Monday, May 24, 2010

2010 Catches

May 23th-24th: 1 faulty battery, 1 very bright moon, 0 stormies, 6 sleeping petrellers and 8 Pastéis de Nata.
May 24th-25th: 1 bouncing bird, 3 very desperate ringers by the net whole night, 1 armed policeman and 8 warm Pastéis de Nata.
May 25th-26th: 0 stormies, 6 Pastéis de Nata.
May 26th-27th: night off
May 27th-28th: 0 stormies, 7 Pastéis de Nata with a good discount.
May 28th-29th: 2 stormies!!!!!!!! Nevermind the Pastéis de Nata.
May 29th-30th: 0 stormies, back to Pastéis de Nata
May 30th-31st: night off, goodbye Team 1
May 31st- June 1st: night off, welcome Team 2
June 1st-2nd: 0 stormies; 0 Pastéis de Nata!! getting worse...
June 2nd-3rd: 2 stormies :))))
June 3rd-4th: 1 stormie, a retrap from 5th June 2009, weighing the same (26g)
June 4th-5th: 0 stormies! Ze wins the mars bar - again! 8 creamy doughnuts (later re-identified as custard by Abi Gordon, doughnut conniseur).
June 5th-6th: 0 stormies again -what is going on???
June 6th-7th: night off -boat trip tomorrow -maybe we'll find some stormies further offshore....
June 7th boat trip: 8+ common dolphins, 7+ stormies 6miles and 9 miles S of Lagos
June 7th-8th: 0 stormies, but a couple of birds very briefly over the net. We are taking solace in Odiaxere bakery products which are consoling us about Renata's depature as well...
June 8th-9th: End of team 2 party!
June 9th-10th: Night off, welcome team 3
June 10th-11th: 1 stormie, Cory's shearwater overhead. A bag of custard doughnuts and pasteis de nata was briefly sighted at dawn.
June 11th-12th: 4 stormies -Happy Days!!!
June 12th-13th: 5 stormies + 1 police-boat encounter
June 13th-14th: 0 stormies again, though 1 bounced at 3am.
June 14th: boat trip, 2.5 miles S of Lagos: 8+ stormies coming for mackerel amazingly close to the boat, including 1 ringed bird.
June 14th-15th: 2 stormies ringed, 2 seen off Ponta da Almadena at dusk.
June 15th-16th: 6 stormies, including 1 ringed in the UK
June 16th-17th: 5 stormies, including 1 uk ring
June 17th: End of team 3 -party!


June 27-28th: 22 stormies, including 1 UK ring & 1 Spanish ring

Hurrah for team 4!!!!

June 28-29th: 10 stormies

Running year total: 60 stormies in 21 nights of fieldwork.

17 comments:

Rob T said...

Great result at the bakery! Keep up the good work :) Rob

Rob T said...

Oh dear, have you tried sardine sandwiches? Works every time for me :)

David HS said...

paste'is de nata... nao quero esperar! i'm looking foward to the stormies too!

Clive Ward said...

interesting Rob ... seems like last year the full moon is stopping the Storm petrel coming in! .. but on a greater scale than i think we saw last year!
Trust you are all enjoying the good food and hospitality and that the good old (should i say young i think) stormies makes a return to your nets.
while there are no stormies take a look at my new blog "Tuning into Birds" ... your project may get a slot at some point!!
Send my regards to the Portuguese obsevatory staff ... trust things go well for them.

Clive .. previous 2009 storm petrel counter and artist!

Rob T said...

Hi Clive, great to hear from you -hi from all at Cruziha :) Send us your website link and I'll put it up here. I've just arrivaed and am hoping that the stormies will soon -watch this space! Hope all is well with you. Rob

Clive Ward said...

Hi Rob!!

In the same vein as the Stormies project I was up at 4.30am this morning to observe the gossling and signet and more especially the young grebes on Roath lake! I will be putting a post on about it later today. My site is Http;//tuningintobirds.blogspot.com

I trust you are playing the right tapes to attract the Stormies !!?? - I know you got a thing about attracting Med stormies!!

I work part time now and spend much time observing birds at Roath Park and Atlantic Wharf ... two very contrasting urban sites in Cardiff! I also still volunteer on the Peregrine project which has healthy fast growing infants this year!

Happy stormie counting, perhaps you have seen more little owl??!!

Clive

Rob T said...

Clive's blog page is at:
http://tuningintobirds.blogspot.com/

Check out his amazing photos of hatching cygnets. Happy birding!

Unknown said...

We are also ringing stormies and Bulwer´s petrels on the island of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands). Usually the first catches happen about the end of April here, but thisyear we have caught 0 Hydrobates already. What´s happening? Bulwer´s are a little bit more abundant but are also scarce
But we have no Pasteis de Nata here
Francisco

Rob T said...

Hello Francisco! We are also really wondering what is going on!!! Thats really interesting that you have are also finding this absence of stormies. I have just found on the web some video of a good bunch of stormies (plus a swinhoe's!!!) off Madeira on June 3rd, so maybe there will be some here soon...
http://www.madeirabirds.com/swinhoes_storm_petrel_off_madeira

We are going on a pelagic trip off SW Portugal tomorrow morning so we'll see if there are any stormies further offshore.

Rob T said...

Hi Francisco, we found 7 H. pelagicus off the Portuguese coast yesterday and a couple seen at night onshore but not caught last night. Have you caught any yet?

Unknown said...

Last Saturday to Sunday night (June 5-6) we trapped 0 Stormies and 8 Bullwer´s. Someone(not me) talked about having seen a couple of hydrobates flying by. We were scattered over 2-3 places in about 1 km of coast

Clive Ward said...

Rob .... only 5 stormies ... you must be playing the wrong tape!

Whatever I do hope you get some Stormies soon!!

Anonymous said...

Do Storm Petrels breed near to the ringing site? The tape lure is it of local birds?
regards Andy

Rob T said...

Hi Andy, there are no known storm petrel breeding sites in Portugal, though we sometimes catch heavy birds with vascularised brood patches that look as if they could be breeding locally. The main tape we play is of the Atlantic subspecies, though we have also played the Mediterranean subspecies songs as an experiment. Almost all of the birds that we catch are of the Atlantic subspecies though.

Clive Ward said...

looks to me as if you have not got a large enough number to make the count viable?

does the fact that the petrel have not been seen in both locations reflect the regional winter climate?

here in the uk other speoies like osprey have arrived as normal!!

weavers&whatnot said...

Hi Rob, Hope they turn up for you soon. Sounds like the bad old days again... But interesting that you're now getting UK controls- I seem to remember them being the first foreign birds to turn up on average?

C

Rob T said...

At last!!! The first decent catch of the year!!! To my great relief we now have a decent sample for the annual estimate of body reserves.