A photo of a smart male Black Redstart feeding amid the demolished rubble of Porthmadog tax office last week reminded me of post-war images of these songbirds nesting among the shattered remains of cities following the Blitz. Others were seen in Amlwch, Trearddur Bay and Llandudno over the weekend. It’s a common species across mainland Europe and Asia, all the way to central China, and is really a bird of dry, rocky mountains, but spread to villages and towns across the continent in the last century. Although Black Redstarts occasionally nest in Welsh quarries, small numbers also occur here in winter and on migration. These probably originate from the Low Countries, and some individuals return to the same place each winter. One ringed at Aberystwyth in December 2010 returned there in 2012 and 2015.
New sightings during lockdown walks this week include a Cattle Egret on a flooded field south of Llanfachraeth in western Anglesey and four Snow Buntings on the Great Orme. Two Great Northern Divers are off Beaumaris and Hooded Crows at Holyhead and Dyffryn Ardudwy. Overwintering Water Pipits remain at Glanwydden and Llandudno, the Rose-coloured Starling at Amlwch Port and a dozen Whooper Swans near Llyn Llywenan, while a Scaup and Iceland Gull were at Rhyl’s Brickfields Pond throughout last week. Snowy conditions resulted in small movements of Redwings and Skylarks across the region. Following last week’s appeal, readers have reported Blackcaps from across North Wales, mostly along the coast and on Anglesey, but with some farther inland. We’ll report on the results next week, but in the meantime it’s the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend, which requires nothing more than an hour sitting at a window with a mug of tea. It starts on Friday, so could be part of home-schooling this week… Visit rspb.org.uk/birdwatch for details.
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Following last week’s BirdNotes on the changing migration of Blackcaps, Bangor University undergraduate Toby Carter is seeking readers’ help to map the birds. If you have seen a Blackcap in your garden this month, please email [email protected] with your postcode and a note of how many males (with a black cap) and females (with a rusty brown cap). I’ll pass on your records and publish the results in a couple of weeks.
Midwinter is a time of minimal movement by birds, so many of this week’s sightings have been present for a few weeks. On Anglesey, three Slavonian Grebes, two Great Northern Diver and a Long-tailed Duck are on the Inland Sea and a Rose-coloured Starling feeds in gardens in Amlwch. Two Snow Buntings remain at Holyhead Breakwater and one returned to Horton’s Nose, Kinmel Bay, after a gap of several weeks. A Great Northern Diver remains off Beaumaris and 11 were in Caernarfon Bay, but a Bittern over Bangor harbour on Friday was surprising. Water Pipits remain at Glanwydden and Llandudno’s North Wales golf course, and a Hawfinch was at Marl Woods in Llandudno Junction. Firecrests were in Conwy’s Bodlondeb Woods and Marchwiel Marsh, near Wrexham, while a Ring-necked Duck was on Llyn Tegid. Red Kites, which surely should be national bird of Wales, are a more regular sighting than 20 years ago, part of a recovery across Europe that has led to its global conservation status being revised. Its Red List category has moved from Near Threatened to Least Concern, which means it has moved a big step away from the risk of extinction. Great news, although it’s not doing well in the southwest of its range, with declines in southern Spain and Portugal, and it has recently been lost as a breeding species in Africa. ![]() The first few days of January saw a remarkable five different species of warbler in North Wales, a family of birds usually associated with long days of summer. Our one regular resident warbler, Cetti’s Warbler, lives around wetlands, primarily on Anglesey, and Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps occur in small numbers across the region. A Yellow-browed Warbler and Lesser Whitethroat on Anglesey are more unseasonal, however. Blackcaps now occur regularly in Britain in winter. Hugh Linn, who lives near Rossett, Wrexham, currently has seven in his garden. Four are males, of which one is moulting out the ginger cap that it’s had since it fledged from its nest last summer. He remembers seeing his first winter Blackcap when he was Rector of Eccleston, on the outskirts of Chester, in the 1980s: “We had put out some fat with other edible offerings for our garden birds and we were very surprised to spot a male Blackcap tucking in, as in those days we had only encountered them as summer visitors”. Blackcaps are found in around one in seven British gardens that participate in the BTO Garden Birdwatch project, and slightly more frequently in gardens of Welsh participants. Blackcaps are generally found along the coast, with numbers usually peaking in January or February. Their presence here in winter has been noticed since the 1960s, coinciding with the start of growth in people putting food out for wild birds. Numbers really grew during the 1980s, and have been fairly stable since the mid-1990s. Garden feeding has certainly helped Blackcaps to survive the second part of the winter, once the autumn berry crop is exhausted. A survey of BTO Garden Birdwatch participants found that 70% of Blackcaps fed on fat-based foods, such as suet balls, and 35% on sunflower seeds. In summer, they eat small insects, hence those that breed here migrate to the more temperate Mediterranean, although some travel farther and cross the Sahara. Summer residents do sometimes stay beyond late October, when autumn migration is over. In the early 20th century, North Wales naturalist Herbert Forrest reported a Blackcap being “pugnacious” to other birds in a Porthmadog garden, and it has earned a bit of a feisty reputation for defending feeders from other birds, especially Blue Tits. When people noticed more Blackcaps in winter, in the 1970s and ‘80s, many assumed that these were birds that had not migrated south. I remember attending a lecture by German ornithologist Dr Peter Berthold at the 1993 BTO Conference, at which he explained his orientation studies of Blackcaps captured in central Europe during the summer. In autumn, some of these showed a strong tendency to move to the northwest corner of their aviary and he was convinced that these were the source of Blackcaps wintering in Britain. In order to try and prove his theory, he got permission to catch a small number of wintering Blackcaps in Somerset, which then bred in captivity in his aviaries near Lake Constance on the Swiss/German border. Berthold and his colleagues showed that the following autumn, the chicks from those British birds also attempted to move northwest, back towards Britain, just as he predicted. I remember being staggered when I heard his talk, which was before any of the modern technology that enables us to track birds. What was most astonishing was the speed at which the change had happened. Evolutionary biology had traditionally told us that it took hundreds, if not thousands, of years for such a radical change to occur in migration, but Berthold showed that it could happen in just a few dozen generations of birds if the conditions were favourable. Garden bird feeding in Britain has provided those conditions. Berthold subsequently proved that the direction of travel was set by the birds’ genes. The first birds to make the journey, perhaps by accident, returned to their breeding areas earlier in spring than those coming from farther south, so they paired up with each other and thus the genetic selection for migration to Britain was strengthened. Fast-forward almost 30 years and technology has added more detail to those studies in the 1980s. Tiny, ultra-lightweight geolocators, which record day length, were attached to more than 600 Blackcaps across continental Europe during the breeding season, and to over 130 wintering in Britain. When 100 of these birds were recaught, the data stored in the geolocators enabled scientists to back-calculate the position of the birds on most days in the intervening period. This showed that the trait for wintering in Britain is not restricted to the area of the original southern German studies, but extends from northeast Spain through France, and east through central Europe as far as the Polish border with Ukraine, a distance of over 2,000km (see the map in Fig. 1d of this paper). The same study found that British-wintering Blackcaps arrived back in their European breeding area 10 days earlier than those that travelled south. It is quite possible that Blackcaps in adjacent territories in Europe head to different places for the winter, but while they live close to each other, they are effectively divided by that 10 days, which means they are evolving separately.
It is rare for scientists to be able to study such a dramatic change within a lifetime’s work, and there is still much to discover about Blackcaps wintering in Britain. The highest densities are in southwest Britain, and over the last three winters over 600 have been colour-ringed in Cornwall as part of a study by the BTO, Oxford and Exeter Universities, so if you do see a Blackcap in your garden, check its legs for plastic rings, and send details of the combination to [email protected]. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how many Blackcaps are reported in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, which takes place on 29-31 January. Besides Blackcaps, there have been plenty of other winter birds seen this week. Several Firecrests are wintering in Gloddaeth Woods near Penrhyn Bay, where a Water Pipit remains on nearby fields and another is on Llandudno’s North Wales golf course. Three Great Northern Divers are off Dinas Dinlle and one flew over Bangor Pier on Monday, and two Surf Scoters were off Llanddulas at the weekend. Two Long-tailed Ducks were in Y Foryd and another at Cors Erddreiniog until the lake froze at the weekend. Long-stayers include a Black Redstart in Beaumaris, Rose-coloured Starling at Amlwch Port, Iceland Gull at Rhyl’s Brickfields Pond and Snow Buntings on Holyhead breakwater. *BirdTrack is a partnership between the BTO, the RSPB, Birdwatch Ireland, the Scottish Ornithologists' Club and the Welsh Ornithological Society. Participation is free and open to all. New Year is a day for new leaves and new lists. Unable to meet up for the traditional ‘first day’, keen birders in North Wales put on their boots to see how many species could be seen or heard within walking distance of home. In eight hours of daylight, my total of 63 included a Water Pipit feeding adjacent to a cattle trough on a nearby farm, although the absence of Greenfinch and Lapwing reflects the decline in both species in recent years. The Water Pipit had been found a few days earlier and is unusual in North Wales, especially away from coastal saltmarsh. Another was seen on Anglesey’s Dulas estuary.
My walk total was put in the shade by the efforts of others. On north Anglesey, Steve Culley saw 81 species, including two rare Tundra Bean Geese at Cemlyn, and on the mainland Simon Hugheston-Roberts saw 80 species around Caernarfon. Any total over 60 is pretty impressive in North Wales in mid winter. It was notable how many Blackbirds and Song Thrushes were seen along the coast, pushed to lower altitudes or out of northern Britain by recent snow. An Iceland Gull and Scaup are at Rhyl’s Brickfields Pond and a second Iceland Gull was, briefly, near Glanwydden. Snow Buntings remain at Holyhead breakwater and Cemlyn, and Slavonian Grebe and Great Northern Diver were off Beaumaris. A Grey Phalarope was reported on the Dee near Bagillt, and Firecrests at Llanrhos and Conwy’s Bodlondeb Park. A Yellow-browed Warbler was a great find at Anglesey’s Llyn Llywenan, and several Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps were reported. Even more unseasonal is a Lesser Whitethroat found inside a house at Carreglefn, near Amlwch, which may be one of the rare Asian subspecies. A couple of Black Redstarts fed on berries in a Llandudno garden on Christmas Day, apparently overwintering here, and others were in Tudweiliog, Point Lynas, Holyhead Mountain and Amlwch Port, where a Rose-coloured Starling continues to visit local gardens. A European White-fronted Goose tagged along with the flock of Greenland White-fronts on the Dyfi estuary, and a flock of 21 Whooper Swans is on Lake Vyrnwy. Speedy work by Martin Jones of the Anglesey Bird News blog saw a 2020 report on the island’s birds published when 2021 was only a few hours old! Raising funds for Bangor Bird Group, details of how to receive one by email are in this blog post. |
Bird notesA weekly update of bird sightings and news from North Wales, published in The Daily Post every Thursday. Archives
February 2025
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