Every year FBO runs its Migweek event, offering daily guided walks, daily ringing demonstrations, talks and a migration station providing info, merchandise and chat. The event continues to grow in popularity with this year being the best ever with a big increase in visitor numbers.
The team ran eleven ringing demonstrations, eight at South Landing and three at RSPB Bempton with each one being very well attended with over fifty members of the public enjoying birds up close, hearing about migration and the importance of the BTO ringing scheme.
Ringing took place on eight out of the nine days, with just the last Sunday being cancelled due to the strength of the wind, the lack of wind throughout the week enabled us to run thirty six sessions across seven different headland sites. Whilst we didn’t have the easterly winds to bring us rare migrants, we had some favourable winds to bring us migrant thrushes, Redpolls and a flurry of Yellow-browed Warblers.
This years Migweek saw the team catch a record number of birds, with 1741 birds caught of which 1511 were newly ringed and 230 re-traps or controls.
Totals for across the headland are shown below:
| Species | Totals | Newly ringed | Retraps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sparrowhawk | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| Kestrel | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Coal Tit | 20 | 13 | 7 |
| Blue Tit | 90 | 41 | 49 |
| Great Tit | 36 | 14 | 22 |
| Long-tailed Tit | 81 | 74 | 7 |
| Yellow-browed Warbler | 19 | 17 | 2 |
| Chiffchaff | 30 | 28 | 2 |
| Reed Warbler | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Blackcap | 24 | 21 | 3 |
| Garden Warbler | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Firecrest | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Goldcrest | 173 | 151 | 22 |
| Wren | 54 | 39 | 15 |
| Tree Creeper | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Starling | 19 | 19 | 0 |
| Song Thrush | 26 | 25 | 1 |
| Redwing | 361 | 360 | 1 |
| Blackbird | 275 | 254 | 21 |
| Fieldfare | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Ring Ouzel | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Robin | 35 | 17 | 18 |
| Stonechat | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Tree Sparrow | 75 | 68 | 7 |
| Dunnock | 76 | 47 | 29 |
| Grey Wagtail | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Meadow Pipit | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Rock Pipit | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| Chaffinch | 34 | 28 | 6 |
| Brambling | 4 | 4 | 0 |
| Bullfinch | 12 | 8 | 4 |
| Greenfinch | 7 | 7 | 0 |
| Linnet | 15 | 14 | 1 |
| Mealy Redpoll | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Lesser Redpoll | 118 | 113 | 5 |
| Goldfinch | 50 | 46 | 4 |
| Yellowhammer | 53 | 53 | 0 |
| Reed Bunting | 27 | 27 | 0 |
| Totals | 1741 | 1511 | 230 |
We welcomed Mariana Santos from the Zoological Society of London for two days, Mariana is a wildlife veterinarian sampling wild birds for mosquito borne viruses, in particular the Usutu virus which is causing large declines in Blackbird populations. Mariana was able to sample a good number of Blackbird, Song Thrush and Chiffchaff whilst with us. Mariana is also involved in the Darwin Tree of Life project which aims to sequence the genome of all the ‘complex’ organisms in the world to make them available for research, conservation and more. Whilst with us Mariana was able to sample a Tree Sparrow and a Grey Wagtail for the Tree of Life project, and we were able to connect Mariana with Dr Joe Wynn to enable sharing sample from Yellow-browed Warblers.
The FBO ringing team is immensely proud to have been able to be involved and help facilitate this important scientific research.
Information about the Darwin Tree of Life project can be found at https://www.darwintreeoflife.org/
Below is a newsletter from VB-Radar-the project on mosquito borne viruses.
