End of the season 2017

This year we had been ringing birds till 15^th of October 13 o’clock (list of caught birds and photos of all caught species in the end). We wanted to remove the nets even earlier - 13-14^th of October. But birds were migrating and getting into the nets – so we continue ringing as long as possible.

Pallas's Rosefinch

Bird count days 2017

30^th of September and 1^st October we took part in Europe and Asia every year bird count:   Our team of five bird observers registered 1572 birds of 54 species. 

It was good migration of Hawfinches (559 registered) and Common Redpolls (Accanthis flammea) (390 registered). Also tits were in good numbers and third place by numbers got Coal Tit (Parus Ater) – 125 birds registered.

Hawfinch (Coccothraustes Coccothraustes) - most numerous October migrants on the station 

First spring observarions 2017 part 2

 See part 1 HERE.

Oriental Turtle-dove (Streptopelia orientalis)

First open water on Baikal appeared on the 17th of April. Since 27 of April we were observing flocks of wagtails by 15-40 birds feeding on the melting ice along the shore. It was mixed flocks with mainly White Wagtails (Motacilla alba) with some Citrine (Motacilla citrinela) and Grey (Motacilla cinerea) Wagtails and River Pipits (Anthus spinoletta).

April of 2015-2017yy.

Long-tailed Rosefinch (Uragus sibiricus), male

Long-tailed Rosefinch (Uragus sibiricus), female

This April we caught 305 birds of 28 species. We also had been ringing in April in previous two years. Number of birds is similar to 2015 Year and 3 times less than in 2016. Compare to both years we can see some differences:

Snow test of traps passed succesfully!

On Monday 17th we installed Big Ribachinskaya Trap.

Spring is coming on the wings

As last year we will tell you about first observations of migrating spiecies in the area.

2017 ringing season on Baikal has begun.

On the third of April we started 6-th ringing season on our station. Baikal is in the ice and still many snow around but much less than last year.

Our movable waggon in Rechka Mishikha village.

Volunteers wanted

© Marc Bastardot

Volunteers welcomed for working on Baikal bird ringing station in 2017 ringing season.

Volunteers 2016

We want to thanks our volunteers. Dear friends - without your great help we couldn't do  this hard work! In 2016 year 33 people from 9 countries helped us. 

This was the first season when we had volunteers from Asia: Batmunkh from Mongolia, John from Hong Kong and Ruth Yang with Ping-Yuan Chang from Taiwan.

John showing process of ringing to the children from Baikalskaya Ecological School

Outcomes of 2016.

It was a nice year. More birds, more volunteers, more ringing points. So, here is some our results.

Ringing season started 3rd of April and finished 24th of October. Station had been working almost without interruptions during that period. Sometimes nets were closed because of snow or rain, about 3 days - because of no people at the station. For catching we used Ribachinskaya trap and in different periods from 50 to 180 meters of mist nets.

October records

Ringing season 2016 ended on the 24th of October. And during this not full month was caught record month number of birds for the station - 1759 individuals (in September was ringed more birds but together with Tankhoy ringing point)! We saw how good to have different types of traps. Most numerous species of this month (766 ind.) - Hawfinch were mainly caught in Ribachinskaya trap while second by numbers for October (638 ind.) and first for the 2016 (1148 ind.) - Red-flanked Bluetail - in mist nets.

White's Thrush (Zoothera dauma)

9th of January 2017 the founder of Ladoga Ornithological Station, Georgy Alexandrovich Noskov, died.

https://www.facebook.com/maksim.antipin.56/posts/1555312324486598?pnref=story

Maksim Antipin

Вчера в 1:09

9 января 2017 года умер Носков Георгий Александрович.

Results of September

Autumn migration starts here in August. For local breeders often hard to divide after breeding movings and beginning of migration. By catches we could see period of activity for some birds. Most of Radde's Warblers were caught in the period 31 August - 13 September, Palla's Warblers - 9 - 26 September and for these species we can be sure that this is real migration time.

August

In the beginning of August youngs of Brown Shrike, Thick-billed Reed Warbler and Richard's Pipit started to get into our nets and Brown Shrikes had been biting us for the whole Month.

Results of July

In July juveniles appeared making our job more complicated. First were caught on the 5th of July. It was local birds: Long-tailed and Willow Tits. First youngs of migrants were caught on the 12 of July - Olive-backed Pipits. Other youngs this month were three Flycatcher species: Taiga, Dark-sided and Brown; Siberian Rubythroat, Black-faced Bunting, usual breeding bird of our villages - Daurian Redstart and some others.

In July we caught 209 birds of 22 species.

Olive-backed Pipit (Anthus hodgsoni), juv.