A splash of gold

Back in March BTO Ringer Roy Pearson ringed a Goldcrest in his garden and has recently received some exciting news about his Goldcrest.

At 09:00 on 25/03/2016, I ringed a female Goldcrest in my garden in Boston, Lincolnshire. The bird weighed 6.9g.


Female Goldcrest. Photo taken by Anne Carrington-Cotton

This was subsequently caught by a ringer at 08:00 on 02/04/2016 at Griefswalder Oie, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.  This is close to the Baltic Sea and the Polish border, a distance of 931 km from where it was ringed (see map below). The duration was an amazing 8 days.

This is all the more remarkable as I ring very few Goldcrests in the Fens and is only the second recovery of this species in nearly fifty years of ringing.  The other recovery was also this year, but on this occasion the distance covered was merely a few hundred metres.

 

Eds write:

 

A ringer is nearly twice as likely to catch a foreign ringed Goldcrest in this country than to have a BTO ringed one found abroad. Around 22% of BTO-ringed foreign recoveries are found in The Netherlands followed by France (19%), then Belgium (16%). The bird in Roy's report is also one of the most-travelled BTO-ringed Goldcrests.

 

In a month's time we should reach the peak in Goldcrest sightings, as shown by BirdTrack (below); the sightings are currently following a similar reporting rate to last year (however there was an unusually high number of birds reported last October as previously posted). So if you see a ringed Goldcrest and are up for a challenge, have a go at reading the ring (usually 6 digits). It might have words like 'Norway or 'Sweden' as well.