Little Egret goes south for the winter

With the increase of Little Egrets in the UK more and more birds are being ringed. One regular site in Norfolk that also adds colour rings is resulting in a growing number of recoveries through sightings.

So far there hasn’t been much movement between countries, with only 1 foreign ringed bird from The Netherlands to the UK and three British ringed birds being found abroad (1 to Netherlands, 1 to Channel Islands and 1 to Spain).

We have just heard of one of these Norfolk birds have been found near Pasaxe de Pedrido, Galicia. Unfortunately this bird was dead but much more noticeable with the colour rings. This is a distance of 1227km in 244 days, which beats the previous furthest Little Egret movement of 910km to Irun, San Sabastian, Spain!

This is a brilliant movement and with more birds being colour ringed there is a lot of potential to make a big difference to our understanding of Little Egret movements, just like Xakobe Gandara did, who found this bird. Thanks go to him for letting us know and the use of his pictures. I am especially grateful, as I was the one who ringed this bird!

Lee Barber

'German Geordie' returns to Lothian

'German Geordie' is an old friend to Tom Dougall and members of Borders Ringing Group.


He's a male Blackbird ringed on the German island of Helgoland on 10 March 2005, and was presumably on return migration there, breeding further to the north or east in Scandinavia. He was the first caught near Gifford, East Lothian, on 16 February 2008, a farmland site fed up by Mike McDowall.

Though some birds are quite faithful to their wintering areas, it was a surprise when he was caught again on 14 December 2008 (and 3 January 2009). Even more interesting, he was caught again recently, on 30 January 2010. Presuming he'd been in the area all along this would have been his sixth winter, and he looks very good for it!

Thanks to Tom for letting us know about 'German Geordie' and to Duncan Priddle for the photos.

'Sea Empress' scoter shot in Russia

When the Sea Empress ran aground in Milford Haven on 15 February 1996, it spilled 72,000 tonnes of crude oil into Carmarthen Bay (more here). The bay supports around 30% of the British wintering population of Common Scoter, often numbering over 10,000 birds.

Following the spill, 4,571 Common Scoter were found dead or dying, but many were also successfully rehabilitated, ringed and released. Although many of these were found quite close by, several have since been found in Europe (in blue below), including one unlucky bird found following the Tricolor spill in the southern North Sea!


View Sea Empress Common Scoters in a larger map

We have just received details of GF67015 (rehabilitated and ringed following the spill), shot in Russia in June 2009 (the red marker above), actually very close to where another bird was shot in May 2007. So it is encouraging to see that some of these birds are still alive and doing what they should after being successfully rehabilitated.

New longevity record for Red Kite

Just a gratuitous reason really to put up a nice picture of a Red Kite! We heard recently that 'Orange/Orange R' (below) is now the oldest BTO-ringed Red Kite.


More details about 'Orange/Orange R' can be found on the Welsh Red Kite Trust blog.

Winter Whitethroat ringed in Devon

After our brief mention of a winter Blackcap movement, this recent capture is far more bizarre!

On 17 January Jon Avon was ringing in his Devon garden and found this Whitethroat in his net! We're not sure of the age of the bird, but the colour of the eye and tail both suggest it might be a first-winter bird.


Amazingly, despite the recent Arctic conditions the bird was in really good condition, weighing in at 12.9g which is what you'd expect a Whitethroat to weigh in autumn.


Thanks to Jon for the photos and to find out what our migrants should be doing in the winter, check the blog here.