Baltic Waxwing

It's always a pleasure having a half-decent flock of Waxwings in your garden, although keeping them fed and happy is no mean feat. But the lengths Peter Alker has gone to to keep get birds into his garden in Orrell (Manchester) are something else! His efforts have been well rewarded though, with a small flock now regularly visiting.

In late February Peter noticed that one of these birds was ringed with what certainly didn't look like a BTO ring. A week later he finally caught the mystery bird and was rather surprised to see it was from Estonia! The Estonian Bird Ringing Centre were kind enough to let us blog the details straight away and this bird was actually ringed in Pärnu in western Estonia in mid-October 2012.

Waxwings wearing Grampian Ringing Group colour rings

This is in fact the first Waxwing movement to/from Estonia, with most of the previous records being to/from Scandinavia (see map below). Interestingly though, there are two records from Russia, both of birds ringed in the UK. Presumably this bird was on migration when ringed in Estonia and is actually surprisingly far south...

Thanks to the Estonian Bird Ringing Centre for the details for this bird and to Peter for letting us know about it in the first place and for the photos, and more can be found on his own blog.