Last winter saw a record flock of twite using our purpose grown crops on The Oa reserve. Over 1000 birds had arrived by mid November, feasting on the seed pods of fodder radish and creating an amazing spectacle.
See January's blog http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/placestovisit/islay/b/weblog/archive/2017/01.aspx for the full story.
Following this success we set about making grand plans for this winter. We proudly advised a number of people hoping to grow fodder radish around the country. We organized for a crack team of twite experts to visit and colour ring some of our birds. We planned a social media campaign based on our phenomenal numbers.
All too predictably our crops didn't grow well and the numbers are way down!
Oh well, plan B it is then. The twite ringers assure me that the birds might actually be easier to catch if not spread out over two fields of seed rich crop, so now we are claiming that we grew rubbish crops on purpose, and putting out nyjer and oil seed rape seed in the corner of a field. This will draw the birds to a reliable area and hopefully attract some reasonable numbers. The aim of the colour ringing is to fill in some gaps in our knowledge of British twite. Recent declines have reduced the English, Welsh and Irish populations to dangerously low levels, with only the Scottish population still maintaining good numbers. With last years Oa flock being the largest single gathering of this species in the UK in recent years, it is hoped by colour ringing these birds and taking non-invasive DNA samples, researchers can study how population fragmentation may be affecting gene flow and how the diffent breeding groups around the UK and Ireland interact with each other during the winter. This work is planned to start in early December, so more to come on that in future blogs.
The twite have quickly cottoned on to the easy meal on the floor we are providing and the flock currently stands at around 250 birds. Mixed in with them in recent days we have seen brambling, yellowhammer, greenfinch, goldfinch, chaffinch and linnet, making the view from my office window even better than usual.