Colour Rings

8th July - another gloriously hot and sunny day.  I wasn't hopeful of much at the pit, but made a lunchtime visit anyway.  It was immediately obvious that there had been an influx of post breeding Black-headed Gulls, with at least 300 birds counted, including 9 juveniles. Last year I recorded several colour-ringed BHGs during this period showing that many of these birds are coming in from Europe and as far away as Poland and the Baltics.  Today it was great to find a returning bird that I had first recorded on July 13th last year, this was black P430, a bird ringed as an adult female at Dumpiai dump, Klaipeda, Lithuania on 30th March 2010.  The ringer commented last year that he was surprised that it had reached England that early, so a week earlier this year - an amazing example of migration site fidelity.  I took a photo of the bird last year here .  There was also a bird with a white ring, code 6EC, which looks to be from Denmark.  I await details on that one.

The CR Common Tern seen at the end of June was present again today.  The split colour ring didn't seem as faded today and still looks like blue over yellow, so ringed as a chick here in 2009.  The BTO ring looks to be hanging off at the top, which is a bit worrying!

4 male Wigeon were new in today, otherwise it was some regular birds: 3 Shelduck, a pair plus another female; 2 Oystercatchers and a lone juvenile LRP.  A Hobby hawking odonata low over the lake surface in the NW corner was putting on a fine display and added a further distraction.