During the last week we’ve had four species reported from the valley that have been seen with colour-rings/darvics - two Black-tailed Godwits and a Moorhen on Wheldrake Ings, plus a Woodlark on Skipwith Common and a Shelduck in Foggathorpe, details below.
Black-tailed Godwit (Wheldrake Ings) - out of 35 present 2 have been seen with colours, but there could be more as the birds tend to stand in the water, keep an eye out! The colours from the first bird (seen by Craig on 22/03/12) were reported as: right leg - lime/lime, left leg - red/yellow. We’re awaiting confirmation but it’s believed this bird may have been ringed a few years ago on the Humber. The second colour-ringed bird (seen by Craig on 26/03/12) is: right leg - orange/yellow, left leg - white/yellow.
Shelduck (Foggathorpe) - Andy Walker & Russel Slack (both regular valley birders!) sent us their record of a Shelduck with a green ring with white letters 'CV' engraved, they spotted it on a pond in Foggathorpe (3 miles from Bubwith). We’re still in the process of tracing it but at the moment we believe it may have been ringed in Fife, Scotland.
Woodlark (Skipwith Common) - several birds have been reported recently, and then last week another local birder, Tim Jones gave us the colours from a bird he’d seen (left leg - yellow/red, right leg - metal/red with white stripe). We’ve looked back through our records and it was ringed by Dave Tate (one of our volunteers) last year on 24th June on Nightjar Heath.
Moorhen (Wheldrake Ings) - Tim also spotted a colour-ringed Moorhen on the pool at Wheldrake, one of very few records we have! The bird was seen with the following colours: right leg - metal/red, left leg - black/white. It was initially ringed on Wheldrake Ings in 2009 as a local breeding bird and so it’s interesting that it has re-appeared now. This is actually a really good record as we’ve colour-ringed in the range of 250 Moorhens now and hardly had any re-sightings, additionally we’ve metal ringed over 1500 and only had a handful of recoveries, most of them local. There is clearly much more to learn about common species such as Moorhen. The bird in the photograph below was caught last week in the whoosh net at Bank Island, right leg - metal/red, left leg - blue/cyan.
Colour-ringed Moorhen - 22/03/12
Along with Moorhens, we’ve also been colour-ringing Coot over the last few years and had several sightings (more than from just metal ringing). The photograph below was taken at Cleethorpes Country Park, Lincolnshire on 29/11/10, having been initially ringed in the valley at North Duffield Carrs on 20/10/08. Kane Brides (WWT) runs a successful and more extensive colour-ringing programme for Coot in the North West (see his blog for full details - http://birdringing.blogspot.co.uk/).
Colour-ringed Coot - Cleethorpes 2010
The bird in the photograph below (right leg - metal/red, left leg - yellow/yellow), was ringed at North Duffield Carrs, it’s not been seen since....but hopefully it’s out there somewhere waiting for someone to spot it, it could be YOU!
Coot numbers start to build up on spring passage through the Lower Derwent Valley, peaking at around 1400 in March (depending on water levels). Numbers then decline to the local breeding population, with a mere 20 or so birds remaining into early autumn. It looks like birds winter to the south, moving slowly northwards as spring progresses, with some evidence that they move north along the Trent Valley in Nottinghamshire, into the Humber and back to the LDV.
Colour-ringing a Coot in the valley
It's brilliant for the people involved to get data back from birds they've colour-ringed but equally after talking to people who've spotted colour-ringed birds it's also really intriguing for them to find out where and when the bird was ringed, so without people like yourselves submitting records we'd never know! So thanks to everyone who's already submitted their records/sightings, keep them coming!
this brd was spotted in bolton 03/04/2017
ReplyDelete