It doesn't always go to plan... (Starlings and Little Owls)

The best laid plans and all that.....

The last couple of nights have seen over 1,000 Starlings feeding over the sports fields on the UEA campus in Norwich, roosting in 2m high Elders - perfect for catching! So we hastily assembled a crack ringing team from BTO and UEA, expecting a catch of at least 2-300 birds. So we all gathered next to the somewhat empty-looking fields, with only a token five Starlings flying around looking lost. Our catch???...


Yep, one out of five! All wasn't entirely lost though, as on the way, a car load stopped off at a hollow tree near Thetford, following up a hot tip from a local walker. Inside.....


We don't ring many Little Owls locally, so this was a real pleasure!

Thanks to all of the 23 ringers who turned up for the Starling roost (and to the 'event organiser' who shall remain anonymous), and to Kate Risely for the photos.

Foreign ringed birds here in the UK!

The office here gets a lot of records of foreign-ringed birds that have been found in this country and part of my job every week job is to process a batch of these records and send the information to the ringers and finders.

This week's batch had three rather diverse reports; from Greenland, France and The Netherlands. The first was Sanderling 8223222 ringed at the Zackenberg Research Station in Greenland on 5th July 2007 and had been recaught by the Wash Wader Ringing Group at Wainfleet Marsh, Lincolnshire, on 30th August 2008. We have records of 66 foreign-ringed Sanderling in Britain and Ireland but this is the first from Greenland!

Similarly, we don't get many reports of foreign Nightingales and so far they have all been caught by BTO ringers, this latest was no exception. Ring number CB22174 is only the second from France and was found at Haddon Hall on 10th June 2008. In the past we have also had reports of one from Denmark (caught several times at a site in Cambridgeshire in different years), one from Spain and one from Guernsey.

Reports of foreign-ringed Green Sandpipers are even rarer - there have only ever been two: one from Germany was found in Basildon, Essex, under unknown circumstances, and one from Sweden was shot as a Bar-tailed Godwit in Kent. This latest bird was from The Netherlands, and was rather bizarrely hit by a car at Stainfield, Lincolnshire!

Dirty weekend in Cambridgeshire

As part of the BBC's Dirty Weekend, Wicken Fen Ringing Group recently played host to Sue Dougan from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

You can listen to Chris Thorne talking to Sue (and suffering a Magpie in the hand) below.

Suffolk Marsh Warbler that almost got away

It took five years to make it through the process, changed identity a couple of times, but the second foreign-ringed Marsh Warbler to be found in Britain has finally come to light.


When a slightly odd-looking Reed Warbler wearing a Norwegian ring was caught on the Suffolk coast in August 2004, no one at the time realised its true identity.


After a fair bit of investigation across the North Sea in Norway, this bird was actually pinned down as a Marsh Warbler. This could also be confirmed retrospectively from photos taken of the bird at the time, which have come to light recently (above). It was actually ringed as a young bird in Norway in July 2004, caught on autumn passage.

We have very few international movements of ringed Marsh Warblers, but the map below nicely shows where birds are coming from on migration, and where our birds are heading in the autumn. Green markers show the movement of the bird mentioned above, with blue markers showing where British-ringed birds have been found and red markers showing where birds found in Britain originated.


View Marsh Warbler in a larger map

Thanks to the ringers in Suffolk (who shall remain anonymous) for sorting this out and letting us know about the cock-up.

Incestuous Peregrines in Bath

We've just been sent some footage of the ringing of a young Peregrine from a most strange pairing!

This is the offspring of a pair of Peregrines on Bath Cathedral, which starred on the BBC recently. The male parent, though, is actually a chick hatched from the same nest in 2007, so is now breeding with his own mother! We only know this because these birds are ringed, so we know a lot more about their unusual life histories.

You can see the news footage here and to keep track of the Bath Peregrines, subscribe to the study group blog here.

Thanks to Ed Drewitt for letting us know about this unusual pairing!