Colour Ringing Willow Tits

Colour Ringing Willow Tits
Why Willow Tits?:

Our endemic subspecies of Willow Tit (Poecile montanus kleinschmidt) is Britain’s fastest declining resident bird, and within Cornwall is precipitously close to extinction. There is an urgent need to change the management of habitats, at landscape scale, to prevent this. With specific habitat requirements, a fragmented distribution and an aversion to dispersing over large expanses of open terrain, the species also presents an opportunity to consider more generally how landscape scale conservation can and should be carried-out. Such interventions are likely to bring about positive change for a range of other species and ecosystem services.

The Willow Tit population on the Goss Moor and Tamar Lakes are the last substantial populations in Cornwall and perhaps a significant portion of the population located in the Southwest. Therefore, any information on these populations that is learned from colour ringing will only be beneficial to managing the habitat and conserving the species moving forward.
So, what additional information can we gain from adding colour rings that we can’t accumulate using more traditional methods?

• Survival –By adding additional colour rings, we are able to identify individuals by sight and therefore collect additional data on survival rates. Also, if birds are “moving” into areas that are not suitable for traditional survey methods then they could still be easily identifiable as an individual.
• Monitoring Movement – Whilst we tend to re-trap a small percentage of Willow Tits that have been ringed the majority seem to go missing! The addition of colour rings helps us assist in finding where these birds are moving too. We can also see how far they are moving away from their original hatch site. Or if the same pairs are using the same territory each season or is this dependent on other factors?
• Dispersal – we are not able to determine yet if any of this population is moving from the core sites and inhabiting other locations nearby. We aim to see just how far juveniles end up away from their original hatch location. Also, if there is a natural or unnatural barrier that might be preventing a spread. Such as lack of “habitat corridors” linking to other suitable habitats. This could be determined by mapping the edge of the population through monitoring colour ringed birds.
• Productivity – By colour ringing the population we are able to determine average hatch rates in an area. Parental lineage would also be a great thing to determine in what is thought to be an isolated population. How closely related are parent birds and who is replacing the adult birds once they have perished?

North Cornwall Ringing Group members have also been heavily involved in setting up the “Willow Tit Task Force” in Cornwall and more information on this partnership can be found here: https://cbwps.org.uk/the-cornwall-willow-tit-task-force-training-day/