Duck happy

Phil Jones writes:

All ringers know that certain birds can become frequent visitors to traps and are prepared to enter them and eat the bait regularly. The inconvenience of waiting for release being outweighed by the readily available supply of food.

Tufted Duck taken by Barry Yates

The site at Icklesham runs a duck trap during the winter months and catches a trickle of Mallard, Tufted Duck and Coot. We know that female Tufted Duck with ring FA80827 is a regular visitor but we were surprised when she was retrapped for the hundredth time on 28 October 2012! She appears to be a migrant as she never turns up in the trap early in the autumn, in 2009 her first catch was 03 December and this year we caught her for the first time on 27 October. She was first ringed 27 September 2008 so hopefully will be a regular for many years to come.

Thanks to Phil Jones for letting us know and to Barry Yates for the great photo.

News from the south: They're on their way back

Here at BTO HQ, we are hard at work loading all the ringing data from our ringers for 2011. This is sure to be a record ringing year but we won't know by how much until this process is completed.

We are also processing birds that have been recovered in 2012, which include a couple of very interesting recoveries. With 'most' of our BTO Cuckoos slowly returning to the UK the first interesting recovery is of another migrant. A young Lesser Whitethroat ringed at Icklesham, Sussex on 03 September 2011. This bird was caught by ringers in Eilat, Israel, three days ago (25 March 2012)! A minimum distance of 3721km in 205 days. Obviously on its return migration so hopefully it will make it back to a lucky ringer here next week.


The second was a ring found in a clothes peg bag. This was bought into a secondhand shop in Roxburghshire (Borders) last week. Was it a Starling, pigeon or Blue Tit? Nope, a Goshawk ringed in 2009 in Dumfries and Galloway!

Thanks to Dawn Balmer for the photo.