Bardsey's Wildlife: Autumn round-up

Monday 13 January 2014

Autumn round-up

Autumn was pretty fantastic on Bardsey , with some great birds....

July

Breeding birds fledged good numbers of young

July began with a flourish of 'scarce' migrants with a few Great-spotted Woodpeckers

Red Kites

and Crossbills

A Vestal was trapped

Turnstones began to come back

With a Black-tailed Godwit in Henllwyn

The first Grasshopper Warblers began to arrive

as did Mediterranean Gulls

The first Purple Sands come home for winter

With a few Sanderling moving too

And the first Willow Warbler arrived

August

The first Migrant Hawker of the year turned up

Storm Petrels were trapped and ringed then weighed and measured...

Good numbers of Willow Warblers were scattered around - even on the beaches!

and Painted Lady

A fab male Blue Emperor was trapped in the new Heligoland trap

The New heligoland trap

a good number of shearwater chicks were being trapped as part of the monitoring projects.

Pied Flycatchers began to move

With a few Whinchats

September

Spotted Flycatchers

and Chciffchaffs arrive

and Osprey flew over

and Greenland Wheatears moved in

Lots of swallows were on the move

and an early GND

with stong winds producing Sooty Shearwaters

and the island's 2nd Fea's Petrel (no picture)

Arctic Skuas

abd Long-tailed Skuas

first calm day for a while and a Barn Owl was found

whilst observers were looking at a Melodious Warbler

and a Common Rosefinch!!!!!

The first Yellow-browed Warbler was found at Nant

whilst Observers were watching a Wryneck

that was in the same bush as this Red-breasted Flycatcher!!!!!

and a Turtle Dove was nearby

with a Treecreeper at Nant.

This rather smart Siberian Stonechat was found towards the end of the month

with Whinchats (centre) and Stonechat (left) nearby

A firecrest or two were seen

and six of the 21 Yellow-browed Warblers were trapped

one of the five Red-breasted Flycatchers was trapped

an adult Sabine's Gull was seen

more Wrynecks arrived

and Yellow-broweds continued to arrive

Geese started to move, with four Barnacles

and then This Pied Wheatear - a new bird for the island

a Red-throated Diver was close in shore

with more Firecrests

and Stonechats building in number

More wind - Med Gulls

and Gannets

Lapland buntings were never numerous

Hooded Crow was almost resident

Baby Storm Petrel was attracted tot he lighthouse

and a Water Pipit was found on the beach

amongst the local Rock Pipits

and Scandinavian Littoralis Rock Pipits

Thousands of Sarlings appeared

and this Siberian Chiffchaff

Water Pipit stayed to December

Choughs on the beach were trapped

and this Swallow was seen on 13 DECEMBER !!!

and then BBFO data gets entered on to the modern world

THURSDAY, 5 DECEMBER 2013

Bardsey gets all census data into 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!!

Rough seas and Strong winds saw the tear come to an end

and good auk passage

And so ends another year. Thanks to all who contributed in making BBFO's 60th year its most successful yet.

No comments:

Click to see inside!

Edited by Mike Archer, Mark Grantham, Peter Howlett and Steve Stansfield and published by T & AD Poyser, this fabulous book describes how much has changed since the first edition of Bird Observatories in Britain and Ireland was published in 1976. There are detailed accounts of the history and work carried out at each of the 18 observatories, with personal accounts by wardens and staff of the excitement of discovering a rarity, watching thousands of migrants attracted to a lighthouse after dark, and the pleasure and experiences that working at some of the country’s most remote and beautiful locations can bring. Click the picture of the book to see inside or to buy your copy.

Migrants

Being sited on the main migration route of many species, Bardsey (or Ynys Enlli in Welsh) is a well-known site for migrant birds, turning up many scarcities and rarities, as well as large numbers of common migrants. The island’s list now stands on 326, after the recent addition of Citrine Wagtail in October 2012.

Although Bardsey’s reputation for rare birds may not quite match that of some observatories, it is almost certainly the best site in Wales for rarities. Among Bardsey’s rarer visitors are the first Summer Tanager (1957) and Yellow Warbler (1964) to have been recorded in Britain and Ireland, as well as American vagrants such American Bittern, Sora, Kildeer, Spotted Sandpiper, Grey-cheeked Thrush, American Robin, Song Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, Red-eyed Vireo, Black-and-white Warbler, Common Yellowthroat, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Blackpoll Warbler. To add to this impressive list of rarities, Black-winged Stilt, Lesser Yellowlegs, Lanceolated Warbler, River Warbler, Western Orphean Warbler, Booted Warbler, Blyth’s Reed Warbler, Eyebrowed Thrush, Thrush Nightingale, Red-flanked Bluetail, Isabelline Wheatear, Black-eared Wheatear, Collared Flycatcher, Blyth’s Pipit, Pine Bunting, Rock Bunting, Yellow-breasted Bunting and White-throated Sparrow have all been recorded.

Besides the rarities, Bardsey regularly attracts large numbers of weary migrants during 'fall' conditions in Spring and Autumn, largely a consequence of the fully operational Bardsey Lighthouse. In 2011, for example, a single grounding of migrants resulted in over 1000 Willow Warblers making groundfall on the island in August. In the not-so-distant past, a single attraction of 40,000 Redwings occurred in late October at the end of the last century.

Breeding birds

Bardsey is home to some 26, 000 pairs of Manx Shearwaters, which can be heard on dark nights from mid-March to August. They breed in their excavated burrows, which are scattered all over the island. Chough is the most important species of conservation concern, with between four to eight pairs nesting around the coastal cliffs most years, and a wintering flock of up to 50 individuals. A pair of Peregrines breed on the island, and a 1-2 pair of Ravens also nest most years. There are several species which nest only occasionally, such as Sparrowhawk and Little Owl, along with Afro-Palearctic migrants like Sedge Warbler, Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Willow Warbler. Up to ten pairs of Stonechats can nest in the isolated gorse patches around the island, along with many Linnets and Meadow Pipits. Corncrakes were once a common breeder on the island, although since 1970 there have been no confirmed pairs nesting. In recent years the likes of Lapwing, Yellowhammer, House Sparrow and Starling have also all become extinct as breeding species. In contrast, Shelduck, Puffin, Long-eared Owl, Grasshopper Warbler and Goldcrest have been added to the breeding bird list since 1998.

Ringing

Ringing is a very important part of the observatory’s role on the island. Since 1953, the observatory has ringed over 315,00 birds of 198 species. The highest number ringed in a single year was 1988, with a total of 11, 301 birds ringed of 93 species. There have been many days in the observatory’s history when several hundred birds have been ringed in one day; these occasions have mostly involved breeding seabirds, although these numbers can also easily occur with migrant species.

Lepidoptera

A total of 561 species of moths have been recorded on the island. Bardsey is not an overly good location for scarce moths, although the existence of Thrift Clearwings (Nationally scarce) has been established on the Thrift plants around the coast in recent years, after first being recorded in the years 1980 and 1996. Migrant moths arrive in small numbers every year, for example the annual arrival of Hummingbird Hawkmoths in the autumn; rarer immigrants in the past have included Death’s Head Hawkmoths, Vestals, Crimson Speckled and Red-necked Footman.

In recent years, a greater emphasis has been placed on recording and identifying the so-called ‘micro-moths’, which has resulted in the finding of 41 new species for Bardsey since 2011. In 2012, the coastal subspecies of Eana penziana (E.p.colquhounana) was re-found on the island, which was the first time that this Nationally Scarce species had been recorded on Bardsey since 1966. Apotomis semifasciana is also amongst the scarcer species of micro-moths to inhibit the island (also Nationally Scarce).

Butterflies are present on the island in small numbers, with species such as Common Blue, Small Copper and Small Tortoise-shell being the most common. A scarcer breeding species is the Grayling, which can be found in small numbers on the top of the mountain. Migrant butterflies such as Painted Lady can arrive in their hundreds, although other migrants such as Clouded Yellow and Dark-green Fritillary are quite rare.

Bardsey's Wildlife

Pages