A change of management.....

I took over from Mike Tyler as the Leader of the Group at the Annual General Meeting and  have been asked to provide something about myself and my plans for the group.

I began ringing informally at about the age of 12.  My father was an honorary head warden for the local nature reserve where I grew up in Warwickshire, and was asked if the reserve could be used for ringing activities to support a local evening class.  He replied that this would be fine as long as he could come along!  I went too and so my ringing began.  I started training properly at around 14 and got my C permit just before I left for university at 18.  I have held a ringing licence, since my first trainee permit, for 46 years. 

In recent years I have been ringing on the Axe Estuary and on various sites in Devon, primarily, in recent years, working with Peter Bennett on the Pebblebed Heaths looking at Dartford Warblers and Nightjars.  These projects unfortunately ended about 2 years ago.   

I have been living in Cornwall for 7 years but have now retired from work as a Chief Examiner of A level Chemistry and can devote more time to ringing.  My daughter lives in Newton Poppleford which means I can combine ringing activities with visits to her and to use my season ticket for the Exeter Chiefs!

I see the group having four main roles.  

One is to provide a measure of general population on the Wetlands over time.  We can do this by continuing our general ringing, but we have some plans to try to make our activity more measurable by carrying out ringing sessions in a similar way from year to year.

The second is to consider species of particular importance on the Wetlands.  We have been working on shelduck for some time, and as a result have also caught and colour ringed a number of black tailed godwits.  I hope to continue this work and perhaps expand to other duck species and waders.

Training the next generation of ringers is an important role which the group should undertake, and we are currently seeing a number of new ringers starting to work with us.

The final task is to explain our work and our findings to the public.  We do this through our interactions with visitors to the Wetlands during our sessions, by communicating our findings to the Wetlands management, by attending various shows and, of course, through the blog!

The recent addition of new areas to the Wetlands has opened up some interesting possibilities for our ringing activities.  I am hoping that we will be able to continue with our current programme (bird flu permitting), but I am also hopeful that more opportunities for a variety of different activities will make themselves available, focussing on both the new areas, particularly for waders and duck, but also on some of the old areas to look at some new projects, perhaps including work on mallard and sand martin.

Please keep an eye out for news on the blog!

Ian Stanbridge – Leader AERG

Mist Netting 12/01/2025

Eight members of the group undertook a mist netting session on 12th January. Our activities were targeted at birds using the reeds as a roost site as we had done previously on 10th December (see report below). The team assembled at midday and eight nets were set around the Discovery Hut to catch birds during the afternoon before our roost endeavours were to begin in earnest. A variety of species was caught and of particular note was a group of eight long-tailed tits, six of which were retraps and four of these were previously ringed at the same session suggesting that outside of the breeding season they stick together in groups. A song thrush, as always, was good to catch and then we put up a net next to the Discovery Hut pond where a couple of teal had been spotted. One bird went in to the net fairly quickly but unfortunately got out before we could collect it. However, a moorhen soon followed and this was keenly inspected by the team since they are not frequently ringed here. We caught a female kingfisher, which was a retrap and had been ringed here a few weeks ago, and then as the light began to fade we saw a barn owl quartering the nearby reed beds. We put out a net in a likely spot for the owl and then another couple of nets in the reeds for the roost birds. A kestrel was seen heading off to investigate the owl and on the next net round although we hadn’t caught the owl we had caught the kestrel. It was a female and was a new bird, not one of the chicks from a nestbox at the wetlands that we had ringed last summer. By now it was 1615 and the first of the reed buntings going to roost was caught. As the light went down over the following 50 minutes we caught 25 more reed buntings. In contrast to the long-tailed tits earlier, only one of the reed buntings was already ringed and this bird was interesting because it was a control ie a bird that had been ringed elsewhere. We subsequently found out that it had been originally ringed 40km away in November 2021 at The Fleet in Dorset and so is at least 3 ½ years old.

The song thrush was aged 5. The wing shows the yellowy triangular marks of the old greater coverts in contrast to the smaller more buff marks of the new greater coverts. The tail feathers are fairly pointed which is typical of many age 5 Passerines and this bird shows the beautiful breast typical of this species.

This moorhen was hatched last year and so is aged 5. The white chin feathers and the pointed primaries are diagnostic of this age class.

 

The broad bands giving a mottled pattern on the mantle feathers are diagnostic of a female in this kestrel and the broken bars on the tail feathers show this to be an adult female (the tail colours in this photograph are influenced by artificial light).

 

The Team

Mist netting 9/1/25

The team met at 730, and after a walk through the reserve with the kit, 8 nets were set around the reed bed & the 'crop field' at the Colyford Common end of the reserve. There was no frost or snow, and there was little wind, so it didn't feel too cold. Although we didn't catch a huge number of birds (31), we had a great variety with 16 species, which included a control Dunnock ie a bird ringed at a different site.  We'll have to wait to find out where the bird was ringed, although we know it was ringed on 23/8/2023. 

We caught 2 Reed Buntings, one new & one that we caught at the roost near the Discovery Hut on 10/12/24. 

Male Reed Bunting from the December roost catch

We caught a Treecreeper, which isn't a bird we catch very often on the reserve, with this being only the 23rd over the last decade. They're well adapted for their lifestyle, being well camouflaged against tree bark,  with long sharp claws for clinging to trees, stiff tail feathers for propping them up as they climb, and a long curved bill for probing cracks & crevices for insects. Once they've completed their post juvenile & post breeding moults, it's very difficult to age a Treecreeper. It may be possible to use the shape of the pale tip of the outer Primary Covert, but it's a feature that's shown as being highly variable and to 'use with caution'. Using this criteria, that the pale tip may spread along the shaft in young birds and be smaller in adults, this could have been a bird hatched last year (age code 5), but it was left un-aged due to the uncertainty of using this feature. 

Treecreeper

Treecreeper

Outer Primary Covert (arrowed)

We caught 2 Meadow Pipits in the nets beside the reed bed. The one shown below was aged as a 5 as it had a clear moult limit in its Greater Coverts, with the new inner 2 being edged a much darker buff colour than the paler edged outer 8. 

Meadow Pipit

Meadow Pipit Greater Coverts

Our most surprising bird of the day was a Kingfisher, a bird more usually caught during sessions around the Discovery Hut. This bird was a male, indicated by the lack of any red on the bill.

Male Kingfisher

Kingfisher 

We had company a couple of times during the morning......

Fox: Photo by Robin Pearson

The Team ringing on the Colyford Common viewing platform

	Ringed	Re-trapped	Control
Blue Tit	4
Cetti’s Warbler	2
Chiffchaff	2
Dunnock	1		1 (22/8/23)
Goldcrest	2	1 (30/11/24)
Great Tit	1	1 (15/8/23)
Greenfinch	1
House Sparrow	2
Kingfisher	1
Long-tailed Tit		1 (26/9/24)
Meadow Pipit	2
Reed Bunting	1	1 (10/12/24)
Robin	1
Sonechat	1
Treecreeper	1
Wren	4
	26	4	1

Roost mist-netting 10/12/24

A very small team assembled at midday to try and catch Reed Buntings coming in to roost. As it's something that the Group hasn't done for a very long time, it was a bit of an experiment. It was rather windy, so 6 nets were set in the more sheltered areas around the reeds & willows to the west of the Discovery Hut. 

The first Chiffchaff was caught almost straight away and was a control, having been ringed somewhere other than the Wetlands. It turned out that the bird was having a bad day, having been caught and ringed earlier the same day by our leader Mike Tyler at his own site at the Colyton Waste Water Treatment Works further up the River Axe. A short time later another interesting Chiffchaff was caught, this one looking much paler & greyer than normal, so possibly a Siberian Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita tristis).

Possible Siberian Chiffchaff

Possible Siberian Chiffchaff

We caught our first Reed Buntings just after 2pm, but it wasn't until nearer 4pm that they really started to arrive, and we had our biggest round of 8 Reed Buntings at 5pm, taking our total to 19. Some of the birds were quite easy to age, having obviously pointed juvenile tails, but as quite a few Reed Buntings moult their entire tails during their post juvenile moult, a nice rounded adult tail doesn't necessarily mean that the bird's an adult. Sexing the birds is usually done using the shape of the black centre of the crown feathers, and although most could be sexed in this way, a few were a bit ambiguous. The presence of white in the collar around the neck & grey feathers on the rump can also assist in sexing, but there were still a couple of birds that were only provisionally sexed.

The bird below was a male, as shown by the rounded shape of the black feather centre, and the slight white collar. The pointed tail indicates that it's a bird hatched this year ie age code 3. 

Reed Bunting 

Pointed tail...age code 3

Rounded black feather centre & white collar....male

The 'Team' & a row of bagged Reed Buntings 

It had been a successful evening, with 39 birds caught in total. An attempt was made to catch owls after the roost, but unfortunately the only owl encountered during the session was the stuffed one in the Discovery Hut. 

	Ringed	Re-trapped	Control
Blackbird		1
Blue Tit		2
Cetti’s Warbler		1
Chiffchaff	5		1
Dunnock	1
Goldcrest		2
Reed Bunting	19
Robin	3	2
Wren	2
	30	8	1