Hawfinch on the move

We get very few reports of ringed Hawfinch, probably due to their secretive nature, but we have just received reports that show they do indeed make some long distance movements.

At Stromness on Orkney, Ian Morrison and Kitty Halcrow were watching a Hawfinch at a bird table and saw that it was ringed! Amazingly they managed to read the ring number '8244367'. The address on the ring was too small to read but after some detective work found that this bird had been ringed in Oye, Kvinesdal, Norway on 8th July 2003 as a juvenile female!


The Forestry Commission have been operating several Hawfinch feeding stations in the Forest of Dean, where Jerry Lewis has been colour ringing since 2003. In that time he has ringed over 250, and although its still a bit early in the "Hawfinch catching season" he caught 11 birds on 24th March, including his first capture of a bird from Norway!

Previously, there have only been 2 foreign ringed Hawfinch found in UK, one
in Shetland from Germany and one on Fair Isle from Norway.

Many thanks to Jerry Lewis and Alan Leitch for letting us know about these amazing Hawfinch movements.