14 May 2010

Greenfinch control comes full circle

The Ringing Office has very extensive paper archives, but storage space is running out, so we are disposing of old recovery letters more than 20 years old. However before disposal we are removing and keeping any attached rings and also keeping samples of all the letters.


A happy coincidence recently was when a volunteer came across a 'BRC16' reporting a Greenfinch control from Dec 1987 in Ireland of a bird which our Ringing Database Officer Dorian Moss had ringed in his garden in Anglesey a few months earlier.


View Dorians Greenfinch recovery in a larger map

The Migration Atlas shows that movements of Greenfinches across the Irish Sea are relatively unusual, so it was rewarding to be reminded of this interesting control.

2 comments:

  1. Can you scan the letters and anything else before throwing the originals away - just in case they have some value in the future?

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  2. Bridget Griffin14 May 2010 at 15:47

    We have letters going back to 1960's and for any given week there can be between 130-200 letters so it would be a big job to scan them all. We are, however, keeping any unusual/interesting reports along with a sample from each year for our archive records.

    Bridget Griffin
    Ringing Data Manager

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