on Friday, I packed the car with 4 boxes full of uni stuff (I'm starting to move out), and then headed over to Chris' in Ormskirk. We spent the night there and most of Saturday too. I spent the morning sorting out all my ringing details for my C permit application, not an easy task!

We then drove to my farm in Shropshire in the evening, which is conveniently close to the place where Chris was having his interview for Bardsey the next day. A nice, quiet, evening in with my parents was much welcomed after a busy week.

Sunday morning was a drive over to Penkridge for Chris' interview. Thankfully it went very well, and he's now just waiting to hear back. Fingers crossed! We then drove back to mine for a quick cup of tea before I dropped Chris off at the station, for him to head up to Dumfries (guess neither of us can sit still for long). I then spent the rest of the day with mum and dad, and helped mum sort out her new iPad. This was classically entertaining, with many wrong buttons pressed, but I think she's got the hang of it. I left there at 19:30 and was back in Bangor for 21:30. A quick car unpack, shower, room sort and prepare for the morning was all I had time for, before my brain totally gave out and I got some sleep.

This morning was a 6am start for my first February ringing session! Despite some unwelcome drizzle, we had a good session with ~50-60 birds. Conor (new trainee) managed to make it along this morning, and I think he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. He's one of the keen birders from the uni, and I'm glad I've helped him get into ringing. I'm hoping he'll be the replacement chairman of the Uni Birding group once I'm gone, as well as taking over the BTO Student Ambassador role, and my nest recording site in Abergwyngregyn. The ringing session itself did wonders for boosting my confidence, and consolidated the fact that I feel ready for my C permit. 

So, after a long weekend, I've travelled ~400 miles, and suspect it'll be the same again next weekend with a trip down to Cheltenham to meet the team I'll be working with on Skomer.

Ringing update

Whilst looking through my ringing records tonight, I discovered that I'd somehow managed to omit Nuthatch from my overall species list. This means that the Little Grebe I hand caught whilst lamping on the 23rd January was actually my 75th species ringed! I just thought it was nice that my first lamped bird bought my ringing diversity to such a nice total number.

Also I'm pleased to say I'm currently filling in my C permit application. Hopefully I'll be an official, full C permit holder by the end of the month, at the latest!

Weekly round up

After a great night out on Friday (31st) to celebrate getting the Skomer job, Saturday was a day for catching up on odd jobs and then getting my weekly climbing session in with Adrienne Stratford. We've both improved a lot since we became climbing partners in late December. I can now comfortably lead 5c routes and have even managed 2 6a routes too. Not bad considering 1 1/2 months ago I struggled with 4c routes. (Apologies to non-climbers, that probably made no sense!).

Sunday was a beautifully sunny day so Zac, Conor, Hamza and myself went for a lovely birding walk around the Bangor area. This resulted in 74 BirdTrack records, of 42 species and 4 complete lists. Highlights of the day were 4 Goosander at close range, a great tree climb, much birding banter and 20 more UBC records. 

Monday was a day trip to John Moores Uni to help Kelvin Jones give a BTO talk to some of the 2nd year biological students, my first external trip as BTO Student Ambassador. I found the talk fascinating, and at least a few of the students seemed quite responsive to the idea of volunteering with the BTO. Hopefully by educating them now, some of them will come back to volunteer with us in the future. It was also good fun seeing what (at least part of) Kelvin's Development Coordinator role involves. There's such a diversity of roles within the BTO, and it was nice to see this side of the organisation, rather than my standard ringing / surveying involvement.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday have all been uni work days. I have managed to sneak in some birding along the way, and have added another 19 records to UBC BirdTrack. Zac and I are keeping the record / species rate high and are hoping to win these two categories this year! Also had another good climbing session and am really making physical and mental progress now...it's a shame I won't be able to climb with Adrienne once I get on Skomer :-(

The weekend (plus Friday) is going to be another busy one, with a blood donation, lectures, driving to Chris' on Friday and then over to mine on Saturday night to take my first load of luggage back home (starting the moving out process). Then I'll drop Chris at his Bardsey interview on Sunday before spending the day with my parents and then back to Bangor! Lets hope the wind and rain don't stop me!

Skomer Job

I'm incredibly excited, pleased and proud to say I got the Skomer Job! So from 14th April I will be on the island, working for Dr. Matt Wood of Gloucester University, studying the adult survival, nest success etc of the breeding seabirds! 

I really can't believe the luck I'm having at the moment, and finding it hard for all the good news to sink in.

After handing in my final January assignments this morning, I've had a well earned afternoon off. I had a celebratory lunch with some friends, and now preparing for a celebratory night out. It'll be my first proper night out of the academic year, so lets hope it goes well. 

Happy birding to all, and hope none of you get washed / blown away in the coming storm. It's certainly stopping any mist or cannon netting attempts around here!

Mensa Acceptance

I am delighted and proud to say that I've been accepted to join Mensa! 

I sat the Mensa IQ Test on Saturday 18th, and today a letter arrived with the scores from the 2 test I took. One result puts me in the top 2% of the country, and the other in the top 1%! I'm not usually one for posting things like this online, but I'm proud of this result and wanted to share it :)

My acceptance letter with IQ scores and percentiles

Weekly roundup

Most of the early part of this week was taken up with preparation for a dissertation presentation on Thursday. This left little time for getting out and birding/ringing.

I gave my presentation at 09:10 on Thursday morning, which went very well, and then spent the rest of the day listening to 20 other talks. They were all very interesting, and have given me some more ideas for routes that my own dissertation can take. By 6pm I was quite shattered and actually had to have a nap. However, I found myself wide awake again by 9pm and decided to join Chris (@CJBridge) and Hamza (@HamzaYassin3) on a drag net attempt for Jack and Common Snipe at a new site on Anglesey. What a brilliant decision this turned out to be!

The drag net attempt wasn't very successful, but as Chris and Hamza marched ahead with the net, I spotted something interesting in one of the pools 30ft away. I had Chris' lamp and, keeping the eye shine in the beam, I gently crept close enough to see that it was a Little Grebe! It then floated into the reeds at the side of the pool, which meant I couldn't see it anymore. Unfortunately there was a small creek (3ft deep) between me and it. I quietly crossed this (in waders), sneaked back to the reeds I thought it was in, knelt down on the bank and then leant out over the water with the lamp. I'd got the distance just right and the grebe was there below me. It was intent on looking into the beam, so I managed to lean out a bit further and catch it from behind, before it had time to dive. This is the first bird I've ever lamped and for it to be a hand caught Little Grebe was particularly special. 

The other two had made it 30m further up the marsh by this point, but a celebratory shout bought them quickly back to me, drag net abandoned! We then took this delightful little bird back to the car for ringing and processing.

My first Little Grebe and first bird lamped !

These are incredibly calm birds when caught and it happily sat in my lap, with no restraint, whilst I put the ring on and took full biometrics. It even sat obligingly on the scales with no pot or bird bag: 

Sitting pretty

Chris had a go at lamping some snipe after this. He came very close to a Jack Snipe, but it decided to fly before he could get close enough to net it. Despite a snipeless night, we all left very happy!

On Friday I had a well earned rest from work, and spent the day birding with Chris. We finished the day off back at the drag net site, this time with Chris lamping on the beach. Remarkably, the first bird he saw and caught was a Woodcock! It was bizarre to catch this bird on a beach, but a very welcome addition to Chris' woodcock totals. He then followed this up with a lovely adult Ringed Plover.

On Saturday morning I finally gave up waiting for good weather and did my WeBS count. 20-30mph winds and driving rain didn't help whilst counting diving ducks in choppy lake water, but I did manage to get a good final count of 470 ducks (Teal, Tufted Duck, Wigeon, Mallard, Goldeneye, Shoveller, Gadwall and Pochard) plus Coots, Grebes, Grey Herons and 2000+ gulls (Black-headed, Herring, Common and Great Black-backed). One particularly bad 10 minute storm had me, Chris and Hamza cowering in a hide whilst 40mph winds kept blowing the poorly latched door open. Thunder and heavy rain added to the atmosphere as all the ducks dived for cover, and the surrounding area turned white with spray from the lake.

View from the hide. Usually you can see green fields all around.

The rest of the day was spent doing more uni work.

Today (Sunday) was a quick trip home to my farm in Shropshire, for Sunday roast, and for my parents to meet Chris' parents. Thankfully the horrible weather eased up after lunch so we all had a chance to get out for a walk! All in all a lovely day and nowhere near as stressful as I was expecting the first parent meet to be. 

I'm now back in Bangor and ready for lectures to start again tomorrow.