Pages

▼

Tuesday, 13 March 2012

13/03/12 - 100 Shelduck??

A title with a double meaning - we keep catching more Shelduck in the duck traps making it our best ever year for the species. We’ve now ringed 72 new birds and with re-traps and controls the total number of birds handled is 92, so we're slowly approaching the 100 mark. Given that there are still lots of un-ringed birds being seen throughout the valley it also suggests that our estimate of 100 birds is rather low, or at least there has been some turnover of spring passage/breeding birds over the last two months.

We caught another old friend today - GN81832, originally ringed as a ‘shelduck-ling’ at Wheldrake Ings on 24/06/07 - we next heard about her when she appeared at North Cave Gravel Pits on 14/02/10. Today she was back at Wheldrake Ings on the pool where she was reared as a chick 5 years ago. The photo of her below was taken at North Cave Gravel Pits in 2010 and sent on to us. This shows the value of using colour-rings, especially in this day and age of high quality photographic gear and digi-scoping. Great to see her back!


at

2 comments:

  1. Tim Jones21 March 2012 at 20:59

    I mentioned it to Russ but had a drake Shelduck at Newbrugh Priory yesterday with dark ring and yellow writing XU I guess is one of your birds?

    Also theres a Redshank at Hes East with just a metal on it last 4 number 1850, any way if you can tell if its one of yours? I'll try reading the rest of the numbers this week hopefully

    Cheers
    Tim

    ReplyDelete
  2. LDV Team22 March 2012 at 13:08

    Hi Tim,

    Thanks for the record, it is indeed one of our birds, it was first ringed 16/03/11 at Thorganby, and then two weeks ago we re-caught it in the valley. As for the Redshank we're not sure just yet but we'll let you know when we find out.

    Cheers again.

    ReplyDelete