Dolphins of the Bay

A weekend on the coast of Wales would be nothing without spending a little time in search of those enigmatic marine mammals, dolphins, in this case bottlenose dolphins to be specific.

Cardigan Bay holds one of two resident, coastal populations of bottlenose dolphins in the UK. Recent work by Feingold et al., 2011 indicates the population of dolphins is around 200 and made up of transient, occasional and resident individuals.

Whilst we have seen dolphins from Borth and Aberystwyth, one of the best places to see them from the shore or to take a boat trip, is New Quay and it is here that we headed on Sunday.

With the narrow streets bustling with people, we headed for the quay, eyes scanning the silvery grey sea for any hint of a dorsal fin. It did not take long and soon we were settled, eating chips and watching two dolphins surfacing a short way off the harbour…bliss!

Bottlenose dolphin surfaces off New Quay, West Wales

A lot of the research carried out on dolphins is based on photo-identification, taking photos of the dorsal fin and back of dolphins and identifying individuals based on scars, nicks and scratches. Interestingly one of the dolphins we saw today had a really distinctive dorsal fin, with a white top edge, distinctive shape to the fin and nick in the trailing edge…

Close up of the dorsal fin 

See the recent work by Feigold  et al., here - http://www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/docs/Daphna%20Feingold_poster_11_final.pdf

Me and Barley, watching dolphins from the quay wall...
although Barley seems to be facing the wrong way!

The Pleasure...and Pain of Ringing

Saturday, Easter weekend and we woke to the faint patter of rain on canvas and the dawn chorus of birds. Quietly, so as not to disturb slumbering parents, we dressed, left the caravan and headed out into the early morning light to meet with local ringer Tony Cross.

Heading north we drove into the rugged landscape of North Wales through sweeping valleys, along twisting roads and past reddish, brown and green mountains with occasional patches of brilliant white snow, a reminder that its not quite summer yet. After an hour we had arrived in a beautiful woodland, with moss covering fallen trees and ancient walls, browned leaves crackling softly under foot. Here, amongst the hornbeam and beech, Tony has a feeding site for a rather special woodland bird… the hawfinch.

A rather large, beautiful finch with a huge bill, capable of cracking opens cherry stones, the hawfinch is another British bird that has undergone a large-scale decline since the 1940s. Tony’s project involves colour ringing adults to try and increase sightings of this species which is usually very difficult to catch.

A beautiful male Hawfinch, complete with colour ring

The weather was perfect, the earlier rain having ceased and the sky cloudy with only occasional bursts of sunshine sparkling through the trees. Birds were dropping down readily to the food covering the ground, and on take off flying directly into our nets.

Our task was then to extract them from the net, ring and measure them, all the while avoiding that powerful beak! Easier said then done!

An equally beautiful female hawfinch...check out that bill though!

In total we caught 21 hawfinches, all of which were given a uniquely numbered metal ring and a colour ring. A huge thanks must go to Tony for such a superb day’s ringing and for giving us the opportunity to get up close, and in some cases a little too personal (well my fingers think so anyway!) with these amazing and beautiful birds. 

And so to the pain.....
and boy does it hurt when these guys get hold of you!

You can follow Tony’s ringing activities at his Blog also!

http://midwalesringers.blogspot.co.uk/

Easter Chicks

The last couple of week’s effort into searching for nests around Thetford began to pay off this morning, as I got to ring my first blackbird chicks of the year.

Having waited for the rain to pass, we approached the wall of ivy where this nest is hiding with caution and a little trepidation, hoping the chicks had survived the down pour and plummeting temperatures of recent days.

Our luck was in… there hidden amongst the ivy, hidden and protected from most of the rain was the nest, and inside three chicks! With downy feathers giving them a rather scruffy look and wing feathers just starting to peek through, they were the perfect age for ringing.

Ringing my first Blackbird chicks of the year

Carefully adding the uniquely numbered ring to the chicks leg using special ringing pliers

Most unusual about this nest was the fact that I know this is an old nest from previous years, distinctive as the builder used bits of plastic bag, woven in with the grass!. Small birds such as blackbirds usually build a new nest each year to lay their eggs in, although the use of old nests is not unheard of. This particularly nest has been present for at least two years, although as far as we know it was not used last year.

With the chicks safely returned to the nest we left them in peace with a wish of good luck and keep safe!



All safely tucked up back in the nest



Spring Arrivals

With the warm, sunny days of recent weeks it has really started to feel like summer, let alone spring! Released from the confines of the office at the weekend, Sunday saw us exploring Thetford in search of nests.

Song thrush nest, as seen through the nester's mirror stick, one of eight nests found today

Climbing over trees and picking our way though bramble undergrowth, we searched amongst the ivy and trees of woodlands, before breaking out into the blazing blue sky and warm sun bathing open grass and scubby areas. All around resident birds were singing; robins, dunnocks, blackbirds to name a few; all sang their songs heralding their territories and hidden nests. Intermixed with these resident species were the unmistakable calls and song of migrants...birds that have returned from far afield after epic journeys of thousands of miles to breed once more in the summer climes of the UK.


Today's wanderings saw our first willow warbler of the year, having just returned from tropical and southern Africa and immediately singing his heart out. Mingling with this charismatic song were a number of chiffchaff's, so similar in appearance to the willow warbler but with such a distinctive song that gives them their name.."chiff chaff...chaff chiff..."

Willow warbler singing in the UK sun after a winter under the African sun

Another newly arrived migrant, fresh from a winter further south in Africa, was a rather odd looking bird, the stone-curlew. A rare breeding bird in Britain, the stone-curlew has large, bright yellow eyes and yellow legs with thick knees. Once common across southern and eastern England, stone-curlew's underwent a dramatic decline since the 1940s with numbers reduced by 85%. Concerted conservation efforts at the last two breeding strongholds in East Anglia and Salisbury Plain began in the early 1980s, since when numbers of breeding pairs have doubled and there are now approximately 307 pairs in England.


Later in the day, with the sun setting and pink, evening light splashing the edges of the few whisps of clouds in the sky, we heard a twittering overhead that later in the summer will become second nature, part of the background summer sounds...but today it meant one thing.... the swallows have returned...

Beautiful swallow, one of the classic birds of summer

Nesting in the Tree Tops

Spring is here! The daffodils are in full bloom, the blossoms on the cherry trees add a splash of pale pink and white to our streets and the birds have started singing, a sure sign the nesting season is starting. For some birds however nesting has been in full swing for at least a month, one such species is the grey heron.

An unmistakable bird, with long legs and a long beak, the grey heron is typically seen stalking the edges of pools and rivers in search of their fishy food. It is surprising to discover then that they nest at the tops of trees! On a large nest of twigs and sticks, reminiscent of a pigeon nest, grey heron’s typically start nesting in February, laying between 2 and 7 eggs which hatch after 23 to 28 days.

Nest recording for grey herons high in the tree tops

North Notts Ringing Group has been ringing nestling grey heron since the early nineties. Although numbers of grey heron across the UK are increasing slowly and the species is by no means rare, numbers at this colony have seen quite a dramatic decline over the last couple of seasons. The reasons for this remain unclear, hence the importance of continuing to monitor nests and ring chicks. This year, in response to requests from the British Trust for Ornithology, the group is colour ringing the chicks, adding a blue ring with white letters along with the metal ring. Colour ringing should improve the reporting of sightings for this species, which is generally only recovered once a bird dies… but what happens in between? Where do the birds move during their lives? Do they stay in one place? Return to their natal colony to breed? Colour ringing could help provide the answers to these kinds of questions.

Grey heron chick

So this Saturday, Lee and I headed up to Besthorpe Nature Reserve, near Newark to help ring the first load of chicks for the year. With the mist clearing, we headed over onto a small island in the middle of a lake. As Jez climbed to the tree tops, we waited below, recording the contents of each active nest and waiting for any chicks that could be ringed. Quite a few of the nests had small chicks or eggs, but three nests had chicks large enough to ring. Delivered down to us in a bucket, we ringed the chicks, placed a colour ring above the knee of the right leg and weighed them. After a quick photo call, the birds were returned to the nest via the bucket…

Me and my first grey heron chick

In all nine chicks were ringed from three nests. The team will return to ring the remaining chicks over the next couple of months. Its then just a question of keeping eyes peeled for colour ringed birds, over the next few months as they leave the nests and over the next few years to see if they return to breed.

If you ever see a colour ringed bird of any species, please report the sighting to the BTO. Record the combination of colour rings, or the colour and letters on the ring. Sightings can be reported via www.ring.ac. 

Likewise if you ever find a bird with just a metal ring on then please report that too!

Scribbling down at the farm

For the first time in a quite a while, we returned to Lodge Farm for a mornings ringing. Over the last few months large numbers of siskins and redpolls have been descending on the garden feeders, however the last ringing session on Friday was pretty quiet, by the Farm’s standards and so we were unsure how many would turn up today. Despite this a large team of us assembled, slightly bleary eyed at 6:30am this morning and opened the nets in anticipation.

Twenty minutes in, the first net round complete and the signs were that we were in for a busy morning. With such a large team of people it can get really hectic at the tables where we process the birds, but it remains paramount that data is recorded accurately. To prevent the evitable scrum for the pen, one person is dedicated to the role of scribe, the most important job in the team.

Super Scribe!

For the first few hours this morning I was scribe, collating and recording data on each bird from three or four ringers at a time. This information gathered during the ringing process not only provides an opportunity to study where birds move to and how long they live, through recoveries, but also an opportunity to learn about moult strategies i.e. how and when birds replace their feathers.

Lesser redpoll waiting to be taken out of the net

As the morning progressed, the birds kept coming and by 2pm we had caught and processed 336 individual birds, including 121 birds which we actually ringed. The remaining birds already had rings on and provide even more valuable information. Most of the birds were siskins and lesser redpolls, which provide interesting challenges to aging and in the case of the redpolls identification! Todays were all lesser redpolls, ranging from very pale, grey to rich brown birds.

So all in all a very good mornings ringing…..

WhaleFest Unleashed... and inspired!

On November the 5^th and 6^th 2011, I volunteered for WhaleFest, Europe’s first ever Whale Festival. Over 2,500 people came to Brighton over the two days to take part in the event; with 60 exhibitors from charities to tour operators, talks from experts and wildlife celebrities and workshops from underwater acoustics to whale origami. In the ‘great hall’ people could wonder amongst life sized whales, watch amazing footage on a huge screen, explore the belly of a sperm whale, learn how to rescue a stranded pilot whale and even go on a whale watch!

Me next to the almost life-sized Blue Whale!

For my part I was involved with this last activity, taking people on a virtual whale watch with real boats, real life jackets, real water and real footage of blue whales and various dolphins off the coast of Sri Lanka! (well why not eh!).

It was a fantastic event, a real uplifting experience to mingle with so many people all passionate about whales and dolphins and too pass that on to all those people.

The 2011 WhaleFest Virtual Whale Watch Team!

Fortunately the festival was not a one off and WhaleFest 2012 has been confirmed! In the 30^th anniversary year of the International Whaling Commission’s adoption of the moratorium on commercial whaling, WhaleFest is returning to the place where this historic decision took place, the Brighton Hilton Metropole.

This weekend, returning and new volunteers met up in order to celebrate the success of WhaleFest 2011 and to chat, and get excited about, WhaleFest 2012. Led by Planet Whale founders and WhaleFest organisers extraordinaire, Dylan Walker and Ian Rowlands, the weekend gave many volunteers the chance to experience one of the big successes of the 2011 event, the film Keiko The Untold Story.

The film tells the story of the killer whale Keiko, the star of the film Free Willy, from being rescued from the isolation of a tiny, concrete pool in Mexico to a purpose built, state of the art enclosure in Oregon and finally to the ocean waters of Iceland, and home. Although many would say the end of that tale is sad, with Keiko dieing from pneumonia in Norway, I found the whole tale inspiring and moving. Although never completely ‘wild’, for five years Keiko was a free whale, free to move around as he pleased and free to interact with wild killer whales. Watching a whale that had been so lethargic and ill in Mexico surfacing amongst wild Orca in Iceland was truly amazing.

  

And so as the sun set over Upminster in Essex, exciting plans were being made, plans to inspire more people about these amazing animals and to make WhaleFest 2012 the biggest and best event of its kind in world. 

For more information on WhaleFest and Planet Whale visit the website

http://www.planetwhale.com/WhaleFest

WhaleFest 2012 27th and 28th October 2012 - be there and be inspired!