Lost(?) Snow Bunting in France

With a chill in the air, it only seems right that we've just received details of a very bizarre Snow Bunting movement... With the aid of some excellent photos, we were able to read the ring of VX35928, seen on 22nd November at Moosch, France, right on the French/Swiss/German border.

VX35928 in northeast France in November

Interestingly, this bird had been ringed by East Norfolk Ringing Group as a young male at Eccles on Sea, Norfolk, just six days previously! It is interesting to think where these East Anglian birds are coming from, and as the two races can be identified on plumage (easier in the hand!), studies have shown that 80% of females in East Anglia are from Iceland whereas 80% of males are from Scandinavia (or Greenland).

The only other British-ringed Snow Bunting found in France was, more typically, found on the Belgian border, but an inland record so far east is almost unprecedented. There is one slightly more bizarre record, which bears many similarities with this recent record. AC96749 (also a young male) was ringed at Walberswick, Suffolk, on 4th November 1962 and shot just 14 days later in northeast Italy. So the fact these were both males and found so far east presumably means they were both Scandinavian birds wanting to winter more to the east than the UK...

All movements of Snow Buntings to/from Britain, with VX35928 in red

Having said that... the East Norfolk Ringing Group obviously do see birds from both races, as they caught the bird below on 8th December, wearing a shiny Icelandic ring! This is a bit more expected, with almost 50 exchanges between here and Iceland.

Many thanks to Marc Solari for the photos of the bird in France to allow us to read the ring and to Dave Andrews for the photo of the Icelandic-ringed bird.

Snow Buntings on the move

We recently heard of some fascinating results from a French project colour-ringing wintering Snow Buntings. 'A5' was ringed on 29th December in Calais and was then seen further north at Dunkerque on 28th January before returning to Calais from 5th-25th February. It was then that it headed off, seen at Shingle Street (Suffolk) on 10th March (and still present yesterday - 21st March), becoming the first French-ringed Snow Bunting ever to be reported in the UK (shown in red on the map below).




View Snow Buntings in a larger map



This was also the first sighting for the project outside of France, but the second wasn't too far behind, when 'E0' was reported from South Shields (South Tyneside) on 16th March (shown in blue on the map). Interestingly though, when this bird was caught at Calais on 9th February (where it remained until 18th February), it was already wearing a Belgian ring! Presumably linked to greater ringing effort, there are seven previous records of Belgian-ringed Snow Buntings in the UK, with previous movements all to the north of this: the map below shows all Snow Buntings movements, from the BTO's Online Ringing Report.



There are two races of Snow Bunting wintering in western Europe: nivalis (long-distance migrants breeding in northern Europe and Greenland) and insulae (short-distance migrants breeding in Iceland and Scotland). Nivalis from western Greenland winter in north America, whilst those from eastern Greenland winter from northern Scandinavian to western Russia and we don't really know much about those from southern Greenland. It is likely that they winter in western Europe and most birds caught in winter in France are nivalis and are thought to mostly be from here. So the fact that these two colour-ringed birds both headed northwest from France in spring is perhaps the first evidence of this.

Thanks to Quentin Dupriez for the details here, John Richardson for the photos of the bird in Suffolk and Mike Marsh for originally letting us know about the Suffolk bird.

Snow Bunting mystery (now solved!)

*****MYSTERY INSTANTLY SOLVED!*****
We've had an instant response on this and it looks like this is a female bird ringed in Norfolk in February 2009 (not January 2005 as posted earlier).

We've also just heard a colour-ringed bird from the same Norfolk site was seen in France in October 2009, so this is now the SECOND record to France!
******************************************

We're being plagued by a mystery Snow Bunting seen in France recently. The bird was well photographed and obviously has a BTO ring, but what number?!


The bird was seen on the beach in Dunkerque on 13 December and thanks to the photos of Daniel Haubreux we have got as far as --84768 but can't seem to figure out the first two letters!


Hopefully we'll figure it out and will post an update here... This is our first Snow Bunting exchange with France (either way), with most movements involving Iceland (48), Belgium (12) and The Netherlands (11), though we have had birds go to Canada and Italy!