We rarely hear of long-distance movements of Blue Tits, so it was quite exciting to hear last week of a Belgian-ringed bird in Norfolk. This was recaught by David Fuller at his site near Garboldisham. You'd imagine this would be juvenile dispersal, but we found out today that BLB-10945741 was ringed at Essen, northern Belgium, on 10 October 2008, almost a year previously!
View Blue Tits in a larger map
The map above shows all foreign movements of Blue Tits, with blue pins marking BTO-ringed birds found abroad and green pins marking foreign-ringed birds found here (the red pins show the movement of David's bird). It is interesting that of the 10 movements of BTO- ringed birds, seven were ringed in Kent and no less than four were ringed at Dungeness Bird Observatory! There have only been four foreign-ringed birds found here (all recaught), and one of these turned up at Dungeness as well!
So the Blue Tits in your garden might not be as uninteresting and resident as you might think.....
20 October 2009
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In the Benelux and northern France we had big influxes of blue and great tits from the Baltic states and beyond with many foreign controls. The photo at link: http://lh5.ggpht.com/_xSK7jkUOC4s/R1cMo9c6v8I/AAAAAAAAAXo/OTsTUHNMpc4/PolandLithouwen.jpg shows blue tits with Polish and Lithuanian rings caught within a few meters of net in 2007. For this reason it is more than likely that your October ringed Belgian bird actually originated from much further east.
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