Rocking Robin Recovery

Last year British ringers ringed over 22,200 Robins. I'm sure that most of these ringers didn't expect any of their Robins to be recovered more than 20km away. This is what Jackie Lawrence thought until one of her Robins, that was ringed in her Hampshire garden, was found in a water butt in Finland seven months later!


There have been 11 recoveries of British or Irish ringed Robins found in Finland. All of these were ringed on the East coast of Britain at places like Lincolnshire, Suffolk, East Yorkshire, Shetland and Orkney. These Robins would be birds that bred or hatched in Scandinavia, or on the near continent, and then migrated through Britain and France on their way to the Mediterranean.

Interestingly the Hampshire Robin was ringed in December and could have actually been wintering in the UK before migrating back to Finland. Could this be the start of something new?


View Robin Recoveries in a larger map

This was the first ever ringing session in Jackie's garden with a total was 25 birds caught and this Robin was the first bird she caught. A Blackbird was also ringed, that was later found in Sweden! Not a bad ringing session at all.

Thanks to Adrian Blackburn for letting us know and to John Harding for the photo.

London buses (and LRPs)

We were pleasantly surprised to receive photos in April of a ringed Little Ringed Plover (on the blog here), as its rare to manage to pin these birds down. But just today we heard of another bird, this time in Hampshire.


This bird, seen at Blashford Lakes, hadn't come quite as far, having been ringed as a chick just up the road near Ringwood. This was back in May 2004 though, making this bird 5 years old now. The oldest LRP we know of in Europe only made it to 6 years and 8 months (another British bird), so this is getting close!


Thanks to Steve Copsey for the photos (see his blog here), and to all the birders who managed to piece together the ring number.