An eventful week

The past week has certainly been busy. The CES finished on Tuesday, with a final total of 156 new birds captured of 53 species, plus a further 52 birds that were re-traps. A nice treat for the last day was a Tree Pipit - another Palearctic migrant. The next CES will be at the end of November/early December before I take a break for Christmas. I have some ideas for refining data collection during the CES so there is plenty to work on between now and then.

 

A juvenile Tree Pipit ringed during the CES

 

This week I have been able to visit my Whinchat sites again to look for more colour-ringed birds from last year. The total is now 13 birds, all in the same territories as last year, which is very exciting stuff. 10 of these are from the APLORI site where I ringed 30 birds last year, meaning that at least 33% of the birds have returned. I think that’s brilliant. One of these birds was another individual that vanished after ringing last year and I am happy to see again. Because of the boggy ground I have been parking the car further away from the site, and I re-sighted it a little outside of the study area. I think it was around all of last winter but I missed it on the way in. Usually we manage to catch birds within or very close to their territories, so it looks like this one was trespassing when we caught it last year. Expanding the site with new captures is one of this season’s objectives, and already the APLORI site is growing. This will increase the chances of re-sighting individuals like this one next year, along with adding more new birds to the pool of colour-ringed birds.

I have been catching and colour-ring new birds this week. There are now 11 new birds at the APLORI site. This morning I went out to the ‘Bridge Site’, about 2km away, where I caught 5 birds last year. This morning went better than expected and we caught 7 new birds, almost 8. A great spirit-raising morning, unfortunately tied with the ‘most birds in a day’ record of 7 in a morning (although to be fair this time it was just me and Arin my field assistant instead of 3 of us). Credit goes to Arin for 5 of today’s birds. We often joke about who gets the most birds in a morning and we seem to have started a little competition between us for this season. So far it’s me in the lead with 10 and Arin close behind with 8. Sometimes a little extra incentive is needed to keep going on long mornings when the sun gets hot and lunch and a cold drink is far more appetising than willing Whinchats into the traps.

 

A beautiful African morning out in the field

 

I am really pleased how trapping is going, especially after this morning. As I have already let on, it has been a bit tricky with so little bare ground and the whinchats constantly squabbling with each other. There are still turf wars going on and playing calls gets everybody quite furious. I think the boundaries between territories are still being deliberated. Yesterday at the APLORI site I was catching on the edge of 3 territories and the morning was a chorus of ticking whinchats. I got two of the birds within 30 minutes, but the other one was far less gullible and took a great deal of coaxing to get into the traps. The first 2 birds were males, which are often easier to catch as they respond more aggressively to playback (and of course we all know that females are known for being the more intelligent of the sexes!). After 2 frustrating hours I had 8 traps right under the bush that the whinchat was perching on. Finally, after 20 minutes of it staring at the traps (during which I could clearly see the personal battle it was having with itself as to what to do about the situation), it went for the bait and was caught. Luckily for me in the end it just couldn’t overcome millions of years of evolution telling it to eat the wiggly bug.

 

A male Whinchat with his black wing coverts and bright white flashes.

Soon the Whitethroats will be here in large enough numbers and I will switch focus to netting. I hope some of my birds from last year will come back to their territories like the Whinchats have. Tomorrow I will return to the Bridge site to hopefully add to the number of ringed birds there. It will be a busy morning, mainly as the road to the site is impassable after a point (which I found out from personal experience last year...) meaning that we take the kit into the bush and set up there. I have to been even more on top of how long traps are left for now that the weather is hotter and we have to move further to find new birds. Sunday morning is reserved for sleep and breakfast in bed :)

Emma