Adopted Avocet suffers identity crisis

BirdTrack Organiser Nick Moran was surprised to find an interloper in the Oystercatcher roost at Snettisham RSPB reserve in late September.

Avocet M8 seemed happy enough with it's equally pied roost mates and interestingly the story took a much stranger turn when we heard back from the ringer.

M8 was ringed as a chick at Dunkirk, near Ely, in Cambridgeshire earlier in the year and had already featured on the inside back cover of BirdWatching magazine (September 2013). Here it was seen being fed a leatherjacket by one of its apparently adopted parents; an Oystercatcher! Once M8 had made the switch from natural parents to adoptive parents, it remained with them exclusively before fledging and departing.

So whether Avocet M8 now thinks it's an Oystercatcher is an intriguing question, and we wonder if it now feeds side-to-side sweeping (as an Avocet should) or is trying to probe (as an Oystercatcher would). It might also make finding a mate later in life an interesting proposition!

Foreign Avocet still breeding in Suffolk

Avocet movements are very interesting to monitor as there as been quite a bit of exchange between birds on the continent and the UK. Mike Marsh saw the colour ringed bird (below) at Orfordness, Suffolk wearing only a yellow colour ring and a metal ring. He tried to trace this bird from the colour rings but to no avail. He later managed to read the ring number which was easily traceable.


Avocet 5239200 was ringed as a chick in the Beltringharder Koog, on the German north sea coast on 20th June 1992, making this bird 18 years old and a possible longevity record! This bird had also been colour ringed but had since lost a black, red and green ring, which is why he couldn't trace the bird via the colour rings.

After being seen several times around its natal site up to the 14th July 1992 it was next seen in May and June 1996 at Minsmere and now, thanks to Mike Marsh at Orfordness, Suffolk where it has one small chick to look after. Unfortunately we don't know where it spent the intervening 14 years.


View Avocet leaves home in a larger map

Thanks to Mike Marsh for letting us know about this bird and also to David Crawshaw for the photo.