Ringing and Recovery update

Ringing Update

In this difficult year with ringing not yet allowed on two of our major sites we have manged to handle  just under 6500 birds to date, around 1750 down on lastyear  for the same period. Blue Tits  are usually our most ringed species with 834 this year. However, Pied Flycatchers  now head the lisit with 983 handlings. Sand Martins come in at 468 and Meadow Pipits at 457.'

Recent Recoveries

 Meadow Pipits are  one of the commonest passage birds in our area. We have ringed over 7300 over the years but we have only had one recovery and four controls. A control  on September 18th this year had been ringed  a year previously in Devon. Past ringing has produced one  from Devon  and one from Hampshire on  autumn passage. We have had only 25 retraps,most of them  at the same area as ringing including one four years and 40 days after ringing.

A Blackcap was reported on passage in West Sussex. Interesting to compare the ringing stats with Meadow Pipits. We have ringed 4180 but this has produced 24 recoveries including reports from The Netherlands, Spain and Algeria.

Up to this year despite ringing almost 950 Tree Sparrows the longest movement has been 10 km. But this year one was found dead on the tideline and had been ringed as a nestling near Wakefield  113 km SE. How it got on the Morecambe Bay tide line is a  mystery.

Two sightings of colour ringed Black-headed Gulls in a park where they are regularly fed. are interesting. Although ringed locally by ringers outside our group one had  been reported from St Petersburg Russia in June and another in The Netherlands in March.

The value of colour ringing is well shown by a Mediterranean Gull .Orginally ringed on July 2018 in Devon. It has been sighted in spring and summer 2019 in  Finistere France. This year in early Spring it was seen in South Wales and Hampshire  then in September  on the Lune Estuary. Quite a mover.

John