New Bird Observatory in the Gambia

Volunteer ringers from the UK have just returned from their first trip to the Kartong Bird Observatory, to help understand bird demography in the Gambia. During the 11 day trip more than 800 birds were processed and measurements taken. The majority of the birds ringed were African but there were some Palearctic migrants which were just arriving including Blackcap, Garden Warbler, Olivaceous Warbler, Yellow Wagtail, Sedge and Reed Warbler.


During the nights it was very dark, due to the new moon and provided great lamping conditions for Long-tailed Nightjar, Painted Snipe, Senegal Thick-knee and Spur-winged Plover. Local bird guides and birders will be able to take part in reporting leg flagged Spur-winged Plovers throughout Gambia and the movements of the whoosh netted Hooded Vultures will be very interesting (below).



Ringing demonstrations were run mid week to introduce the local school children to bird conservation and it was received very well with many fascinated faces. Some notable birds were Yellow-crowned Gonolek (pictured), Levaillant’s Cuckoo and Blue-breasted Kingfisher (1 of the 6 species of kingfishers caught).


Future annual expeditions will provide more valuable data, with the next trip being March 2011. Maybe more new birds will be added to the Gambian list like Cassin's Honeyguide as on this occasion.

Sedge Warblers in Senegal

Last week we received details of two Sedge Warblers found in Senegal. These birds were controlled by ringers from the Aranzadi Scheme (Spain). This is what bird ringing is all about, ringers from different countries mapping the home range of migrant birds across the continents!
During 2009 an impressive 22,399 Sedge Warblers were ringed in Britain and Ireland.
The ringing recovery tables show that about 80 other Sedge Warblers have ever been reported in Senegal and almost all come from Parc National de Djoudj. All of these birds were found by ringing expeditions to Djoudj by the British and Irish, French and the German Schemes.
T620003 was ringed in 2 August 2009 in Titchfield Haven, Hampshire, and X395199 was ringed exactly the same day in Southbourne in Dorset. Both were controlled while wintering after the 4,000 km long journey to Africa.
In the future we hope to see more recoveries of breeding migrant birds in their wintering quarters as part of the study of long distance migrants carried out by BTO/RSPB/Birdlife in Ghana and Burkina Faso.
Photo of Sedge Warbler by Dawn Balmer

View Sedge Warbles in Senegal in a larger map

There's more at Whitby than the seaside... update

We have just received news about the foreign ringed Pallas's Warbler that we reported a couple of days ago, which was caught by Wilf Norman near Whitby Lighthouse, North Yorkshire on 31 October 2010.


View Pallas's Warbler in a larger map

This bird was ringed on 27 Oct 2010 at 11am, only a few days before it was recaptured! It was originally caught at Nijefurd, Warns, Friesland, Netherlands (52°52’54 N, 05°24’20 E). It is also interesting to note the northward movement into this country. Reverse migration?

Thanks to our colleagues in The Netherlands and to Wilf Norman.

A Dunnock from Norway... and other places, update

Having reported on 2 foreign ringed Dunnocks previously this autumn I thought that was our lot, especially considering we have only ever had 31 foreign ringed Dunnocks found in this country before.

Its turning out to be a bumper year for this species with new records of 1ER56285 from Sweden, caught by Ian Marshall at Flamborough Head, East Yorkshire and 10980683 from Belgium caught by Keith Bowden near Grantham, Lincolnshire.


The graph above shows just how many foreign Dunnocks have been processed up to this year and how good these recoveries really are.

Thank to Ian and Keith for letting us know about these birds.

There's more at Whitby than the seaside

We have just received word from Wilf Norman, that he was ringing on one of his regular ringing sites yesterday (31/10/2010) near Whitby Lighthouse, North Yorkshire and he had a surprising catch.

This has been a good site over the years with a Blackcap in particular, which had only been ringed 2 days before in Denmark. Even with this great bird he was not expecting to catch 2 Pallas's Warblers in 1 day, one unringed bird and the other ringed with Y97899 from The Netherlands!


To put this in to perspective, we have only ever had 2 recoveries of Pallas's Warbler both in 1982, one bird ringed at Dungeness in Kent, which was later killed by a Kestrel and the other ringed on Fair Isle, Shetland and found dead a day later.

We will let you know the ringing details as soon as we can.

Thanks to Wilf Norman for letting us know and for the photo.