Tuesday, 5 August 2025
Summer Shows 2nd August
The group attended two summer shows which coincidenally were held on the same afternoon. One was at Uplyme where Mike Tyler and Robin Pearson manned our stall and the other was at Whitford where Ian Stanbridge and Dan Montgomery represented us. These events are an opportunity to talk to members of the community who might otherwise not know anything about bird ringing. We were assisted in promoting the AERG this year by our recent appearance on Countryfile!
Our exhibits at the Uplyme Show
The MP for Honiton Richard Foord was in attendance at the Whitford Show. He was obviously impressed with Ian and Dan because his social media featured pictures of our stall and a link to the group!
Monday, 4 August 2025
Ringing at the Wetlands 1st August
A small team of three, Ian, Sue and Robin, undertook a ringing session around the Discovery Hut. We ran five nets – two in the scrub and three in the reeds – and caught 73 birds. Recent sessions in this area have produced a good number of reed warblers and so it continued, with 30 birds caught. Of these we aged 19 as this year’s birds (age codes 3 or 3J), nine as adults (age code 4) and two birds didn’t show sufficient features for us to decide how old they were (age code 2). So there were twice as many young birds as adults and this is what we’d expect towards the latter part of the breeding season when young birds are dispersing.
It was good to ring and process a garden warbler and a linnet, neither of which is a frequent capture here.
The garden warbler and the wing of the linnet showing a moult limit which makes this a young bird: the older juvenile feathers (marked) are shorther and darker and are being replaced by the longer browner adult feathers.
We caught five willow warblers which showed a wide range of body colouration, from the lovely lemony yellow that is typical of this species to the rather drab buff more typical of their close relative, the chiffchaff, of which we caught nine.
One of the yellower willow warblers.
of the nine chiffchaffs caught, one - the bird above - was a control and had been ringed in Spain. More details of exactly where and when it was ringed when we have them.
This is a wren which is this years bird. The lines on the primary feathers are arraged in neat rows showing that the young feathers all grew at the same time, unlike the chequered pattern in an adult where the feathers have been variously replaced. This bird also shows no white under-tail coverts that would be present in the adult
This is a young greenfinch. The striated breast and belly are typical. The wing shows the pristine feathers of a young bird and the lack of yellow on the primaries tells us that its a female
Sunday, 3 August 2025
Three days of ringing activity - 17th-19th July
After a considerable delay in our blogging we have a report from three sessions carried out on the 17th, 18th and 19th of July.
17th July
This was our weekly session working behind the sand martin colony. This involves the checking of the nesting boxes to monitor activity and record the progress of nests for submission as nest records. This is predominantly carried out by the indefatigable Doug who uses an endoscope to check each of the nests. Several of us join him on each session to ring any pulli ready for rings. This time we ringed a total of 33 nestlings from 8 of the boxes.
18th July
We made a very early start trying to catch more adult sand martins in front of the sand martin bank at the Seaton Wetlands. A team of ringers set out very early to set the nets before dawn. We were soon catching birds and had a total of 68 birds.
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| The team at work |
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| Processing one of the sand martins |
19th July
We set out again with intentions to do some general mist netting in the hope of catching our resident reed warblers, but also some migrating warblers. The Wetlands sees good numbers of sedge warbler and willow warbler stopping on passage south for the winter.
The weather was not ideal so we made our base in the Discovery Hut. This is used by the Wetlands as a focal point for visitors and has been designed with ringing demonstrations in mind and has displays and information for visitors as well as refreshments for thirsty ringers! This meant that as the morning wore on we attracted a number of visitors who we share our activities with. We try to inform about our activities, the birds that we are studying and about the Wetlands as an important local nature reserve.
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| Yours truly showing one of the birds to the public... |
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| ... while Dan gets ready to process another. |
The mornings ringing proved very successful. We had a total of 75 birds, with good numbers of reed warblers with 16 new birds and 12 recaptures. Sedge warblers ran the reed warblers a close second, with 22 news birds and 1 retrap. Many of these sedge warblers were carrying large deposits of fat. This year so far, ringing in the same areas on a number of occasions, we have caught only two sedge warblers. These suggest these birds are on passage and heading south for the winter.
We also caught four juvenile stonechats indicating that there has been successful breeding on the reserve.
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| One of the stonechats... |
Other interesting birds included five sand martins and a house sparrow. The sand martins were four unringed juvenile birds, which we presume are birds also on passage or local birds from other colonies prospecting the surrounding area, and one juvenile from the bank. While we do catch house sparrows on the Wetlands they are generally not in the area we were ringing on this occasion so this was a nice record. Hopefully there will be more!
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| ... and the house sparrow. |
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| Two new primaries about half grown, one just appearing from pin and the rest are old primaries |
We also caught a kingfisher which, as always, drew an admiring audience from those people nearby at the time and so generating a great deal of interest from members of the public.
The total of birds for the session was
Species New birds Retraps
Reed Warbler 16 12
Sedge Warbler 22 1 Blue Tit 3 1
Stonechat 4
Cetti’s Warbler 3
Sand Martin 4 1
Chiffchaff 1
Willow Warbler 2
House Sparrow 1
Blackcap 1
Reed Bunting 1
Kingfisher 1
Wren 1
Sunday, 27 July 2025
Gull ringing on the Breakwaters of Portland Harbour, Dorset
A project organised by The Radipole Ringing Group and heavily supported by the AERG on the North Eastern and Outer Breakwaters in Portland Harbour targeting the Great black-backed Gulls (GBBGU) and Herring Gulls (HERGU) and with kind permission of the Portland Harbour Authority.
The scheme is registered with the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) and was begun in 2011.
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| A challenging environment |
The project, begun by Terry Coombs and Steve Hales, is now run by Guy Hayden and Doug Rudge. In more recent years we have carried out Nest and Egg surveys before the ringing season. This year we found 317 nests, 622 eggs and 114 pulli, we were late with the second survey as weather got in the way and hence a significant number of pulli instead of eggs! At this stage the pulli are too small to ring. Incubation is around 27 days and then it is between 49 to 56 days from hatching to fledging. We gathered some interesting egg weight data. (For the analysis you will have to see our end of year report.) The breeding productivity is reported to be around 1.
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| Eggs being weighed |
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| A hatching! |
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| Pulli too young to ring |
In the ringing season, from late May to early July, we fit both BTO and Darvics to pulli of the GBBGU and HERGU. This years totals were 91 GBBGU, 28 HERGU, 2 Oystercatchers, 36 retraps or sightings of this years pulli, and 5 Sightings of adult GBBGU returned to the Breakwaters. The pulli are very difficult to find once they have left the nest.
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| Big challenge: identify the species- L HERGU, R GBBGU |
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| L HERGU, R GBBGU |
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| 2 Oystercatcher pulli also ringed this year |
Our Darvics are white with red letters and a code similar to P:45Z for the Great black-backed gulls and black with white numbers similar to 687 for the Herring gulls.
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| Putting a Darvic on a GBBGU |
Our email for sightings is seawaterbirds@gmail.com
We always aim to include a variety of experience in the teams to promote education and learning.
In the last 5 years we lost two complete years' activities to COVID and Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and one year was ended early with potential HPAI signs in the colonies.
It is now common for us to find some previously rung Great black-backed gulls on the Breakwaters. The oldest one seen is 11 years old but they are known to achieve 26 years old. The project has now rung over 600 Great black-backed gulls and nearly 500 Herring Gulls.
We have a spread of sightings from Lubeck in Germany, Bay of Txingudi in France and A Coruña in Spain and this year we have had our first sightings from Ireland and we know of one gull that has managed a trip of over 132 miles within in two days.
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| P:18C ringed 27/11/19 |
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| Transport to & from the Breakwaters is by the Pilot boat |
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| The Team (well, one variation of it!) |
Guy Hayden
Saturday, 5 July 2025
Sand martins on the 4th of July
A team of six did our second mist netting session in front of the sand martin bank on Friday and followed that with some sand martin nestling ringing to complete our mornings ringing. It meant an early start, with the nets up at 5 am. We walk the nets, already set, into place in front of the bank, and as we move in birds leaving their nest holes are caught whilst we are on the move. We were more efficient in getting the nets out this time compared to last, but as always we learnt new lessons for next time.
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| The team of six looking cheerful despite the early start! |
The catch was very good. We limit ourselves to an hour to minimise the disturbance to the colony. We are planning to continue this at approximately two week intervals, with this being the second catch. We caught 83 birds. One of these was a sedge warbler, only the second one for the year so far. Of the remaining 82 only 6 were birds that hatched this year. I have read reports from other colonies of first year birds roosting in the colony, but this does not seem to happen much here. There are reports from local birders of sand martins roosting in reed beds near the tramway line so this may well include our first year birds. All six were already ringed.
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| First year bird showing characteristic paler fringes fringes to feathers. |
28 of the 76 adult birds caught were retraps, 27 of them were birds we had ringed previously this year. The 28th was our third French ringed bird.
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| French ringed sand martins. Just as attractive as all the others. |
We will post details of these three encounters when we have the details for this third bird. This left 48 new adult birds, so adding 49 to the total of breeding adults encountered this season.
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| The nets just before we finished. |
Having packed up from our mist netting session we turned out attention to nestlings. It is very busy at the moment behind the bank with many pairs bringing up their second broods with the earlier second broods really coming to the ringing stage over the next week or so. We dealt with 8 broods of youngsters ringing a further 34 chicks.
Overall an extremely productive morning!
Wednesday, 2 July 2025
Mist netting & Sand Martin Cliff
This post will cover another 3 sessions.....
On Sunday 22/6/25 a team of 4 put up 4 nets in the reed bed in front of the Discovery Hut. We caught 23 birds, including a Reed Warbler originally ringed as an adult on 9/5/19, making it at least 6 years old. The typical life expectancy is 2 years, but it still has a long way to go to reach the oldest known bird of 12 years, 11 months & 21 days.
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| The Team |
Ringed | Re-trapped | |
Blackcap | 1 | |
Cetti’s Warbler | 1 (9/1/25) | |
Chiffchaff | 3 | |
Reed Warbler | 15 | 1 (9/5/19) |
Robin | 1 | |
Sand Martin | 1 | |
21 | 2 |
Once the mist nets went quiet, we moved on to ring 5 broods of youngsters in the Sand Martin cliff, where Doug had already spent the morning surveying the nests with an endoscope.
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| Endoscoping the young Sand Martins |
On Sunday 29/6/25, another session took place at the back of the Sand Martin cliff. It was a busy session with 13 nest boxes being checked, and 11 broods ringed, the remaining 2 broods being too small to ring. We then checked out the condition of the Abberton duck trap which had been removed from the scrape behind the Discovery Hut whilst it was dredged. The trap requires some attention, but hopefully it will be back in operation soon.
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| Assessing the 'flat-packed' Abberton duck trap....modifications are needed as the water is now deeper. |
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| A young Song Thrush....we caught 3 |
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| The wing of a young Song Thrush |
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| Comparison of Reed Warbler wings: pristine juvenile top, worn adult below |
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| 1st Sedge Warbler of the year...a juvenile as shown by the spotty 'necklace' |
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| Pristine wing of the juvenile Sedge Warbler |
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| Juvenile Greenfinch |
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| Wing of the Greenfinch. The thickness of the yellow on the primaries indicates that it's a male. |
Ringed | Re-trapped | |
Blackbird | 1 | |
Blackcap | 4 | |
Blue Tit | 1 | |
Cettis’ Warbler | 1 | |
Chiffchaff | 3 | |
Great Tit | 1 | |
Greenfinch | 1 | |
Reed Warbler | 10 | 2 (17/6/25 x 2) |
Robin | 1 | |
Sand Martin | 4 | 1 (19/6/25) |
Sedge Warbler | 1 | |
Song Thrush | 3 | |
Wren | 3 | 1 |
34 | 4 |
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