This colour-ringed male was part of a project looking at the dispersal of birds away from a winter roost, but this is slightly further than the group expected! They were hoping to just receive a few sightings from local gardens! It was originally ringed on 23 December 2006 at Charnwood, Leicestershire, and found in Poland on 31 March.
This is about as far as Chaffinches go, though we do have two records of BTO Chaffinches found in Russia. Going the other way, we've had two from Russia and one previous from Poland to Britain (ringed in Poland in September 1965 and found in Bewdley in March 1967).
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Dear Mark,
ReplyDeleteI am enjoying the 'Demog Blog'.
Just a small comment on this Chaffinches account. By the emphasis on 'BTO-ringed Chaffinches', it can seem to a non-specialist that this means they are British Chaffinches. In fact, all of those that you mention are of course continental Chaffinches - breeding or hatched outside the UK - visiting here for the winter.
British Chaffinches are amongst the most sedentary of all birds, most spending all their lives within 1 km of their nest, but there is one odd record of a bird ringed as a chick in north Wales by the late Andy Madden, a fellow member of Merseyside Ringing Group, that was later found dead in the Netherlands in May 2000.