Started Ringing My Starlings, Today .....

  Actually written on the 28th of April. Dunno what happened there!

  Funnily enough, every year, this stresses the shit out of me.  It's not the handling, positioning and climbing the ladder.

 It's not opening these boxes and  being greeted by that miasma which, believe me, only a starling nest box can hit ye with.

  It's not the certain knowledge that, by the time I've finished? Despite my years of experience and the crafty little tricks I've developed? I Will end up stinking of starling shit! 

   No. It's the fucking Weather!

  Starlings hatch. Then, they're in that nest for three weeks. Second week, they've grown exponentially. 

  Eyes opening. Feather points coming through. Grips like gin traps. That is when I want to ring them! 

   It's, frankly, shattering work. Because ye so focused. Total concentration. Trying to be quick, yet careful and correct as ye can.

 Ye've also got to be absolutely certain the conditions, outside that box, are right. Their lives are, quite literally, in my hands!

  And, I've been praying for those conditions. Because I have a couple of dozen, active boxes to do. Average of five chicks in each.

 Forecast has been wind, rain and dead starling chicks, for ever!

  Today? It simply wasn't so bad! No rain. Wind was in the right direction. This Was It! I have, probably, a ton plus chicks to ring. Here we go!!!

  Grabbed my gear and checked it. Bird bags? Check. Ringing pliers? Check. Note book? Check. Pen? Check. C rings? Ch .....Ang about!!!

  Rings come on 'Strings', see? Strings are colour coded. A rings ~ finches, tits and shit ~ Yellow. B rings ~ Sparrows, greenfinch, what ever? Brown. C rings. Starling? Orange. 

  And, a year since I rung a starling, I'm staring at this string of almost a hundred rings. And the plastic is very, Very fucking Brown!!! That short stub, beneath it, was Orange. 

  I had just Twenty fucking Starling rings left!!!

  How the Hell did That happen?!! For a whole Year now, I've had these damn rings, Laying There, in my kitchen. In clear view.

  How The Fuck have I looked at almost a hundred, tiny rings, on a Brown string, and thought; " Mm. Yeah. Ready for the Starling season! "

  Ah well. Life's a bitch. Phoned my boss; 200 Starling Rings will, hopefully, be here for Wednesday.

  Forecast ~ though That changes by the day! ~ is good. Hope and pray that it is. And the rings get here.

  It'll be close. It'll be intense. I'll end up covered in projectile starling chick shit.

  But; This is what I live for, now.

Blackbird; I'll 'Ave 'Ee ....!

 Game on ....! 

I've been feeding the blackbirds their apples for months on end now. So much so that my weekly bag of apples has just become part of the household shopping list and budget.

Worth every last penny though. Just to be able to look out through the back door and see them scarfing down their life assuring rations, within minutes of me putting it out there.

 Always cut their apple in half, 'mind. They don't know what to do with a whole one, it seems. I've always cut them in half anyway. Just something I've done. I like to give them half, then, now that the days are longer and they have the time, I'll give them another half later.

 Anyway; I've had a male and, more particularly, a female out there for ages now. Both rung. (I'm a licensed Ringer and my Trainer and I have caught most of the 'resident' birds, in Mist Nets, and rung them long since). More than one male bird gets around here. Sparrowhawk took one a few weeks ago.

 Today though, I've seen 'my' female bird, enjoying her apple. Then, she's come out from the shelter of the hedge, where I feed them, and started bouncing around, pecking up the ground! 'My' bird's never done this before!

 She also looked 'different'. Her brown wasn't the same tones. No doubt about that. I've grabbed the bin's and focussed in on her right leg. No ring!!!  I was right; This was a completely different bird! Straight away, I decided we'd have to catch her and sort that leg out!  

 But, here's the best bit: Five minutes later, there's a Male bird out there. And he's fucking about, digging the ground and such too. Glass on the bugger straight away. Dear god! He's somewhere between 'warm brown' and 'browny black'!  Probably last years hatch then? And no ring!!!

 Fuck this! These birds need catching and ringing! God knows where they've come from. But, rings may let us find out where they go. How they get on as they go there. How long they live. All sorts of fascinating and useful shit ye never knew ye didn't know. 

 Ringing even just the birds in my 'garden' has expanded my knowledge and understanding of the True dynamics here exponentially. 

 You may observe the birds at your feeders. Count them, even. And think your finger's on the pulse? I used to. But, no. You're really just looking at a procession  of Chinese.  They all look the same and ye really just seeing apparent numbers. But, are they passing by? Or just walking endlessly round the block?

 You too could be amazed. Start Here. 
 

 

Ring Rage .....

 I actually wrote and posted this over on Jims, this morning. Just a knee jerk to get it off my chest. But, as I hope to mention my Bird Ringing adventures a bit more on here, now I have a limited C Permit, I figured this would be a place to start .....


I have just been screaming down the phone, to my Trainer! Absolutely fucking Raging!

Why so, ye might ask? I'll tell ye why. And it won't half help if ye at least know the most basic bird identities.

I'm allowed to trap sparrows and ring them. Right? Now, a sparrow takes a size B ring. Also though, I'm allowed to ring anything else that happens to go into the trap I set for sparrows. And, believe me, just about every other bird that flies takes an A ring. Okay?

So, Chris slung me a shit load of B's, in anticipation of all the sparrows I'll be catching. And, as an after thought, a few A's for those incidentals.

Well, for the past couple of days now, I've had the traps out. And boy, have I caught some birds! Coal tits. Blue tits. Dunnock. Robins. All stuff I've caught before and, frankly, frustrating me. Because a trap with a robin in it can't catch a sparrow, can it?

So, I've spent all morning emptying non targets and ringing them, 'just because'. In fact, I've now used up all my A rings. Put the last one on a rather sweetly trusting little robin. Robin that was hanging about the trap with a chaffinch!

Now, for some reason unknown even to me, I had a hard on for that chaffinch. Only a dowdy female. But, I've never trapped one before and I fancied it. Got the fucking robin instead. There went my last ring.

Looked out. Trap's fired again. Caught another bird. And Oh My Fucking God! It's a fucking stunningly gorgeous full adult, Male chaffinch!!! Beautiful rose breast and that striking blue hood. And I haven't got a ring to fucking put on him!

I've gone ballistic! I've rung Chris and started screaming! LOL! So fucking funny, looking back on it. Me, standing out there with this fucking chaffinch in my hand, ranting and raving to my Trainer as he pisses himself at me! Bastard!

Of course, once he managed to catch his breath, the giggling fucker told me what I knew: Nothing for it but to let the bloody thing go. No point weighing or measuring a bird we can never identify again.

So I did. My first ever self caught, male chaffinch. And I just had to open my fucking hand and watch if fly off. What a pisser!

If I Hadn't Seen It With My Own Eyes ....!

  Okay. So, I'm a bit of a Bird Nut, among other things. Yeah? Thinking about the wild birds around me takes up a fair proportion of my attention, every day.  It's like I'm always up to something, concerning them.

 Feeding them, 7 / 52, is a given. But, more than that, lately I've been focusing on 'Baiting' them. Luring them into certain, tightly defined corners. Places I can build up their numbers, ready for the day we catch the lot and Ring them.

 I have a separate feeder station, over in the corner of the home acre. It's heaving with small birds, all day, every day. We can put a Mist Net across for them.

But, I have designs on some bigger stuff too. I've been Ground Baiting, with rolled oats, for about three weeks now. Already I'm getting half a dozen or so Magpies and fifteen or more Rooks. I want to Ring that lot!

To this end, as I wait for my Single Clap Net mesh to be made, I'm planning to set up a Crow Trap for them. That's why my aviary has been down there this past few days. Door open and half the roof off. They're already used to it. Feeding right outside.

And I stand up, every hour or so, and record a swift head count. So many magpies. So many rooks. Maybe half a dozen newly arrived starlings? I'll be adapting the trap to catch those too.  I'm loving it!

But, nothing on earth prepared me for what I saw, when I looked out, at eleven this morning! And here, let me just remind ye; I'm completely isolated here. This is Wild country. People, out here, are like individual ants on their own football pitch. One for every tens of acres of open land.

 That's why I was so wiped out to see the Fox! No kidding! Fuckin' real, live, large as life, gloriously healthy and full coated fox! And it's crouching there, in broad daylight, scarfing down my rolled oats as half a dozen magpies pranced nonchalantly around it!!!

I couldn't believe my fucking eyes! Sixty yards away. I was plainly watching its jaws work as it chewed! Big, orange powder puff of immaculate, full winter coat.

None of ye scrawny, skinny, mangy fuckin' urban kebab killers. This was a pure bred, wild as all hell, totally naturally living, free Irish fox. What a fucking beauty!

 Watched this thing, on and off, for half an hour or so. Magpies never once bothered it or by it. They just pranced around, helping themselves too. What a fantastic spectacle!

Best bit was, when foxy had eaten his / her fill? They got up and wandered inside the aviary, for a look round! Inspected the mesh for a bit. Looked around some. Then languidly sauntered off into the cover of the rough down there. 

Brilliant!

 Would I lie to ye .....?

Swan Song For A Swan .....

  I had Chain Dog out, the other day, as usual. And, as usual, she was snuffling around in her places and relieving herself in her favoured spots as I, in turn, stood and stared into the middle distance. Waiting for her to finish.

 However, I never really 'zone out' at such times. And I never lose focus on the land around me. I'm constantly checking my surroundings.

 And that's how I spotted the white. Hundred and fifty yards away. Out on the bog. Down towards the river. It wasn't there yesterday.

 I didn't know what it was. I decided to get some glass on it, at first. But, I soon realised my little binoculars weren't made or meant for such long distance scrutinising. I'd have to go down there.

 And so, I did. Putting Chain Dog away, I went through one gate. Over another. And began walking straight down across the bog. Directly toward this white thing.

 It appeared to be about the right size for a white, plastic sack. Laying there, caught up in the juncus rushes. I told myself that's what it must be. Nothing else made sense.

 But, then; This was Pat's land. Pat' the fastidious. Pat' the 'just so'. Pat' dropping a sack on his land and just walking away? Get to fuck! It's never gonna happen!

 And it hadn't, of course. It was a swan. Laid out as if by the care of loving hands. Flat on its back. Wings perfectly folded to its sides. Neck stretched. Head back. A tableaux of perfect repose.

 It had only been dead hours. Swans don't fly in the dark. It had only been light so long. I checked the legs ~ sadly, no rings. I lifted the head, to see the beak: Yeppers. Mute Swan. A Cob. Male. Somebody's life partner. These swans, it's said, pair for life.

 I felt gutted for the Pen. The female bird. Now she was a widow. White widow? I doubt she'd get the irony.

 I thought about a guy who I know would have seen this as a gift from the gods. Would've joyfully slung this banquet over his shoulder and strode homewards, grinning. There's nine pounds of meat on a swan, so they tell me. 

 That's just not my way. I had the fleeting thought that some bastard had shot this thing, for shits and giggles. Then, recognising there was nothing on its breast but a mud stain. Just a spot of blood on what would be the bridge of its nose? 

 The Rat Catcher in me kicked in. I looked around. And up. Up at the twin power lines that cross above the bog here. Damn.

 The swans always fly north to south, earlier in the day. One lough to the other. This bird was laying just south of those cables. 

 I imagined it: " Well, love, shall we go down to the southern lough, as usual? " The whooping sound of their powerful wing beats as they traveled through the air ~ probably approaching twenty five miles an hour?

 Then, he was gone. Imagine her, seeing him fall. Turning in a wide circle. Coming back. Landing on the nearby bog and wandering up to him. 

 " Love? Get up, love! Why are you doing this? It's me, look ..... Please ....!  "

  I saw her, a couple of days later. A white. Two hundred yards away. Just a gleaming white spot between the grays of the flooded bog. Hunched and still in the shallows beside the river.

 'Prince' once sung to us of, " What it sounds like, when doves cry ". Well, I've looked out across the bog here. And I've empathised. I know what it feels like, when swans cry.

 In silence. And alone. 

   

One of Those 'Eureeka!' Moments .....

 I knew, as of some days ago, that Chris, my Ringing Trainer, was due up here today. It would have been that anticipation that led to me waking up yesterday, realising that I'd just been Dreaming about mist netting and ringing birds!

 That's par for the course though. Chris reckons he dreams the same thing, even when he's wide awake.

 And today, we were doing it, again. Though it turned out to be the dullest day we've ever had here, by far. Two Coal Tits. One Great Tit and a Gold Crest. 

 There, literally, just wasn't a bird to be seen. I suspect The Idiot's feeding them seed and has drawn the flocks. Bastard!

  And that's probably what got me day dreaming ~ as I made the umpteenth round of tea ~ about catching shit like Rooks and Jackdaws. What savage craic that would be!

 But, then, I thought about it. I'd need a fucking great 'Cage'. Walk in size. And to make a " Ladder " type top for it. All that 2 x 2 and chicken wire. Cost a bloody fortune!

 That's when I started breathing faster. Eureeka!!!  We will catch 'Black Crows'!

 What have I got out there? Fucking Eight by Four foot aviary! All powder coated. Bolted together from pre formed panels. Standing empty, since I used it to drive the Magpies away from here.

 I told Chris we'd be in business. Tonight, I checked my files. Yeppers! There's a dead easy form of 'Chimney' entrance I can knock up out of a length of roof baton and a bit of scrounged chicken wire! Jackdaw, Rook and Crow.

 I can knock that up. Whip a roof panel off my aviary. Chris and I can easily lug the aviary itself down to the corner of the field, by the big trees.

I'll feed the buggers the best I can find. Watch their confidence and numbers build up. I'm dreaming about black clouds here. Enough to make Hitchcock smile and snuggle down, warmer in his grave!

Get the buggers flocking here daily, for their cheap but plentiful bait ~ Rolled Oats? 35 Kilo's for under a tenner! Let them build up till they're as numerous as the sparrows on my nuts. Just wait till Chris is due back.

 That day, I close the door!

My First 'Ringing Recovery' ....!

  I am bouncing off the fucking walls here! I'm absolutely ecstatic! Which is a bit fucking sick, really. Considering the death of a bird has caused all this!

  But, there's the point, see? The bird died naturally. Nothing anyone did caused it. Nothing anyone could have did would have prevented it.

  It's what we Did Do though that has caused me such mind bending satisfaction and excitement. We Ringed that little fukka! In fact, I did. 15 - 6 - 11. Top of the stairs in Noel's old farm house.

  Swallow, ring # L122911 was hatched on, or within a day or so of 3 - 6 - 11. One of three out of the four eggs laid in that nest to have hatched.

   Right there, see? Because I'm already a BTO Nest Recorder, we know this isn't looking like a boom year for Swallow clutches.

 My averages are down from more like five eggs and five young fledging. This year it's more like three or four eggs. What gives? 

 I don't know. But, it'll be down to Thousands of people, like me, recording nests and ringing birds that we'll find out.

 And, once the numbers have been sent in and crunched and we do find out? That's when ye'll read, in the news papers, that some bird is in decline, globally, due to a change in some environmental factor, somewhere in the world.

  They don't just snatch that sort of shit out of the ether, ye know. I record a clutch of eggs, or ring some birds today? Few years down the line, what I did might be helping guide a Government on its next strategy. No shit!

 And, this evening, I got my first real, live taste of it all coming together. 

 I met Noel ~ as I stood, staring out over one of his fields. Drooling. Because I know there are birds nesting in the far hedge. He produced a fucking Ring from his pocket!!!

  L122911. He said he took it from the right leg of a young swallow he'd found outside the old place. It had evidently flown into a window pane and broken its neck.

 I've come home. Checked my records. I can now tell him chapter and verse on that poor birds short life history. What's more; Next year, who knows?

 We may get a report of one of this birds siblings having been caught and released in Africa. Then I could even capture that same bird, back here in Eire. Record its nesting and ring its young :-)

  In case this all sounds like much ado about nothing, to you? Think; Ever had a child ask ye how long a Robin lives? Is the Robin at ye bird table this Xmass the one that was there last year? What happened with the baby Robins in the garden, last summer?

 Ask Google for the answers. They'll be there. Thanks to people Nest Recording and Bird Ringing. And people like Noel, just taking the trouble to look at a dead birds legs .....
 

An Afternoon With A 'Master' .....

  OK. This is a post about Bird Ringing / Nest Finding. If ye've just blown in here from Google, looking for some 'W/we' shit? Boy, are you in the wrong fucking place!

  So; Chris' is the nearest qualified Instructor to me. He agreed to entertain me as a prospective Trainee. Then he drove for Two Fucking Hours, just to get here!

 I'd also been told that he's one of the Best damn nest finders in Eire. He'd shown another Ringer some shit that had blown his balls off. 

 I simply couldn't accept that this guy was even gonna come near me. Shit of this calibre doesn't happen to me. It'd fuck up. Chickens counted before eggs hatched. I knew it.

 And then, after a week or two of false starts, there's this fucking motor coming down my track. Just ten minutes past the ETA! This guy had even found me! :o

  Turns out we're, roughly, 'Of An Age'. We shook hands and started the sort of secretly tentative conversations one starts with a complete stranger who ye looking at getting to know for some time. Trying to guage what's acceptable.

 Within what seemed like a few sentences, Chris is telling me how he was doing some work for some bloke.

" Guy's got a fucking Kalashnikov leaning in the corner! I've asked him; 'Is that thing For Real, or just some repro'? "

" And he's told me; ' No. It's real alright. God help any cunt who comes fucking with me! '.

 Now; What the fuck Is that yellow Dog ye have there ....? "

 And off we went! :D Yakkety yak. Mist Net up. Cup of tea and House Sparrow, male. 

 * A 'Mist Net', in case ye don't know ~ and why should ye? Is a very fine net. As in light. Made of like threads of sewing cotton. Stand ten feet from one and squint? Ye can't really be sure it's there. Birds fly into it and get tangled.

 Chris removed it from the net ~ a job Not for the novice, or ham fisted. It took even him some countable seconds. The head, feet and wings seem to each get stuck in a separate 'hole'. Got to be calm as fuck and gentle as a lovers breath.

  He showed me how the bird is held. How its little leg is presented. Ring placed into the special pliers. Slipped into the tiny, delicate little leg. Crimped closed.

  Then, because he's a Fully Qualified / Licensed, The Complete Shit, Ringer; He measured the wing. Pointed out some all but invisible, to me, differences in some tiny feathers, on the wing. Told me how this esoteric shit said this bird was born last year.

 Then, he popped and wrapped the little fucker in a plastic cone. Weighed him. Wrote all this shit down in a full sized, A4 Ledger. Then let him go.

 Faaaarkk!!! I'd just stood there and watched a real, live Ringer do his shit! Fuck! Unbelievable! And this was right there in my compound! Not some Bill Oddie shit on TV! I Was There!

 Bit of chat. Cup of tea. Great Tit in the net. Chris hands it to me! Now, thankfully, I've 'had to do with' handling wild birds, in a dim and distant, misty part of my past. I wasn't flapping. Nor was the bird.

   I put the ring on. Chris did the scientific stuff. Then we went hunting nests .....

  First stop was the Blackbirds nest I had. Four chicks. Fat as moles. Right on the limit of being young enough to still ring. 

  And the nest was empty. Some fucking cat, or crow had helped themselves at the optimum age / size! I wanted to grab a gun and go blow something ....!

  Chris gently pointed out to me how he'd once done a survey of Blackbirds. Found forty odd nests in a given area. End of the season? Every single fucking one of them had been taken by predators!

 Yet, next season? Another forty odd Blackbirds nests appeared in the same area. Dunno. Maybe we should just accept Blackbirds chicks are a major 'Fast Food' in the food chain, out there?

Maybe cat owners, who let their ' Free Spirits ' and ' Natural Hunters ' go wandering about, off their properties and out of their control? They'd better realise there's 'Natural Hunters', of Cats, out here too.

There's a hierarchy, out there amongst  the fields and ditches. Cats aren't the top of that chain. No matter what they think. 

  Not while I'm around.


 

I'm Gonna Be A Ringer ....!

  No! Din'! They're called " Campanologists ". Fucking rope hangers. See me yanking a rope to make some fucking great bell go 'Clang!'. Deaf enough as it is!

 No.  Ringing Birds. And I don't mean, " Hullo? Do ye offer a 'Full Service', home visit? " either. FFS!

 For anyone who's lived in a cave all their lives; This is about putting little rings on the legs of wild birds. Basically, we ring them in the nest or we catch them and ring them as adults.

  Ring has a # and that leads back to a load of information about that particular, individual bird. So, if I ring my Starlings, in my nest box right now? Their rings will be their little ID Cards.

  If one of them is then found dead, or caught by a Ringer, in Russia, three years down the line? He'll be able to trace that bird back to my cow shed wall. Hatched, May, 2011. I'll also be able to find out that one of my birds turned up in Russia.

 The scientists at the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) will be number crunching Thousands of such records, of course. And that's how we come to have books and Papers, explaining how birds migrate and shit. 

 That sort of information isn't just snatched out of the ether. It's scientifically proven by quiet people, around the world, steadily finding nests and catching birds. Putting little rings on their legs. Recording it all. And adding that shit to the Big Data Base.

  This is something I've pipe dreamed of being involved with All My Life! But, I'd simply assumed the only way in was to be from a Grammar School ~ at least ~ education. Lick the arse of the local Nature Reserve Warden, day in, day out,  for years.

As well as being a non smoker. Not swearing, having a sense of humour, or ever taking ye head out of ye own arse. Except to lick the arse of that local Nature Reserve Warden ....!

 I dunno. Maybe, forty years ago, that was about right? Today? Forget it!

 Take the BTO. I'm involved with their Nest Record Scheme. I ~ like thousands of others across Britain and Eire ~ search for birds nests and record their progress. 

  It's headed by a Doctor. Obviously. Right there; Bet he went to Grammar  School. Doesn't drink. 'Retirement' age. Wears 'nice' jumpers, like Giles Brandreth, the whole shebang. Eh?

What? " Dave " ?! Ye fucking kidding me?! Listen; Dave and Carl are the two main men at the NRS. I'll never forget ~ and wish I could find! ~ a photo they published.

It was one of them posing a demonstration of how to search, with a stick, for warblers nests.
Caption read: " And here, Carl demonstrates poking around aimlessly, with a stick, amongst some bushes. "

 I laughed till I cried, when I saw that! Made all the better by the fact that this 'crusty, austere old wet blanket' was, in fact, patently young enough to be my son.

  And was having the piss taken out of him, by his colleague, who, himself looks like a Mad Hippy, in an official publication! :D Mad as a box of frogs, the pair of them! But, completely human and approachable for it.

Chris? The guy who's agreed to train me as a Ringer ~ an 'apprenticeship' which can take a couple of years! They don't just make ye do a days course and set ye lose to fuck about with wild birds, ye know?!

Chris' is also one of the best Nest Finders in Eire. He was here on Friday. Spent the afternoon with me. Muvva Fukka!!!

  I'll tell ye all about that, in a new Post. Otherwise, ye eyes would be bleeding, trying to read so much shit. But, there it is. I've been accepted as a Trainee Ringer.

  Shit. I've probably wasted most of my fucking life now. Because I always thought he had to smoke a pipe and wear a Fair Isle jumper to even be looked at.

Wrong!!!