Coal Tit .....

[Outlaw Pete 2,224]

Haven't actually seen one of these dear little things around here for a while now. Got this one half an hour ago and it wasn't rung.

 

Hard to tell much about Coal Tits. My boss could probably suss things out by the shape of the tail feathers and what have you. Wear and tear gives different ages different shapes. I'm better with my sparrows

 

Anyway, here he / she is. Cute little souls .....

 

 

 

 

 

[fireman 10,917]

Well done OP,how many birds have you rung so far this year and when does your trapping year begin or is it 365 days a year?.

[Outlaw Pete 2,224]

Fireman; This year's been an absolute wash out for me. If I tallied up my numbers and told you, it would completely skew the true impression.

 

To name but a few of the factors rendering this the worst year imaginable: The pine martens have come ~ in truly biblical numbers! They've wiped out absolutely Every nest in my out buildings. They've destroyed my lovingly nurtured starling colony. The vast majority of my other nest boxes, spread far and wide, they've wrecked them at late chick stage and have taken them too.

 

Then, there's the fact that my boss has been working away all this season. So, no mist nets to catch much of what passes along my hedge. I'm supposed to be targeting sparrows, remember. And I honestly am. Just that there's not a lot of sparrows about this year either. Hence I'm getting so much 'Other' in my trap cage.

 

And, of course, this weather! Now, No Way am I in the business of tapping my way along a hedgerow and finding birds nests. Not when ringing the young would likely mean yet another monsoon would hit, even as I wandered on. Chilling and killing the entire damn brood!

 

It's been like that here, all season. I honestly haven't even Tried.

 

I could go on. Bloody catalogue of natural disasters. Migrant numbers were so shockingly down as to be almost non existent. Few that did arrive? Guess what? Read the second f**king paragraph again!

 

So, yeah. I'd bought £300's worth of rings, to see me through a busy season. Probably used about a scores worth. Does That give it some perspective?

 

I'd normally expect to ring maybe two, three hundred birds a year. Because my boss can barely get here once a month. And then he has to drive across two or three counties to get to me. It's him and his mist nets that rack up the numbers. He catches them. I ring them.

 

But, I'd also, 'normally' ring dozens and dozens of starlings and swallows, at the nest. Plus a shed load of other small birds in my city of nest boxes and what ever open nests I can find. I have endorsements for that too, as one must. But ..... Well; Did I mention the f**king pine martens?!?

 

[pip1968 2,490]

pete you need to come to mersyside next season we are on the outskirts the nests we find are unbelievable as most kids have lost the art of egging as we did when younger so theirs plenty to find these days,you will find most garden birds loads of tits wrens are all over nuthatchs that nest in the same holes year after year crows a few buzzards and the streams hold the warblers reed buntings and white throats and waders

[Millet 4,497]

Here is one that should of been rung so we could see if it survived the winter.. i trapped this one last winter at Moll's after watching it struggle to feed in the bad snow..after it was trapped it quickly became tame and after it's trip to the avian vet's to get it's beak dremeled ..it became so tame and it was feeding on mealworm out of Von's hand...our plan was to hold it in a cage till the snow cleared but the little Harry Houdini some how escaped out of the cage and out of the shed it was kept in..it was feeding well a suit ball's and around 10 mealworm's per day so i would say it had enough reserve's in it to see it through the snow.. ..

Here is a before and after for you Pete..

 

 

[Outlaw Pete 2,224]

Millet; I remember that thread well! And it is indeed a shame you couldn't have got a ring on Harry. Unfortunately, of course, even sneaking a plastic, coloured 'budgie' ring on a wild bird is totally illegal. That may sound harsh, on the face of it. But, the reasoning's completely sound.

 

Pity a local Ringer couldn't have just popped a regular ring on him. You'd then have been passably sure any ringed great tits in the garden were him. Bloody incredible, the sheer numbers of them though! I believe I've mentioned before, how I thought I had mine counted?

 

I reckoned there were half a dozen GT's visiting my feeders each day. We put up the mist net and ringed about twenty!

 

I don't know where they get to. But, just the other day I retrapped one we rung about three years ago. Where's he been? This is why we need as many ringers as we can get, see? If a Dog barks and shouts his head off, deep in a forest where there's no one to hear; Is he still a bad Dog?

 

If my tit f**ks off to the next county, where there's no one to retrap him and tell us about it ....?

 

 

 

Pip; Stop it. Please!

 

[fireman 10,917]

Thanks for the reply OP and my heart goes out to you mate with that martin problem,we can all feel the passion you have for what you do and i know everything has a place but with that many losses i myself would have to do something about it for the good of the rest of the wildlife and only someone like yourself and not some pleb sat in parliment somewhere can see when and where pest control is needed.

But anyway a lot of captive bird keepers have had a poor year (ignore Millet,he was due good karma anyway ) this year and i myself have lost more eggs than have hatched but no real reasons why for the most of them and the cold start we had to the spring held a few things back for sure so maybe the same in the wild and i do have birds still nesting so maybe some are trying to make it up with a late brood?.

Are your rings date stamped OP or are they a open dated ring just with ID numbers as it were?,i'm thinking that's a lot of money to spend on rings if you only have a time period to use them in like we do as our's are date stamped or colour coded for each year but if yours are open it's not so bad i presume?.One day they'll have gps chips and batteries small enough for small birds to carry OP and then we'll be able to follow them a bit better and see just where abouts they do go.

[Outlaw Pete 2,224]

Are your rings date stamped OP or are they a open dated ring just with ID numbers as it were?,i'm thinking that's a lot of money to spend on rings if you only have a time period to use them in like we do as our's are date stamped or colour coded for each year.

 

 

Christ, no! Our rings are simply stamped with a number. That number only 'activates' once we report that we've put it on a given bird. No. I could drop dead tomorrow and not be found for a decade. Then, my boss would think;

 

" That's handy! I wondered where the smelly f**ker had got to. " And have my rings away. Only, he won't; Because it's debatable whether either of us have a decade left in us!

 

But, no. Seriously: I have a couple of hundred starling sized rings here, look. Serial numbered something like " TS27101 - 300 ". Those rings and their numbers are completely meaningless, until I send in a report that " Ring # TS27131 was, today, fitted to a one year old female starling, at my home location. "

 

Then, if that bird is caught ("Controlled" as we call it. God, I Live for Controlling someone elses bird! ) in the next county, or Russia? They'll report the fact. BTO will inform my boss. He'll inform me. And I'll crack out the Jameson!

 

But, yeah, That's how it works with us. You poor sods have my fullest sympathy. Having to guestimate how many chicks you're expecting. And pre order these non returnable rings for them. What a PITA!

 

But, there it is, I suppose. We both know what goes on out there, as it is. Without such 'assurances' ....? Christ; Where would we all be?

[KittleRox 2,147]

all good interesting stuff lads

[fireman 10,917]

Thanks for the reply OP and thought your rings were along those lines ,with ours there around £6,50 for 10 rings of each size so not to bad if you've over ordered say by 10.But it is a pain at times guesstimating ring numbers and to be honest this last couple of weeks has caught me out with the bully chicks ones not arriving in time so rung with 2011 rings and i found a nest of silver redpolls i didn't know i had and had to use 2 of this years rings and 2 of last years rings and now a couple of cinny redpoll eggs have hatched under a irish canary hen(didn't expect them to hatch at all) and i've had to call on a good old fella to send me some of his unused ones,so yeah a real PITA,but like you say "assurances" are needed for sure .

So don't forget the post box in the morning Millet .