Far South Greenshank

A Greenshank colour ringed (left leg black over blue, right leg red over black) at Montrose Basin on 22nd August last year was re-sighted on Porto Santo (an island of the Madeira Archipelago) on 20 October this year, a movement of 2837 km! This is one of our most southerly Greenshank, with other birds having been seen in Morocco and the Cape Verde Islands.

The bird was part of a record catch of Greenshank for us, 34 birds in one night. Unusually it was ringed as an adult, the majority of birds caught on passage are juveniles.

We have been colour ringing Greenshank on the Ythan Estuary as part of a project set up by Farlington Ringing Group since 2003. For the past few years we have also caught at Montrose Basin along with Tay Ringing Group, with last year being our highest ever total.

Thanks to Adrian Aebischer for the re-sighting

Waxwing to Fife

We've had our first colour ringed Waxwing re-sighting of the year, outwith Grampian. Red, Yellow, Red was ringed in Ballater on the 30th October, and was spotted by John Nadin feeding on berries beside Dunfermline High School a week later. Below is RYR after ringing along with a photo by John. Several of the birds from the same catch have been re-sighted around Aberdeen.

Thanks to John for the re-sighting and photo

Waxwings - Week One

This year’s early invasion of Waxwings has seen thousands of birds in and around Aberdeen, with GRG trying to catch as many as possible. In the past week we have colour ringed 153 birds, with a white ring underneath the metal on the right leg and three colours on the left. Please look out for them.


We caught our first control today - a juvenile with a Swedish ring, the third for the UK!!

Also caught was an adult female Sparrowhawk, that had been terrorising the Waxwings all day

Hopefully we'll get lots more Waxwings this weekend and in the coming weeks, unless all the berries have been eaten by then!

Thanks to Thomas, Bogo and Derek for the photos

Waxwing fever

Waxwing fever is definately building within GRG. Flocks of 300 or more have been seen throughout the city and much of the week has been spent planning the weekend's catching efforts. So far a single bird was colour-ringed yesterday and news just in is that 13 waxies have been caught in Ballater by Raymond and co. It's going to be a busy weekend!

A "Trippie" up North

A “trippie” up North to Peterhead and Fraserburgh is always fun, whether it’s cannon netting waders, spring trapping rock pipits or just looking for rings to read. Recent excursions have produced a few interesting sightings.

Several of “our” shag chicks now fledged and doing fine.

Scandinavian GBBGs, 2 chicks ringed in southern Norway in 2009 + an older bird ringed as a chick in 2001 at Vardo in the north of Norway. We received a quick response with excellent feedback from Nils Helge Lorentzen which included a weblink http://www.ringmerking.no/cr/ which offers past and any future information on the ringed birds reported. We still await information on a Scottish darvic ringed chick.

We did finally manage to ring a trapped shag from the fish box cage because Raymond remembered rings (Jane chose the comb!), but alas he didn’t have rings for the juvy cormorant (ggrrr)!

Hannah and Jessica with a juvy cormorant and juvy shag ringed PIS.

Photos Raymond

Migrants

Strong south easterly winds have brought in excellent numbers of migrating birds this autumn, giving us good oppurtunities for ringing. Along the coast we've been catching birds such as Goldcrests, Robins, Blackcaps, Flycatchers and Redstarts.

We've also ringed some less common species, such as Lesser Whitethroats and a Reed Warbler. Despite these species abundance further south, these birds are relatively scarce in the north-east. With regards to rarer migrants, A Blyths Reed Warbler was ringed at the end of September and today a Pallas’s Warbler.

Other interesting birds that have turned up on the coast have included a leucistic (ginger!) Meadow Pipit, and a very nice Long-eared Owl.



Photos Euan Ferguson

Metal detecting ringing

So how do you ruin a nice Sunday walk? No not golf - you take a metal detector with you to look for rings! We decided that we would have a go with a metal detector in the Sandwich tern colony at Forvie to look for rings on chicks that hadn't fledged.

After weeks of practicing on small nails in the garden we headed off on Sunday with dogs in tow, with a spade and big rucksack to carry back all of the 100's of rings we expected to find.
Well it didn't quite turn out that way... D2's don't cause a reaction in the metal detector unless you have almost a whole string of them together! So we found nothing with our metal detector (but had great fun playing airport security!) and had to look for rings the old fashioned way. We found 12 of this year's chicks long dead with rings on, including 6 that were colour ringed also.

We had fun on our walk but learnt an important lesson for ornithological conservation - don't use a metal detector for finding D2s! Thanks to Ian for sourcing the metal detector.

Raymond, Jenny, Ewan, Clunie, Freya, Bramble, Sula, Moya and Tyr