The Lincolnshire Bird Club

I did a winter thrush survey around Keddington to the east of Louth yesterday and webs counts at Manby Flashes and Withern this morning. Interesting thrush totals in a total of 5 hours;

Blackbird 60
Mistle Thrush 3
Redwing 3
Song Thrush 2
Starling 137

Looks like the redwings and fieldfares from late Oct moved through pretty quick but the blackbirds stuck, anyone else found that or is it just me?

Other highlights Manby Flashes 1 juv Marsh Harrier, 1 Peregrine, Kingfisher.

Incidentally for those using Birdtrack for full species lists arising from winter thrush surveys and webs, you have to put all the species into birdtrack as the databases do not read across. This means a bit of double data entry but apparently there is no way around it at present.

Phil,

Re your comment and question :
"Looks like the Redwings and Fieldfares from late October moved through pretty quick but the Blackbirds stuck.......Has anyone else found that or is it just me?"

I started a Gibraltar Point thread (4 posts) on LBC Lincs Bird Reports on Fri 26 Oct, 2012, with a similar comment re Redwings and Fieldfares moving through quickly but Blackbirds staying on. At the time, I also put forward a speculative explanation (which no member commented on.) (post 4) :

"Gibraltar Point Fri 26 Oct, 2012 :

Interesting that so many Fieldfares and Redwings have moved on but large numbers of Blackbirds have chosen to remain at Gib. Pt.

Perhaps it is partly to do with the Fieldfares and Redwings being essentially 'flocking birds' (one group goes and others follow) as opposed to the minor 'groupie' tendencies of the Blackbirds. Some will move on but others won't necessarily follow."

What do you think could be the reason?

Freddy

I honestly don't know but I suspect that redwing and fieldfare may have a stronger migratory urge and keep going, the flocking impulse may be part of that too. Thats if the survey data ultimately shows it to be a real phenomenon. There will be some initial results next year; the survey runs till April and may be repeated with some tweaks next year.

I often wonder if they wizz past the coast and winter on higher ground. Always plenty of fieldfares up on the Wolds all winter.

Thats an interesting comment Colin so I checked it out looking at the winter atlas timed tetrad visit counts for thrushes in TF28 Donington on Bain on the wolds and TF48 Saltfleetby on the marsh.
The results are

Wolds hrs total Marsh hrs total

Blackbird 28 456 39 349
Fieldfare 11 254 10 352

hrs equals the number of one hour counts in which birds were counted
total is the total birds counted

The indication is that over the 4 winters to 2011 in these squares, fieldfares were not commoner on the wolds. I suspect our migrants are heading off along way inland.

I will take the trouble to report any fieldfare flocks I see this winter Phil. I get up there quite a bit but random areas between Wragby Ludford and Ranby. I'm not bird watching really but photographing. The critters must hole up somewhere over winter.

Hi

Sorry - late response to Freddy's post.

From what I have seen, redwings and fieldfares are very closely linked on migration and constituted the vast majority of thrushes during the early part of the invasion.

Blackbirds started to arrive in significant numbers later. Song thrushes arrived in much smaller numbers but the they can be hard to get a true account of numbers when so many redwings around and it is foggy.

With all the thrushes, almost as soon as they are arrive, they move on westward and south west from here. They are very robust migration machines and there is a significant turnover of birds. Although the highest day count of blackbird may only have been 900, there could easily have been double that number in the recording area. Also, given the apparent turnover of birds involved, if there had been 900 again the following day, then a very high proportion of these would be 'new' birds - so I would not concurr with any statement about individual blackbirds remaining. Ths is borne out by ringing activity, sampling a proportion of these migrants and getting an extremely small retrap rate during the period.

Regards

Kev

Kev,

Interesting point, but how would you then classify Phil's Blackbirds in his web count? - are they "stuck" as Phil maintained or is there also a rapid turnover happening: Phil's "stuck" birds are not really stuck at all, but are new birds arriving, the 'old' birds having moved on.

Further re your retraps......if Blackbirds are moving around the large Gib Pt. area after arrival in search of food- and, of course, there's no reason why they shouldn't be - and not staying in the micro trapping area with its poor food offerings, then there wouldn't be many retraps, would there?

Freddy

Freddy

My comments were in response to your query about the October thrush fall from the Gib perspective- Phil's sightings of blackbirds involve a recent survey at sites I'm not familiar with.

We have witnessed smaller arrivals of blackbirds at Gib in November where again, birds are moving sraight through (see posting re 6 Nov) and this has not coincided with any more redwing or fieldfare arrivals.

Kev

Thanks, Kev.

Freddy