The spring passage of Redpolls is now underway . We know from past ringing that some of these passage birds winter in the south of England with recoveries in Hampshire. Greater London, Nottingham, Suffolk and Surrey. We have probably extended the wintering range further for we have controlled a French ringed bird this spring, so we await full details with interest. A recent batch of recoveries produced a further control in Surrey ringed in our area in early August and caught wintering in Surrey in early January.
Other recoveries received recently included our first long distance movement of a Grey Wagtail. One ringed on passage as a juvenile in late August was found wintering in early December in Wiltshire 295 km South. A winter road casualty produced our fourth Black-headed Gull from Norway.
Another road casualty on the face of it produced our longest movement of a Treecreeper. A bird ringed at Heysham in October and well out of normal Treecreeper habitat was found 28 kms.ENE in North Yorkshire. How ever we learnt that it had been found in the radiator grill of a delivery van which had covered a wide area locally so there is a marked uncertainty about the exact locality of its finding.
John
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Just to add that we also caught a Lesser Redpoll which was almost certainly an escaped close-ringed cagebird. Investigation of the lettered and numbered ring (therefore not an amateurish home-made effort) has drawn a blank with the balance of probability a non-British origin and certainly not one of the 'well-known' British or European schemes
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