A Rocha Portugal Observatory Report 2009-2010

48 A Rocha Portugal Observatory Report 2009-2010
RINGING REPORT FOR 2009 AND 2010
Guillaume Réthoré
The ringing programme at Cruzinha continued throughout 2009 and 2010 providing interesting
results. Marcial Felgueiras continued in charge of operations supported by myself and trainees that
were always willing to give a helping hand: Katharina Kühnert in 2009, Andrew Cole in 2010 and
Filipa Bragança, Sara Roda and Leila Duarte during both years. In 2010 I obtained my full ringing
licence and was able to help Marcial to a greater degree. We are very thankful to the many other
ringers who joined us for a few days, a week or even longer, particularly Heather Coats whose
company and help we regularly enjoy. Also worthy of mention are Matt Prior, Elisabeth White, Geoff
White, David Leat, Eliza Leat, Gui McIvor, Richard Barnes, Helen Williams, Roger Gettry Short,
Timothée Schwartz, Muriel Gervais, Kelly Thomas, William Mc Deritt, John Lapton Swallow, Ginny
Weisner and Peter Stewart Weiser. Many thanks to them all.
As usual, ringing took place weekly, all year round including some ringing demonstrations for school
groups, using the ten established net locations in the Cruzinha garden. During the autumn migration
period ringing effort became more intense. Storm Petrel ringing continued in both 2009 and 2010,
for which we are particularly thankful to Rob Thomas and Renata Medeiros of Cardiff University for
their scientific coordination and for gathering so many willing volunteers to help in the night time
fieldwork on the rocks of Ponta de Almadena.
2009 was a rewarding year for ringing including some uncommon species: we caught two Quails in
the Cruzinha garden and our second and third Red-rumped Swallows. The autumn migration brought
some more rare birds as two Yellow-browed Warblers were caught in October and November. Over
the course of 109 ringing sessions in 2009 a total of 1659 new birds were caught. Particularly
important are the 357 new Storm Petrels (Table 1).
Figure 1 Yellow-browed Warbler in the hand
In 2010 we caught our third Barn Owl at Cruzinha, two Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers and our first
three Iberian Chiffchaffs (now considered to be a separate species from the Northern Chiffchaff).
Overall 1492 birds were ringed in 110 sessions. This was not as many as in 2009 due to a bad Storm
Petrel ringing season with only 55 new birds. It was, however, a good year for Golden Oriole records,
with 11 new birds caught – a new record for the station! (Table 3).