The 8th saw a few thrushes dotted around the island, including three Blackbirds, a Fieldfare and a Song Thrush. A single Merlin continued to hunt prey around the Narrows, before flying off towards Pen Cristin. Four Purple Sandpipers and four Turnstones were present around the Narrows at high tide.

The 9th saw the continuation of the brisk South-westerly winds, although the winter sunshine gave the day a lovely warmth. A movement of seabirds out to sea saw one each of Red-throated Diver and Great Northern Diver flying South, along with 77 Common Scoters, two drake Eiders and a Gannet.

 Black-headed Gulls continue to feed in small numbers around the Narrows, especially in Solfach

 Herring Gull in mid head-shake!

 Common Gull

Turnstone

Continuing on the atmospheric conditions of the previous day, the 6^th saw the strong winds still set in the west, producing high seas during high tide mid-morning.  On the bird front, a small movement of seabirds out to sea saw a Red-throated Diver, two Fulmars, 74 Black-headed Gulls and 23 Common Gulls flying South, whilst a feeding flock of a minimum of 5000 Kittiwakes was observed several miles to the East of the South End. There was no sign of the Water Pipit on the now seaweed-stricken Solfach, although the Hooded Crow continued to lounge around this area.

The 7^th was an altogether calmer day, giving a brief interlude between storms. A total of 420 Black-headed Gulls gathered around Henllwyn and Solfach at high tide, feeding amongst another 26 Common Gulls. A small part of the feeding flock to the east of the South End had moved slightly closer to the island, and allowed two Little Gulls to be identified amongst the hundreds of Kittiwakes. A Great Northern Diver also flew past at sea, along with 300 Guillemots and six Fulmars. Elsewhere, a Jack Snipe and a Snipe were seen in the Ty Pellaf Wetlands, and singles of Merlin, Sparrowhawk and Kestrel were scattered all over the island.

Chough, with Bardsey Lighthouse in the background

Some atmospheric images of Choughs in front of this morning's sunrise. The top photo is not manipulated!

Herring Gull

There has been a concentrated gathering of Grey Seals on one of the beaches in Henllwyn in recent days. Spot the Turnstone!

Not wanting to be left out from the destruction that has been caused by the winds and storm surges of recent days, here is the extent to which our coast has been affected: the make-shift photographic hide on Solfach was overturned in a period of strong winds...

Bardsey gets all census data into BTO's BirdTrack

This afternoon I received an email from Andy Musgrove at the BTO HQ in Thetford.

"Thanks to sterling efforts from my colleague Justin, I can now announce that the Bardsey data are fully incorporated into BirdTrack! And they look mighty impressive. Approximately 700,000 records from 15,000 complete lists means that Bardsey alone now represents about 3% of the BirdTrack database...

...Finally, another fun statistic is that loading these records has trebled the number of Chough records in the BirdTrack database in one go! 66% of Chough records are now from the Bardsey Obs dataset."

I was moved!!! Years of work and head scratching to get the data to the BTO and I am now proud to announce that BBFO has become the first Observatory to have ALL its census data and ALL its ringing data digitised and logged at BTO HQ on their systems, making our data sets accessible and usable for conservation purposes on a national scale.

I responded immediately to Andy with this email:

"Andy that is FANTASTIC.

It has been a rather long, drawn out job getting all those records digitised as well as at times being tearful, stressful, and exhausting.

The list of people involved is huge, however, Julia Davies (my Assistant in 2001 and 2002) deserves special thanks as she was the one who originally digitised most of the data, and also Mike Archer and his team of helpers Dale Brown, Daphne Tyne, Joan James, Ruth Edwards and Jude were the main workers at the data checking 'coal face'.

Can I on behalf of the Trustees of BBFO and myself as Warden thank all involved at the BTO and all you guys who sat entering and checking data for such lengthy periods in sometimes uncomfortable conditions in the Obs!!

A tremendous effort all round to get all our ringing data onto IPMR (including all retraps and recoveries!) and now all our Census data onto BirdTrack.

The champagne will be popping tonight on Bardsey!!

And our next task is to get all the other Observatories to do the same!!!

All the very Best

Steve"

Andy Further responded:

"Thanks Steve

I would indeed second your thanks and congratulations to all the volunteers who did the real hard work of entering and checking data. And those who collected in the first place of course (although that's generally a bit more fun!) Well done all, enjoy your champagne!

Best wishes

Andy Musgrove

Head of Monitoring, British Trust for Ornithology

Address: BTO, The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk, UK, IP24 2PU

Well that is a FANTASTIC result, some 15 years in the making and we now have our data all done and dusted. Mike Archer was presented with a gift from the BBRO Trustees in October when he was on the island for his work in the co-ordination of the mammoth task it has been over the past 15 years.

Peter Howlett (one of BBFO's Trustees) wrote a short piece for our Newsletter:

When Mike Archer and Dale Brown left the island on October 12th it brought to a close a remarkable period in the recent history of the Observatory. Mike has spent the past 15 years driving forward the digitisation of the bird log and ringing data. This has been a herculean effort both in his time and the amount of money spent and BBFO owe him and his band of helpers a huge debt of gratitude. Thanks to their efforts Bardsey has become the first Observatory to be able to submit all its archive log and ringing data to the BTO - a remarkable feat! 

As a thank you for all his efforts, Mike was given a small thank you from the Trustees. 


Pete Howlett

Andy did some very quick bits with the Bardsey data and had a look at the difference between Sand Martin records in the 1960s (top chart) and the 2000s (bottom). We can see instantly that there are more Sand Martin Records in March and April in the 200s than there were in the 1960s, prbably due to climatic change.

We are also able to see the number of species recorded per year on bards, as easily as clicking a few buttons on the mouse!!

So having seen the work that has been done on Bardsey, it is time for everyone to get involved. Enter your current sightings and then get out your old notebooks from the loft and get them digitised too. If you are interested in being part of the big picture read on...

About BirdTrack (copied from the BirdTrack web site (c) BTO)

BirdTrack is an exciting project, through a partnership between the BTO, the RSPB, Birdwatch Ireland, the Scottish Ornithologists' Club and the Welsh Ornithological Society, that looks at migration movements and distributions of birds throughout Britain and Ireland. BirdTrack provides facilities for observers to store and manage their own personal records as well as using these to support species conservation at local, regional, national and international scales.

The idea behind BirdTrack is that if you have been out birdwatching anywhere in Britain and Ireland, or simply watching birds in your garden, records of the birds you have seen (or indeed have not seen) can be useful data. Thus the scheme is year-round, and ongoing, and anyone with an interest in birds can contribute. Important results produced by BirdTrack include mapping migration (arrivals and departures) timings and monitoring scarce birds. We know very little about the timing of arrival and departure of winter visitors and this is just one area in which BirdTrack will provide useful information. There are also many scarce birds where we would like to know much more about their populations.

Register now to get started, or read on for more information...

The success of BirdTrack relies on your birdwatching lists. As a contributor you make a note of the birds you see, either out birdwatching or from the office or garden for example, and enter your daily observations on a simple-to-use web page. We need to gather a large number of lists at all times of the year from throughout Britain and Ireland. We prefer complete lists of birds (all species seen and heard) because the proportion of lists with a given species provides a good measure of frequency of occurrence that can be used for population monitoring. Incomplete lists and casual records can also be entered because they too build our understanding of populations, distributions and movements.

The local and national results are available on the website for everyone to look at - you don’t have to be a BirdTrack recorder. Every night the BTO BirdTrack computer will summarise that day's records and produce up-to-date maps and graphs showing the latest in migration, movements and distribution. These include animated maps showing the arrival and departure of migrants and the seasonal movements of birds. For scarce species, such as Hawfinch, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Woodcock and Water Rail, we will be building up a picture of their distribution throughout the year. You can also view and analyse your own records through specially designed features.

We hope that birdwatchers of all abilities will take part in BirdTrack. By encouraging large numbers of volunteers to join in the project we will be able to gather a large amount of unique and fascinating information.

We continue to develop BirdTrack in order to provide extra facilities for birdwatchers to maintain and analyse their own records, and for county societies to be able to do this for records within their areas. With your permission, all of your records will automatically be forwarded to the relevant county recorder.

Recording Migration Patterns

BirdTrack developed from Migration Watch, which ran in the springs of 2002-2004, and incorporates all of the Migration Watch data. Migration Watch was able to record the timing of arrivals and pattern of migratory spread of summer visitors across Britain & Ireland. This was a huge achievement and the power of the Internet made it possible to produce up-to-date daily results. BirdTrack expanded on this to provide a year-round recording package so that we can also study autumn migration (a much bigger challenge) and other movements and distributions. To find out more, read a fascinating article about how BirdTrack data is helping us to understand the effects of climate change on migration timing.

As with Migration Watch we are interested in not just when the first birds arrive or the last ones depart, but we also want to know when the bulk of the population has arrived or departed (whether summer or winter visitors). We can also get interesting information about passage migrants, such as inland wader movements. We can work this out by looking at the proportion of volunteers that have recorded a particular species on a given day.

By using the lists and counts of species submitted by volunteers we can also investigate how birds filter through the country; for example, do they head up the centre of the country or do they disperse west or east in spring time?

Tracking the Conservation Status of Scarce Species

An important aspect of BirdTrack is to provide supplementary information on some of the scarcer species in Britain and Ireland. Many species are monitored well by existing surveys such as the BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey and by periodical surveys such as Seabird 2000 and the Nightjar survey. Others are difficult to survey well due to the habitats they occupy, their low breeding density and their secretive nature.

There is a range of species for which birdwatchers could easily and usefully contribute information. We hope to build up an annual picture of their distribution in Britain and Ireland, which would provide an excellent source of information between national Atlas projects. For species such as Hawfinch, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker and Woodcock we would like to receive records from throughout the year, whilst some other species are more common but scarce in the breeding season, e.g. Pochard and Dunlin, and so those records are particularly valuable.

Read more about taking part in BirdTrack, or just jump in and register to get started.

BirdTrack is organised by the BTO for the BTO, RSPB, BirdWatch Ireland, SOC and WOS. 
© British Trust for Ornithology, BTO, The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk IP24 2PU, Tel: +44 (0)1842 750050
Email: birdtrack@bto.org (Britain) / bcaffrey@birdwatchireland.ie (Ireland)
Registered Charity Number 216652 (England & Wales), SC039193 (Scotland).

The 6^th was a beautiful day, with the sun making its first appearance for at least two weeks. With the island bathed in soft winter light, it was very pleasant being out. The pair of Bullfinches continued to take up residence around Cristin, giving out their soft hooting calls to make their presence known. A single Redwing joined the usual Blackbirds at Nant, feeding in the fields South of Ty Nesaf. The Water Pipit continued to feed quite happily around Solfach, although was prevented from being captured by a very territorial Rock Pipit, which had decided to make the entrance of the Heligoland trap its personal territory.

Gale-force westerly winds on the 5^th made it a task to just stay vertical, and so birding was made doubly difficult! An excellent sea-watching session, from the comfort of Cristin, yielded a Sooty Shearwater, two Long Tailed Ducks (new for the year), and 104 Common Scoters. The huge waves, coupled with a 10.0 metre tide made for an impressive count of gulls around the Narrows, which were feeding both in Henllwyn and Solfach. Totals for the morning amounted to 46 Common Gulls, five Mediterranean Gulls, 230 Black-headed Gulls, 500 Herring Gulls, 17 Great Black-backed Gulls and three Lesser Black-backed Gulls, whilst at least 1600 Kittiwakes were seen gliding over the waves several miles to the east of the South End.

The Water Pipit continued to feed amongst the Rock Pipits on Sollfach, having now been here for three weeks. Unfortunately, the bird was not trapped in the Heligoland, due to a Rock Pipit which continually chased the bird away from the entrance of the trap

An appalling image, although showing the bright white outer tail feathers

An interesting Rock Pipit, possibly of the Scandinavian race A. p. littoralis

Another Rock Pipit, more likely to be a local, with a very reduced amount of white on the outer tail feathers in flight

The Choughs were demonstrating their aerobatic skills in the windy conditions. A very good-sized flock of 46 birds continue to feed on Solfach

Herring Gulls in front of the dramatic sea-scapes

Black-headed Gulls were in abundance around the Narrows today, with over 200 present at high tide

Herring Gull

Another two days dominated by overcast skies saw some notable new arrivals on the 3rd. However, on the 2nd, there was very little around: a Woodcock was flushed from Ty Pellaf, three Fieldfares were present in the Hay Fields, and the Water Pipit remained on Solfach.
Two Bullfinches and a Black Redstart around Cristin were noteworthy migrants on the 3rd. The Bullfinches were incredibly the first records of the year, leaving a suspected cage bird in March aside. A Jack Snipe was flushed from the wetlands, whilst four Song Thrushes was an increase on recent days. A good number of Common Gulls were recorded around Solfach and off the North End, with a total of 60 seen amongst 350 Black-headed Gulls.

The portable Heligoland was set up on Solfach on Sunday. Most of the birds on the beach are now very much accustomed to it, with Choughs, Rock Pipits and Robins all feeding actually within the catching area! Five Rock Pipits were trapped and colour-ringed yesterday, whilst two Choughs were trapped today, along with a Starling.

 The portable Heligoland with at least nine Choughs feeding inside!

 One of the two un-ringed Choughs which were trapped, ringed, and given nice new colour-rings

Juvenile Chough, with duller, slightly brown primaries, secondaries and coverts.

The 30th was a very quiet day indeed, with a Woodcock in the wetlands just about the highlight of the day! However, December started on a somewhat better note, with a few nice arrivals to be seen on the 1st. The day started off well with singles of Wigeon and pale-bellied Brent Goose recorded around the Narrows; two Hooded Crows were seen feeding on Solfach, amongst the usual Choughs, and the Water Pipit was again present here. In the wetlands, two Jack Snipe were flushed, along with six Snipe, whilst thrush numbers were down to six Song Thrushes and one Redwing.

 The feeding flock of Choughs continue to make use of the rotting piles of kelp, with a maximum of 48 birds present on Solfach at the moment

 Two Hooded Crows have also taken to feeding on Solfach 

Rock Pipit

The 28th saw the return of Steve, Emma and Connor onto the island for a few weeks, and this arrival seemed to stimulate a few noteworthy species to turn up. A Snow Bunting flying and calling over Cristin mid-morning was amazingly the first record of this year. Other noteworthy passerines included the Water Pipit on Solfach, a Reed Bunting over Ty Pellaf, a Chiffchaff at Cristin, and seven Redwings in the withies. A Jack Snipe was flushed from the wetlands, along with four Snipe.
The weather on the 29th took a turn for the worse, with gale-force north-westerlies bringing the temperatures back down, and keeping any passerines well hidden away. There was a small movement of Razorbills, Guillemots, Gannets and Kittiwakes out to sea, with a Red-breasted Merganser and Mediterranean Gulls flying past with them.

The Water Pipit remained on Solfach for both days, and represented the most noteworthy bird on the island during this period. Both days were otherwise very quiet, with hardly any new arrivals in despite the very calm conditions. A Merlin terrorised the Rock Pipits on Solfach on and off throughout the day on the 26th, whilst singles of Sparrowhawk and Kestrel were also recorded around the island. Four Redwings and a Fieldfare were present around Ty Pellaf in the early morning. A Woodcock and one Snipe were flushed from the wetlands on the 27th, and a flock of 11 Common Scoters flew North past the island out to sea.

 The Water Pipit continued to feed alongside the Rock Pipits, although would get chased away by particularly territorial birds

Rock Pipit

It was another calm couple of days, although overcast conditions settling over the island made it feel very cold. There were virtually no noteworthy sightings on the 24th, with very few thrushes around the island's gardens, and not much movement out to sea. The Hooded Crow remained on Solfach, and  was still present today. The 25th was a slightly more eventful day, with the Water Pipit making an appearance on Solfach midday. The bird was seen feeding amongst the usual mix of Rock Pipits, along with a couple of birds which looked more like A.p. littoralis. The Water Pipit was a very striking bird, with off-white underparts and more defined streaking making it look like a Meadow Pipit at times. It is likely that this is the same bird that was present a couple of weeks ago.
On the rest of the bird front: a flock of 21 Lapwings flew South-east over the Narrows, a Jack Snipe and four Snipe were flushed from the Ty Pellaf Wetlands, and a Merlin chased the flock of Goldfinches around Ty Pellaf. Thrush-counts were back up, with a total of 26 Blackbirds, nine Song Thrushes, a Fieldfare, and five Redwings recorded.

 Water Pipit- note the much paler tones on the underparts, more defined streaking and browner upperparts

 Rock Pipit

There is still a small flock of Starlings on Solfach, although most of them have dispersed 

These two Choughs became engaged in an interesting battle, which ended with both of them flying off after each other, and several other birds in pursuit!