Migrating Kingfisher

OK, so its hardly the longest movement in the world, but its always nice to have one of your birds do something interesting. SB45298 was a bird we (as in University of East Anglia Ringing Group) ringed at one of our sites near Norwich - the lovely Whitlingham Sewage Treatment Works. It was ringed (along with three others that day!) on 27 June 2009.


As so often with ring recoveries, there isn't a happy ending though, as SB45298 hit a window and died on 9 October. But this was in Stowmarket, Suffolk, 55km (35 miles) from Norwich. Occasionally Kingfishers will move around in relation to cold weather, but that's hardly the case right now, so this is a rather unusual movement.

In the 100 years of ringing, we only have records of 15 foreign movements of Kingfisher, shown in the map below - eight foreign-ringed birds found here (in blue) and seven BTO-ringed birds found abroad (in red).


View Kingfishers in a larger map

Thanks to Dorian Moss for the photo.