Kilcoole-ringed bird in Waterford

Just a very quick blog today. We have a week of catching attempts (and hopefully some ringing and radio tagging!) ahead of us, so there’s lots to do!

I’ve just heard that one of the Kilcoole-ringed Oystercatchers, which was first noticed on Garrarus Beach, Co. Waterford in December was seen again on the 9^th of January on the same beach. We can’t say for sure which bird this is, as no one has managed to read the inscription, but the red ring on the left leg means that it can only be one of three birds. Who knows where the other two in the brood have gone to?

One of the Kilcoole-ringed Oystercatchers on
Garrarus beach, Co. Waterford. Liam Walsh 

We’ll let you know how this week’s catching goes in due course.

NT

Homework

Happy New Year and welcome to the first Dublin Bay Birds Project (DBBP) blog of 2014. I’d like to introduce myself; I am Ricky Whelan the new DBBP Assistant, I hail from Laois but have spent the last number of years working on bird conservation projects and reserves in the UK. You will see my name from time to time on the blog and may come across me as I carry out fieldwork. Regardless of what the lack of blogs may suggest we have been very busy with the project over the past number of weeks. In addition to completing a suite of core counts and all day watches we are now busy preparing for targeted ringing, catch and mark attempts later this month.

With the aid of a “Catch Team” from Scotland we want to catch and mark a number of bird species that frequent Dublin Bay. We also intend to fit a number of suitable birds with radio tags in order to allow us to radio track them in the coming months. This will allow us to identify key sites being used nocturnally by these birds for example.

We have a huge amount of experience within the team and a vast amount of information gathered on the habits of the Dublin Bay birds, saying all this, a considerable amount of prep work needs to be carried out before any catch attempts. I say “attempts” as catches don’t always go to plan, there is a vast amount of variables that may upset plans. The first thing to consider is that these are wild birds and we can’t predict 100% what sites they will use on any given day. If we get the location right there is a number of things that can hamper plans. For instance it only takes one disturbance event to flush all the birds from the catch site such as a jogger or a hunting bird of prey perhaps.

In order to give ourselves the best chance of a successful catch we collect as much information on each potential catch site as possible and how the birds use them. We record the bird’s positions at various tidal states, how they respond to disturbance, weather conditions etc, all this will allow us to make sound choices when choosing target sites.The recent and upcoming high tides have already ruled out certain locations.

Dublin Bay - A lot of ground to cover!

All the homework and preparatory will continue over the coming weeks, it hasn’t been all that bad, the weather has been unseasonably mild so all day watches have been made that bit easier! Other benefits of being out and about Dublin Bay on all day watches is that occasionally something a little bit special might fly past. This week BWI staff managed to find a Ross’s Gull a very rare visitor that normally calls North America home, breeding in the high arctic there and in Siberia.

Ross's Gull, an unusual visitor

So please keep your eyes peeled for our already colour ringed birds throughout the marshes and recreational pitches around Dublin Bay. Be sure to contact us with any sightings of colour ringed birds and hopefully in the coming weeks there will be many more new colour ringed birds joining them.

See March 2013 blog post regarding “Cannon Netting” and our past successes with this catch method. For additional information on bird ringing check out the BTO (British Trust of Ornithology) webpages at:

http://www.bto.org/volunteer-surveys/ringing/ringing-scheme

It’s important to mention that all members of the ringing team are licensed by the BTO and The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) here in Ireland.

Ricky Whelan – New DBBP Assistant

Wanted: First winter Oystercatcher who goes by the name “LV.”

This bird is wanted regarding a series of stabbing attacks on cockles in the Tramore area. LV (1) was ringed by members of the Dublin Bay Birds Project (DBBP) team in Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow in July and was last seen on Newcastle beach, Co. Wicklow in August, sporting the colour rings.

This photo of LV was taken during routine reconnaissance shortly after ringing. Ornithologists believe that LV, having undergone a partial post-juvenile moult, has changed considerably in appearance since then.

LV (right) pictured at the Breaches, Kilcoole,
Co. Wicklow on 8th July Niall Keogh

It was initially thought that this serial cockle killer may have absconded on a southward migration, possibly to France, but yesterday evening, thanks to a tip off from a member of the public, ornithologists have learned that LV is still at large in Ireland.

Birdwatcher, Clare Scott, who encountered LV on Garrarus beach, near Tramore in Co. Waterford on Wednesday, told ornithologists:

“It was only when I saw the blog that I decided to report the sighting.”

Kilcoole-ringed Oystercatcher, possibly "LV" Clare Scott

An eye witness at the scene managed to snap this photograph of these three suspected mussel murderers, thought to be accomplices of LV, as they fled.

Oystercatchers on Garrarus beach, Co. Waterford Clare Scott

A BirdWatch Ireland spokesperson stated that ornithologists “are following a definite line of enquiry” regarding the ecological requirements of the birds.

A source close to the DBBP stated that a sting operation, code-named “cannon-net”, is being planned for 2014, when a number of waders will be apprehended and fitted with radio transmitters in order to keep tabs on their movements and activities:  

“This radio tracking work will allow fine-focused observations at an individual scale, which will be used to support conclusions drawn from observations of larger flocks.”

The source added:  

“Surveillance of these (radio-tagged) birds will allow their ecological requirements and any threats they face to be investigated. It will also allow us to track these birds during the hours of darkness … when it is thought that they exploit different foraging areas.”

More information on this case will be posted to the BirdWatch Ireland Facebook and Twitter pages as it comes to light. Members of the public are encouraged to remain on the lookout for colour-ringed birds and to report any sightings to ntierney@birdwatchireland.ie

Justin Timberlake, Hen Harrier and Health & Safety on Sandymount Strand

Apologies for the title of this post, but it is inspired by a post on the excellent Little Tern blog from way back in the breeding season.  The wardens, as a result of either sun stroke or just general eccentricity, decided to give pet names to the birds that were breeding in and around the Little Tern colony in Kilcoole.  And while reading Oystercatcher rings on Sandymount Strand the other day, I realised that I had taken a leaf out of their book - I’d started naming the Oystercatchers according to their two-letter inscriptions! My rationale is that it saves me taking out my notebook between every ring read: when the rings are coming thick and fast, it’s more efficient to remember a few in your head and then pull out the notebook (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!).

Oystercatcer "DJ" Colin Corse

So JT, HH and HS were just three of the 29 rings I managed to read in about forty minutes at low tide on the northern part of the strand. That shows how readable these rings are, and therefore how much information we can learn from these colour-ringed birds. With so many of the Sandymount Strand Oystercatchers ringed, we have an invaluable opportunity, and perhaps even a duty, to get some science out of the re-sightings, and the more re-sightings we get, the better the science will be. We now have over 450 re-sightings logged in the database and have re-sighted 90% of the birds. Over time, we will be able to piece together the ecological story of how these Oystercatchers are faring in their winter home, and the more re-sightings we get, the more informative that story will be. I know I'm labouring the point, but I really can’t stress enough the importance of reading these rings! So please get out there with the camera or scope and make your birding count.

…What I can stress, though, is the importance of not disturbing the birds when reading the rings. Mid-winter is a tough time for these birds, as they work hard to gain sufficient reserves to stand them in good stead for the rest of the winter and into next season. Any disturbance caused by ring-readers is another straw on the camel’s back. Every time they are forced to take to the air, they are both losing valuable foraging time and wasting valuable energy. And you know what happens if the energy budgets don’t balance at the end of each day….

The additive effect of human disturbance on wader 

over-winter survival as a result of a reduction in calorific

 intake and an increase in energetic expenditure

 during avoidance behaviour. 

Thankfully, with a telescope or a camera and decent light, you can easily read the rings without disturbing the birds, which is the whole point of colour-ringing after all.

Apart from seeing some of the regulars, it was good to catch up with CN, IN and IX, who hadn’t been re-sighted since February. It’s good to know that these three are still knocking around. 

The wing of a Song Thrush, but the weight of three

We had an interesting capture at our wader mist netting session in Dublin Bay the other night – a Little Grebe! 

Some people call them Dabchicks (which happens to be the only bird name to have the first three letters of the alphabet occurring consecutively!), Shakespeare called them Dive-dappers, but I prefer Ducky-divers. Anyway, I flushed one while setting up the net at dusk, but I didn’t think for a second that we would be ringing one later on.

Grebes are fascinating birds: they build floating nests, which they cover with vegetation before leaving, carry their chicks on their back and pluck their own feathers and feed them to their young! And they’re quite interesting birds in the hand too.  

Little Grebe in winter plumage Clive Timmons

The short wings look like they are just about capable of dragging the rotund body from the water to splatter along the surface, but the legs and feet really are something to behold. They are disproportionately large, and placed well back on the body. While this makes them good swimmers and expert divers, it also makes them very ungainly on land. This, coupled with their small wing area, means that they are unable to take off from land. The tarsi are laterally flattened and have serrated hind edges, the front toes are separately lobed, and the claws are flat and nail-like. Another interesting feature is the tail: a bunch of wispy feathers that are no more than a token of a tail.

So you wouldn’t expect these short-winged, plump, almost tailless birds to be seasoned travellers. And you’d be right, they’re not, but check out this map of the journey of a Latvian Little Grebe. He was ringed on the nest in Latvia in June 1983 and was shot in Lancashire in January 1985 after travelling a (straight line) distance of 1,653 km! 

Recovery map for a Latvian Little Grebe
that turned up in the UK

I know I mentioned wader mist netting at the top of this post. Not much to report just yet, but watch this space...

Colour rings

I know this isn’t a Dublin Bay story, but it’ll be interesting to our colour-ring readers. 

In October, we blogged about a Galway-ringed Little Egret  that we came across on Sandymount Strand during one of our low tide surveys, and in that post mentioned the one that another of the Galway birds had ended up in the Azores. Now another of these colour-ringed birds, DH (ringed in June this year), has been seen... in ICELAND – one of a total of only 16 Little Egret records there ever! 

These birds, having colonised Ireland from the south east, must have a tendency to head north west, so maybe that’s something to do with it! The more resightings that are generated, the more chance we’ll have to piece this story together. Please report your colour-ringed Little Egret re-sightings to jlusby@birdwatchireland.ie

DH Birding Iceland

We also posted about a Greenshank colour-ringing study that aims to ascertain the wintering grounds of these waders. The latest news is that another of the Scottish-ringed birds has been recently been recorded on the Mullet Peninsula in Mayo. 

Colour-ringed Greenshank Peter Hill

This guy, “NB-LO,” was ringed in July 2010 in the Ythan Estuary in north east Scotland, was re-sighted close to the ringing location six times between then and the August 2010, and wasn’t seen again until it turned up in Mayo on the 14th October this year. Any colour-ringed Greenshanks should be sent to Brian Etheridge brian@milvus.myzen.co.uk

This lad stands out from the crowd

Have you seen this leucistic Oystercatcher around Dublin before?

The Dublin Bay I-WeBS count team say he’s a regular, and often come across him during their monthly rising tide surveys. We first noticed him this year on Sutton Strand on the 12^th September, and picked him up again on the Red Arches pitches in Baldoyle yesterday.

Leucistic Oystercatcher Anna Valentín

Leucism results in white feathers, due to an absence of melanin pigment. It is an inherited trait, so we can’t know for sure if we’re looking at a single individual or perhaps one of its offspring. Aside from making affected birds more noticeable to predators, the white feathers are prone to more abrasion than normal feathers, and this can affect flight in some cases. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there is evidence that sometimes these birds aren’t recognised by their peers and potential mates!

Speaking of birds standing out from the crowd, when you’re out and about this weekend, keep an eye out for some newly colour-ringed Redshanks!