By Thomas Weston.
Sunday starts with an S and so do most of the birds seen today!
Signs of moult in our Starlings!
Ringing this morning with Luca and Lucile went really well. Our mission was to catch an unringed wild brood House Sparrow. A brood we have been seeing since the third week of June and during recent ringing sessions, both of its siblings have been caught and colour ringed, blood sampled and pit tagged leaving just the one bird out of three. This for context was the only unringed House Sparrow of ringable size on the island. Yes, the Sparrow Project has reached that moment where they have almost completed what most Pokemon players dream of. Alas today was the day. Lucile ringed a brood in a box and whilst checking the traps I returned with our target individual. Almost completely the same biometrics as the previous two, we knew we had finally found our last fledged wild brood individual - until the next! By way of Starlings we caught and we processed 14 in total - 1 new and 13 retraps. The retrapping is great, watching their moult develop and the birds being a lot bigger now then they were in the nest back in May! A cute round circle and soon to have that glossy plumage for the first time.
Weighing and measuring our Manx chicks. Jessie
A couple of Sand Martins headed south later and at 10am I gave a walk and talk about Manx Shearwaters, showing guests and staff the cutest and fluffiest breeding birds we have on the island currently. The chicks are growing well and it was a surprise to find a further chick had hatched. A nest we thought had failed, turned out to be a success! Having an expected hatch date of the 22nd June, it is certainly a 'late one' though not 'too late' in the shearwater world. It is so great watching them grow and to be in the company of people who love the Shearwaters too! We really feel privileged every time. On our way back, a seemingly slight passage of Swifts was ongoing with some coming a few metres in front of the face! More came through later which was nice.
Governement brood were the 2nd to flegde this year, with another four active nests. Thomas Weston
Gathering a team together after some lunch we checked on our Swallow broods. With fine weather and adults happily feeding, we manged to ring two broods whilst another brood were too small to ring, whilst the final pair were on eggs. This means we have had at least 6 broods of Swallows this year, a high in recent times!
Back to the office for admin and catching up on emails before an evening of blog and log later!