Bearded Tit bails out of Scotland

The Bearded Tit is a very handsome bird and their call can excite many a birder when it's heard 'pinging' across the reedbed. As a Schedule 1 species, Bearded Tits are one of 88 species specially protected in the breeding season. Between 800-1,000 Bearded Tits are ringed every year in Britain by qualified bird ringers. Being fairly sedentary they make a good study species, particularly for the Retrapping Adults for Survival scheme (of which there are currently three active projects), but they can be frustrating as groups of Bearded Tits are occasionally prone to flying straight up into the air and disappearing into the distance.

Male Bearded Tit. Photo by Graham Catley

The map below shows some of the movements of Bearded Tits that have been recorded within our Ringing Scheme. As you can see, the majority of movements are from their stronghold in East Anglia to the near continent.


Colour of location: Ringed in Britain and Ireland, Found Here; Ringed Here, Found in Britain and Ireland

We have just heard from our colleagues in the Norwegian Ringing Scheme that one of their ringers has recently (16 Oct 2018) caught a Bearded Tit wearing a BTO ring! This is only the second recorded movement of a BTO-ringed Bearded Tit to Norway.

This bird was ringed as a juvenile by the Tay Ringing Group on 24 June 2018 at one of their regular sites and reported from Norway less than four months later. It is likely this bird would have been travelling in the opposite direction to the thousands of other species that would have been leaving Scandinavia on their way to spend the winter with us.

The map below shows the ringing and finding locations of some of the Bearded Tits ringed by the Tay Ringing Group; the bird reported from Norway was the Group's longest-distance movements to date for this species. The red pins show the ringing location and the blue pins the finding location.

For more information of the movements of Bearded Tits and some interesting recoveries, check out the BTO Online Ringing & Nest Recording Report.

East-West Kingfisher Connection

Here in Thetford we are spoilt by sightings of Kingfishers on our daily strolls into the town centre. As we have blogged before, our breeding birds are residents but the birds that we spot in winter may throw a few surprises.

Such was the case of the sixth recovery of a Kingfisher ringed in Germany that has been reported to us. Whilst it may not be the first or the second from Germany, looking at it in more detail we realised that this was a truly remarkable record. The details were brought to our attention by Dr Martin Flade from DDA who ringed the bird on the 23 July 2015 at Lake Brodowin (Brodowinsee) in the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve in Brandenburg, Northeast Germany, only 12 km from the Polish border.

As can be appreciated from the aerial photographs, kindly supplied by Reiner Krause, the area has a very low human population and encompasses about 240 lakes where Kingfishers typically nest on fallen trees.

German adult male Kingfishers are mostly sedentary, but juveniles and females move. Juveniles leave their nesting area a few days after fledging. One German-born juvenile Kingfisher was recovered on Malta only 22 days after it was ringed as a nestling. Another German bird was recovered as far south as Algeria.

The bird that prompted us to write this post was a juvenile female that was found in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, after having hit a window, and it is remarkable for being the furthest east-west movement recorded by any kingfisher ringed in Germany, as shown in the map below.

Landelin (Martin's son) and Yuma ringing Kingfishers in Lake Brodowin

This is an impressive 1,005 km east-west journey that intrigued us and made us look at the Online Ringing & Nest Recording Report to find out how this movement rates against other east-west Kingfisher movements. As shown in the recoveries map below, there is a yellow dot in Poland of a bird that was ringed on the 06/07/2011 in Rz Drawa, Bogdanka, Drawno, Poland and controlled by ringers on the 25/11/2011 in Orfordness; this bird was also a female. Despite coming from further east, the bird ringed in Poland 'only travelled' 972 km in 81 days, so we can say that the bird ringed by Dr Martin Flade is number one on our east-west Kingfisher connection.

The eastern most yellow dot is the bird ringed in Poland and this post's bird is not showing on this map yet.

Many thanks to Dr Martin Flade for highlighting the relevance of this recovery and for supplying the photographs and very interesting information about German ringed Kingfishers. Martin organised the German BBS from 1989 to 2010. He was also a member of the EBCC (European Bird Census Council).

Migration Mapping Tool

There has been a lot of discussion recently around the value of bird ringing. Ringing collects data on survival, productivity and abundance and this information helps scientists understand species declines, allowing them to prioritise conservation efforts. While the scientific benefits of ringing are relatively easy to see, the more practical applications of ringing are sometimes less obvious.

In November 2014, Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) H5N8 was confirmed on a farm in Yorkshire. Guidance was updated on the BTO website and includes information about how to report any unusual mortality in wild bird populations.

Common Teal, one of the species analysed by the Migration Mapping Tool.
Photograph by Edmund Fellowes

During the previous outbreak in 2007, movement data collected over the last 100 years from birds ringed across Europe were collated by EURING to produce the Migration Mapping Tool. This maps migration routes in time and space for 21 species of water-bird. The tool was developed to assess the potential risk of AI being moved by wild birds; of course, other possible mechanisms of movement also have to be considered. It provides a summary of bird movements between different areas in Europe and at different times and demonstrates how useful data from bird ringing can be in a wider context. As well as being a valuable tool in the assessment of possible risk from the movement of AI, the Migration Mapping Tool is a fascinating resource for learning more about migration in general.

Technical wizardry helps monitor Merlins

For many of us who can’t enjoy this species on its breeding grounds in the moorlands and uplands, the Merlin (Falco columbarius) is a bird of autumn and winter when they can be spotted in the lower lands chasing Skylarks or other passerines. The BirdTrack graph below illustrates that pattern, with an obvious peak in October. An increase in sightings in October is potentially also due to the presence of passage migrants and the incoming winter population.

Merlin chart from BirdTrack

Recently, Roy Filleul, a birdwatcher and photographer from Jersey, captured images of a juvenile Merlin on the side of a pond. The following day we received a phone call from a member of the public reporting a Merlin that had been taken into care in the JSPCA (Jersey Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). Unfortunately this was the same bird that had been photographed by Roy and, sadly, it didn’t survive due to injuries.

Merlin, by Roy Filleul

The bird in question was ringed in the nest last June in Lancashire, one of their strongholds (click here for top five counties for species in 2013). Although this Merlin didn’t travel a long distance or move in an unexpected direction, this is the first time one ringed in the UK has been found in the Channel Islands.

As you can see from the photograph, as well as being ringed, this bird was also PIT (Passive Integrated Transponder) tagged. These tags work in a similar way to Microchips for a dog or cat except that they are mounted externally (on a ring) rather than being inserted under the skin and are read by a receiver placed by the nest (by a licence holder). Metal ringing allows us to gather information on movements as well as survival; for example, it is possible to infer that when you stop catching a bird, that is normally caught year on year at a particular site, it has not survived (the principle behind the Retrapping Adults for Survival Scheme). As it is often very difficult to re-catch adult raptors, using a PIT tag allows us to follow a bird throughout its life to obtain data that categorically tells us the bird is still alive. If nests are monitored by a licensed nest recorder, levels of productivity over its lifetime can also be obtained from PIT tags. Unfortunately, as this bird died before returning to its breeding grounds, we will never know what information we might have gathered from this individual.

Currently in the online ringing database we have 54 recoveries of UK-ringed Merlins that have been found abroad, 35 of them in France. Also notable are the 31 Icelandic Merlins found in the British Isles, mostly recovered in Ireland. This reflects the fact that many British breeders winter on the continent and our remaining winter population is joined by winter visitors, predominantly from the Icelandic breeding population. See map of recoveries below.

Merlin recoveries map, from the online reports

Capping off a busy breeding season

Over the last couple of weeks we have been hearing of large numbers of Blackcaps being ringed (www.bto.org/ringing), predominantly at sites in western and central parts of the country. Ringing migrants on passage provides a reliable indicator of the number of birds moving through an area and helps to improve our knowledge of migration routes and the rates at which birds move. British & Irish breeders are known to migrate south through the country between July and September whilst continental birds wintering here show north-westerly movements across Britain & Ireland during September and October (Wernham et al 2002). The stories below appear to show a southerly movement of Blackcap suggesting that the majority of these birds are UK breeders (migrant birds tend to travel down the eastern and southern coasts (Wernham et al 2002)). The large numbers of birds encountered may be an indicator of a successful breeding season, a welcome event for a species that experienced its worst breeding season on record in 2012. but may also result from a more synchronous movement, with a higher than average proportion of the population travelling simultaneously. The ratio of juvenile to adult birds caught could help us to determine which explanation is more likely.

Despite the poor breeding season in 2012, nationally, Blackcap numbers are increasing and their range is expanding northwards. Breeding Bird Survey data show that Blackcap has increased in abundance by 137% over the past 20 years (download the latest BBS report from www.bto.org/bbs). Data from another BTO survey, Garden BirdWatch (www.bto.org/gbw) show that our migrant Blackcaps are currently moving out of gardens. The data suggest they won’t return in any numbers until the wintering populations move into gardens in November. 

Female Blackcap. Photograph by Liz Cutting.

Peter Fearon rings in North Liverpool and writes:

We ring at a relatively urban site in North Liverpool - Rimrose Valley Country Park - the site is a long, thin country park separating different housing estates. This former rubbish dump has grown to be a diverse habitat for breeding and migrant birds, especially Blackcap. This summer, it wasn't until Sunday 31 August that I was able to get out with my reliable band of trainees to ring at one of our sites on Rimrose. We were rewarded with our biggest catch at the site of over 130 birds ringed, with 52 of these being Blackcap. We were able to set up another session the following Thursday and managed to catch a further 35 Blackcap, only one being retrapped from the previous session indicating a significant turnover. The following weekend (6 & 7 September) however, it was a different matter with two sessions completed but only 25 Blackcap ringed. It would seem that there was a significant movement of Blackcap in this week and it was a shame that the weather prevented us from surveying their movement through some of our other sites. I think that it is interesting to note that we had ripened blackberries in mid-July and most of our sites are now devoid of any soft fruit other than the elderberries.

Mick Townsend rings at Stanford Reservoir on the Leicestershire-Northamptonshire border and writes:

We are just about as far from the coast as you can get, yet we have just experienced the most extraordinary event in the 39 years of ringing at the site. On Monday 1 September the weather forecast was not promising at all with rain due about 10am so I decided to go for a 5am start. I erected six nets in the hope of a few warblers, Blackcaps and Chiffchaff being my target. The rain came early and by 8:30am I was taking the nets down with only 46 birds caught, not a great morning but I at least caught nine Blackcaps. Tuesday dawned and I was full of hope for a much better day and I was at the reservoir for 3:45am. As the time arrived for the first net round I could hear Blackcaps ticking away in the bushes so off we set. The first round total was 163 birds caught, 96 being Blackcaps. The rest of the day continued in the same vain with lots of Blackcaps caught in each round of the nets. We finished on 331 birds caught and of these 298 were new, 214 being Blackcaps. The following day saw another 198 birds caught, 118 of which were Blackcaps. This time we had a control and the BTO tell me the ring was issued to a ringer in Doncaster. The fourth day was a quieter day all round with only 96 birds caught, 47 of which were Blackcaps. The Blackcap rush didn’t stop there though and on the 6 September, we caught 119, on the 8 September we caught 150, on the 9 Sept we caught 101, on the 11 September we caught 111 and on the 16 September we caught 94. At this time of year we usually catch fewer than 30 a session! Blackcap numbers for the month so far are a staggering 994, we have only managed just over 700 for the year in the past.

Site locations - pink: Rimrose Valley Country Park, turquoise: Stanford
Reservoir, green: Swindon STW, orange: Salisbury Plain
Map tile courtesy of National Park Service.

Matt Prior rings on Salisbury Plain and writes:

The North Wilts RG has two teams led by Matt Prior and Graham Deacon. The Salisbury Plain is an area of grassland the size of the Isle of Wight but it has dotted patches of scrub that are very important for migrating warblers on their way back to their wintering grounds in southern Europe and Africa. We have ringed much higher numbers of Blackcaps than ever before suggesting that they have had a very good breeding season. Over the years the Blackcaps that we ring tend to get recovered along the south coast between Sussex and Devon. Blackcap totals are as follows: 24 August – 147, 31 August – 245, 6 September – 160, 7 September – 192, 8 September – 194, 10 September – 161, 13 September – 99 making a grand total of 1198! A further 309 Blackcaps have been ringed in just two ringing sessions at Swindon STW, a 9 hectare nature reserve owned by Thames Water. This compares with two sessions in the same period at the same site in 2013 when 104 Blackcaps were ringed. This year, we recorded Blackcaps breeding in a wide variety of locations where we wouldn’t normally find them such as in tiny areas of scrub on farmland.

To date, we have not heard any similar stories from the east of the country; feel free to leave a comment if you have anything further to add to the story!

Wernham, C.V., Toms, M.P., Marchant, J.H., Clark, J.A., Siriwardena, G.M. & Baillie, S.R. (eds) (2002) The Migration Atlas: Movements of the birds of Britain and Ireland. T. & A.D. Poyser, London.

Overseas Goatsucker in Sussex

Recently we heard of a ring that had been found in a barn, we coded this as 'ring only found' as there was no bird attached to it. When adding the details to the ringing database, it was a nice surprise to see that the ring had once been on the leg of a Nightjar. But, even more interestingly was that this ring had been put on this Nightjar at Jews Gate, the ringing site of the Gibraltar Ringing Group, in the overseas territory of Gibraltar in October 2012.

It would would have been much nicer to receive news that this bird was still alive, but still we thought this was good enough to be mentioned, as the bird must have travelled from its wintering grounds, probably in southern Africa, to the UK at least once.

Nightjar - John Bowers

So this latest Nightjar is the first documented movement between the overseas territory of Gibraltar and the UK, and the second between the Iberian peninsula and the UK.

Found in the online ringing reports...

During the period 1909-2013, a grand total of 6,453 Nightjars have been ringed by ringers in the UK & Ireland, however only 222 of them have been recovered in that period. According to the ringing database, recoveries documenting the movements of Nightjars between the UK and other countries are not very many, 16 in total. Not susprisingly, movements between the UK and France are at the top of this category (11 birds), but there are other five movements between the UK and other countries worth mentioning: Algeria, Morocco, Spain and The Netherlands, which are shown in the map below (ringing and finding sites are paired up by the colour of the pin).



This latest report comes to confirm what our colleagues here at the BTO have revealed with the Nightjar Tracking Project. They were able to map the movements of a bird in a year-long trip across at least 16 countries with the use of a geolocator. They estimated that this bird travelled as far as the Democratic republic of Congo in a 19,000km round trip!

Icky went to Belgium

I hope you were able to celebrate World Migratory Bird Day over the weekend and that your field notebooks are now full of goodies to talk about. I thought I should tell you about a little migration story I found out about a few weeks ago.

Since the beginning of the Ringing Scheme a grand total of 1,091 Icterine Warblers have been ringed in the UK & Ireland. To my surprise only 5 of them have ever been recovered and reported to us, which meant that the report of an Icterine warbler with a BTO ring from Brussels was good enough to please the ringer (and the recoveries officer!)

Icterine warblers are normally passage visitors, with only a few confirmed breeding records in the UK. It is not surprising that practically all records of this species species are from the east coast. The graph below from sightings reported through BirdTrack shows that there is a small number of reports at the end of May-beginning of June during the spring migration, however, the majority of birds are reported in the fall migration from mid August.

On the 8th of June 2012 an Icterine Warbler (age 4) was trapped and ringed in the Isle of May. Presumably, this bird arrived at its breeding grounds somewhere in Continental Europe or Scandinavia, attempted breeding, succeed or failed, returned to its wintering grounds in Tropical and Southern Africa, and then returned to Europe in summer 2013 to breed again. And it was then, in July 2013, that this bird was re-trapped in a ringing session in Koksidje, Belgium.

Although according to the recovery report that we sent to both the ringers in the UK and Belgium says this bird travelled 661 km, obviously a few thousands kilometres more have been covered by this bird in reality!
Of the 5 recoveries of Icterine warblers in the BTO's ringing database, this is only the second found abroad, the other one having been found in France.



To find out more about the Isle of May please visit their web here.

Adios Caledonia

Roy Dennis' team have colour ringed more than 1500 young Ospreys since 1966 and in 2007 they started using GPS tracking devices to 'fill in' the gaps left by colour-ringing alone. These satellite devices enable live monitoring of individuals and have revealed entire migration routes, identified stop-over sites and disclosed previously unknown hazards for different species. At Loch Garten 12 Ospreys chicks have been fitted with satellite tags and their movements are followed by many online fans and reserve staff. The 12 birds have been named and their return to their birth place as breeding adults is much awaited.

Sadly, the fifth day of the new year brought bad news to Roy Dennis, Loch Garten and all the Osprey fans, as Caledonia, a female bird ringed and satellite-tagged in 2012, had been found dead in Spain. We now know that Juan Antonio Martínez Martín, a member of SEO/Birdlife, found Caledonia dead in the garden of a convent in Seville, where it had hit some cables and killed itself during thick morning fog.

All photos thanks to Jesús Fernández

 At Loch Garten, the return of Caledonia was expected with excitement as this should be only three months away. She seemed to be a 'very safe' Osprey, having spent several days in the Guadalquivir River area where she eventually died, and had travelled the same route that saw her sad end before. The Guadalquivir River basin in south west Spain is used as wintering grounds or stop-over by many species including Ospreys.

San Clemente convent, by the Guadalquivir River, where caledonia was found.

The RSPB Community is devastated with the loss of Caledonia, they have posted photographs of her and told their own personal memories here.

This little story highlights the hazards that large birds face, in particular the iconic Osprey. They tend to attract the love and attention of the public, even reserves and conservation measures are established across countries for their benefit. However, in their lifetime, they not only need to overcome the natural elements, they also have to overcome the barriers that we put for them, for their home ranges expand beyond the reserves.

In the UK and Ireland 189 Ospreys were ringed in 2012, and in that year we received 134 reports of BTO-ringed Ospreys found in other countries. To find out more about ringing totals in the UK and Ireland, visit the Online Ringing reports.

Finding locations of Ospreys ringed in the UK and Ireland (purple)
and ringing location of birds later found in the UK and Ireland (yellow).

Thank you to Juan Antonio Martínez Martín for finding and reporting the bird, to Jesús Pinilla and Arantza Leal from SEO/Birdlife for providing further finding details, to Roy Dennis for ringing the bird and to Jesús Fernández for the photos.

Detailed Common Sandpiper movements discovered

We've had a number of recoveries of Common Sandpiper on migration and on the wintering grounds over the years including Algeria, Morocco, Italy and Guinea Bissau. The distribution can be seen on the map below (purple - ringed in Britain Ireland, yellow - ringing location of birds later found in Britain or Ireland).

However, we now have more information from a study by Highland Ringing Group ringers which investigated the pre-migratory change in mass and the migration route of Common Sandpipers in 2011. Some of these birds were fitted with geolocators in Highland, Scotland, which logged the approximate location of each bird using a combination of time and day length.

They write:
"One bird left Britain on 21 July and migrated for three days to Morocco where it staged before continuing its migration to W Africa for the non-breeding season, arriving on 29 July. The region in which it spent most of the non-breeding season (Oct–Feb) was S Senegal or The Gambia.
Prior to northward migration, the bird spent a period inland, before crossing the W Sahara desert to Morocco. Its migration was then delayed, probably due to adverse weather (strong NW winds). However, after a week in Morocco, which involved some northward movement, it followed the east coast of Spain and crossed to W France before moving through England to Scotland. Although Common Sandpipers can accumulate sufficient stores for a long single non-stop flight between N Europe and W Africa, the focal bird migrated in medium-range “skips” during both its southward
and northward migrations."

This is the first record of a British-breeding Common Sandpiper on its wintering ground south of the Sahara. The earlier record in Guinea Bissau referred to a bird on migration, so its origin was unknown.

Thanks to Brian Bates, Brian Etheridge, Norman Elkins, James Fox & Ron Summers for conducting this fascinating study. For more information on the International Wader Study Group click here.

Reed Warbler in the Net

The humble Reed Warbler doesn't often feature in blog posts about passage or migration as it is too ubiquitous. The home range of the scirpaceus subspecies spans across Eurasia and Africa and they can be found in a variety of habitats, typically near water. Breeding in the northern hemisphere as far as 60 N in Scandinavia and wintering as far south as the Congo basin or sometimes even further.

During recent weeks the arrival of reed warblers across the country has been documented "in the net" - both by ringers using mist nets and birders via the web.

The table below shows where Reed Warblers have been submitted by 'BirdTrack-ers', with the earliest records coming from eastern and south counties of England.

Numerous reports of Reed Warblers can be found in the blogosphere, as you can see from the selection below.

The earliest report I found was a reed warbler singing on the 12th april in Cotswold Water Park. Peter Alfrey reported one in Beddington on the 15th of April in his blog, and the same day one was reported in Pierrepoint Holme by the South Notts Ringing Group. A few days later, on the 19th, an early bird was reported in Walney BO. In South Bucks Chirs and Denise Lamsdell reported their first reed warbler of the summer on the 21st April, the same day that Julia wrote about ringing one in the Bristol area. By the end of April many had arrived in the UK, including one reported 'in the nets' at Trimley Reserve on 26 April by volunteer Anna Alum in 'Mick’s Blog'. The Avon Birds blog tells us that a reed warbler with a Portuguese ring was controlled in a ringing session on the 28th. And finally, Rachel Barber recently told us about reed warbler ringing in Cranwich in Norfolk.

However it was not the excitement caused by witnessing the wave of reports of Reed warblers in Britain that prompted me to write this post. What really helped to illustrate the feat of migration was news of a bird with a GBT ring trapped at Merzouga (Morocco) as it completed its crossing of the Sahara Desert. Standardised ringing is carried out there every spring by a Catalan ringing group.

Yasmina, Merzouga, Morocco; photo from the Yasmina blog.

A visit to the Yasmina blog is worth the click as the pictures are great and the array of species is amazing, including some UK-ringed birds.

From the totals summary below we can see that so far in 2012, they have caught 122 reed warblers - not bad for a little oasis in the desert!

Ringing totals from Yasmina, (Acrocephalus scirpaceus = Reed Warbler). Source: Yasmina blog

So, Reed warbler passage is ongoing - some birds will be still on the move while others will already have begun breeding. No doubt you will be hearing about breeding Reed warblers very soon, as BTO staff based in the Demography Unit are undertaking a great little project examining the breeding biology of the species at a site in Norfolk. Watch this space...

Swallow marathon and recorder movements

Ringing never ceases to surprise you. In a recent batch of recoveries reported via www.ring.ac two reports caught my eye:

A Swallow, ring number P768667, ringed as a juvenile in August 2002 at Icklesham, Sussex, was found on 23 April 2010 ( 7 years 4 months later) in Pulborough, Sussex freshly dead under a nest in the barn where it has probably been nesting every year since it first took to the wing back in 2002.


As we know Swallows from UK winter in South Africa so this bird has flown around 64,000km in its lifetime, pretty impressive!

A young American from Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, USA, took a backpacking trip recently which included stopping in Dublin, Eire. Whilst walking in the Park in Dublin City she happened to spot a Robin and managed to read part of the metal ring and record the colour rings on its other leg, she also took some photos. We managed to trace the bird, ring V091085, and it was ringed as a juvenile in November 2006 in Dublin City. So whilst this bird has lead a fairly sedentary life so far, the finder has certainly travelled some distance to record one of the BTO's ringed birds!!

Posted on behalf of Bridget Griffin, Ringing Data Manager and photo by Edmund Fellowes

Blue Tits on the move???...

We rarely hear of long-distance movements of Blue Tits, so it was quite exciting to hear last week of a Belgian-ringed bird in Norfolk. This was recaught by David Fuller at his site near Garboldisham. You'd imagine this would be juvenile dispersal, but we found out today that BLB-10945741 was ringed at Essen, northern Belgium, on 10 October 2008, almost a year previously!


View Blue Tits in a larger map

The map above shows all foreign movements of Blue Tits, with blue pins marking BTO-ringed birds found abroad and green pins marking foreign-ringed birds found here (the red pins show the movement of David's bird). It is interesting that of the 10 movements of BTO- ringed birds, seven were ringed in Kent and no less than four were ringed at Dungeness Bird Observatory! There have only been four foreign-ringed birds found here (all recaught), and one of these turned up at Dungeness as well!

So the Blue Tits in your garden might not be as uninteresting and resident as you might think.....

ALL870 returns to Druridge

I never fail to be impressed by migration, but there are some birds that really do impress! One such bird is ALL870, a Willow Warbler residing in Druridge Bay, Northumberland. The site is regularly ringed by Janet Fairclough and Iain Robson and this particular bird was originally ringed (as an adult) in May 2004.

It was then caught in the same patch in 2005, 2006, 2008 and now 2009. This isn't the oldest Willow Warbler we know of; this was a 10 year old bird from Hertfordshire. What is amazing though, is where this bird will have been over those years. Weighing in at less than a pound coin, this bird will have crossed the Sahara at least 12 times!

Thanks to Janet for the story (and photo) and more details, and some great nestling Stonechat photos, can be found on the Druridge blog.