Norwegian Robin

Just about to close the nets down when a Robin popped in.

Now in Shetland Robins are fairly exciting at the best of times, but my heart started racing as I saw that this individual was already ringed - No, I haven't ringed any here in Skeld.

I extracted the bird then checked the ring - below the ring number was written 'Stavanger Mus. Norway'! A bit of hop across the North Sea then for this healthy bird.

The Norwegian Robin in Shetland!

1st colour-ringed birds of the project

Yes, the Shetland House Sparrow Project is officially up and running! Yesterday we opened the nets in Skeld for half an hour, and caught a female, closely followed by a male. These were ringed with a BTO metal ring on the right leg, and a colour-ring on the left. The female now wears a black ring with AA engraved in white, and the male sports black with AB!

A Starling was also caught and ringed.

Today, another short session at the net, and the 3rd spadger of the project was soon caught and ringed. Another male - he has become AC.

AA - the 1st House Sparrow of the project

A move to Skeld

Well, everything seems to have happened at once with this project. We now have the project registered with the BTO as both a Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) project, and also as a colour-ring project, so we are almost ready to start.

I say almost, because I am now in the process of moving house to the nearby village of Skeld. There's a very healthy population of House Sparrows in Skeld too, so it makes sense to focus our ringing attentions there, rather than in Walls. Everyone concerned now knows that we have moved our research area to Skeld (see map to the left).

The BTO have asked that the colour-ring part of the project start with just two-digits for the code, rather than three. So initially the rings will be Black, with White engraving, using alpha-numeric code as two digits.

The other great news is that we now also have funding from the Shetland Wildlife Fund to pay for the colour rings!

So, the rings are ordered, and once they arrive from Poland we'll be ready to go.

Spuggie RAS

Yes, it's official. Thanks to Allison Kew at the BTO my House Sparrow RAS application has been passed, so once the colour-ring project has gone through the system we'll be up and running with this.

Watch this space!

A Garden Surprise

Well, the wind eased today, despite the cold and snow-showery weather, so I took a gamble and put up a 12m net in the back garden here in Walls.

Not masses of birds around, but in just over an hour of ringing I managed to catch the following:

3 House Sparrows - all female, and all newly ringed today.
5 Starling - 4 of them newly ringed, the other a female first ringed here 100 days ago today.
3 Blackbirds - 2 males newly ringed today, the other a female first ringed on 15th January.

And a bit of a surprise, 1 male Chaffinch.

 

 

We don't see too many Chaffinches here in Shetland, although we did see a pair at Sandness just last Thursday, so it was great to get one in the net in our garden.

Other notable birds in Walls today:

1 Black Guillemot in full summer plumage (at the marina)
1 Little Grebe (at the marina)
1 Moorhen in the garden
2 Redwings in the garden

When will the wind ease?

Very windy conditions here in Shetland over the last few days. 80mph last night - the roof blew off our chicken house!

So, as you can imagine, no House Sparrow ringing for a while. I'm awaiting a reply from the BTO about my application to run this project as a RAS (Retrapping Adults for Survival) and Colour-Ring project, so not ringing isn't too much of an issue at the moment. Ideally, I'd like to start colour-ringing as soon as I next start ringing, but can't do that without the approval of the BTO.

The good news is that I'm in discussions with the Shetland Amenity Trust about some possible funding for the project.

Anyway, for now it's just a case of feeding the birds (I'm now just ground feeding, as anything I put in the hanging feeders just blows away), and waiting for a combination of no wind and BTO approval.

Wrong Species?

Well, a nice frosty morning here in Walls. I opened one net in the hope of making a proper start on the House Sparrow project.

There were about 40 spadgers in the garden, under the feeders, but somehow they all managed to completely avoid the net, resulting in a grand total of ZERO birds added to the project database.

7 Starlings did find the net however (perhaps this should have been the Shetland Starling Project?), as well as one female Blackbird (5F - 5 indicating it hatched last calendar year, F being female) so it was a worthwhile exercise regardless of the spadgers not playing.

Male Starling

Also of note in the garden:

1 Robin (a local rarity)
1 Moorhen (another local rarity)
16 Rock Doves (as common here as Woodpigeons are anywhere else)