Colour-ringed Geese Part II

Continuation of the previous post with the ringing details/records of colour-ringed Light-bellied Brent Geese.

B6WR (born pre 2013) was originally ringed in Seltjarnarnes/Golfvöllur in southwest Iceland on the 18th of May 2014 (the same as 2TWR in last post) and has been recorded 13 times since.  This is the third consecutive winter the bird has been sighted at Lough Foyle and it returned to its ringing site in May 2015.

B6WR/ C3WR

C3WR (born pre 2013) was originally ringed in Seltjarnarnes/Golfvöllur in southwest Iceland on the 18th of May 2014 (associated with B6WR above) and has been recorded 16 times since.  Its re-sightings are almost identical to B6WR above.


3XBB (born pre 2011 - male) was ringed at St. Benildus College, Sandyford, Dublin on the 07th of February 2012 and has been recorded 16 times since.  The bird was recorded at Myroe two winters ago and has been sighted multiple times in SW Iceland during May in 2012 & 2016.  

3XBB

AZWB (born 2007) was ringed at Enniscrone, Co. Sligo on the 14th of February 2008 and has been recorded 20 times since, 12 of those from around Lough Foyle and returned to Sligo over three  winters. 

AZWB

NVBY (born pre 2014) was originally ringed at Alftanes, South-west Iceland on the 12th of May 2015 and has been re-sighted seven times.  It was recorded back in SW Iceland the following May and five of it's records are from Lough Foyle.  

NVBY

2DBB (born 2011) was ringed at St. Benildus College, Sandyford, Dublin on the 07th of February 2012, caught with 3XBB above.  It has been sighted more often with 44 records, 30 of those in Dublin Bay.  

2DBB

XUBY (born 2007) was originally ringed at Axel Heiberg Island, Canada on the 02nd of August 2007 and has been re-sighted a massive 120 times!  The vast majority of the sightings come from Strangford Lough, Dublin Bay and few sites in between.  It has been recorded in Iceland over 8 years and this is the first sighting for Lough Foyle.

XUBY

XLRY (born pre 2005) was ringed at Alftanes, South-west Iceland on the 15th of May 2005 and has been recorded 64 times since ringing.  It's records are split between SW Iceland and Lough Foyle with only two others from Tramore, County Cork in 2009 and 2012.  

XLRY

SKWR (born pre 2008 - female) was ringed around Alftanes, South-west Iceland on the 10th of May 2010 and has been recorded 55 times.  It has been recorded at Lough Foyle 15 times, four times in Iceland over three winters with the remaining records in Strangford Lough.  

SKWR

6KRR (born pre 2012) was ringed at Baldoyle, County Dublin on the 8th of March 2013 and has been recorded 67 times.  This bird is a Dub at heart recorded 58 times in the broad area with a further nine records from Strangford Lough.  

6KRR

4IWW (born pre 2007 - male) was ringed at Enniscrone, Co. Sligo on the 14th of February 2008, on the same day as AZWB above and has been recorded 28 times since.  It spent the first couple of winters after ringing around Killala Bay in Co. Sligo but has since been recorded more commonly between Lough Foyle and Strangford Lough since with two records in western Iceland.  

4IWW

H2BY (born pre 2015) was ringed in the Alftanes area of South-west Iceland on the 19th of May 2015 and has been recorded five times since, all from Lough Foyle last winter.  

H2BY

It is clear to see from these select records that the Irish Brent Project continues to be very successful and has taken a tremendous effort by the team, particularly the recorders around Dublin, Strangford Lough and in Iceland who dedicate a lot of time for the species. 


On our own ringing front it has again been a quite one.  John and I did make an attempt to catch some Twite at a site along Lough Foyle where I have observed a flock of 35-40 in the last few months.  It is an interesting spot as it appears to be the midden head for the owner of an aviary so a continuous pile of mixed seed, millet, sawdust and droppings.  Whatever it actually is it can attract 100's of birds with flocks of Linnet, Twite, Greenfinches, Chaffinches, Tree Sparrows and few other species. 
The morning we attempted a catch the Twite failed to show up and the breeze did the nets no favours and we ended up 6/7 Linnets, 2 Robins and a Chaffinch.  We hope to give it another shot before the Portstewart Strand season kicks off once more, perhaps we'll dust of the whoosh net!

Colour-ringed Geese

I have put a bit of time in recently sifting through some of the current geese flocks at the Myroe Levels, Lough Foyle in County L'Derry and Fair Head in County Antrim.  I've had a bit of success in finding colour-ringed Pale-bellied Brent and Greylag Geese with 18 combinations successfully recorded plus sightings of a single Barnacle Goose, which are scarce in Northern Ireland, plus some Greenland White-fronted Goose.


On the two visits to Myroe this month there have been up to 1500 Pale-bellied Brent Geese feeding on the turf lawns and quite a number of colour ringed birds amongst them.  I was more successful on my second visit when I found 11 combinations within 5 minutes amongst c700 birds at close range.  There were probably the same number again that I didn't clinch but unfortunately they flushed.  These birds are usually fitted with one coded colour ring on each leg or a combination of colour rings.
The birds originate from the East Canadian High Arctic flyway population (c38-40,000 birds) and breed in the very far north of Canada.  The majority overwinter in Ireland but a number head to western and southern Britain, the Channel Islands, northern France and transit through Greenland and Iceland.  Since the project started in 2001 there have been over 4,700 geese ringed across Ireland, Iceland and Canada and records top the 10,000 mark each year!  Hats off to the Irish Brent Research Group for the fantastic work they do and particularly Graham for processing the sightings
- for more details check out their blog - http://irishbrentgoose.blogspot.co.uk/
I've added the details of five of the Brent and 2 Greylags below and will follow up with the remaining Brent in another pot soon.


2TWR (born pre 2013) was originally ringed in Seltjarnarnes/Golfvöllur in southwest Iceland on the 18th of May 2014 and has been recorded 14 times since, including along Lough Foyle over the past three winters.  It was recorded back in Iceland three times in late spring 2016.

2TWR

GRXY (born 2011 - female) was originally ringed in Nairn along the Moray Firth in Scotland on the 13th of January 2012 and has been recorded 13 times since ringing.  It was recorded around Lough Foyle last year and has further sightings in County Kerry and Strangford Lough. 

GRXY

L7B7 (born 2016 - female) was originally ringed at Cross Island, Strangford Lough on the 18th of November 2016.  It was spotted again close-by the following day after ringing and then at the Myroe Levels 12 days before my sighting. 

L7B7

TUWB (born pre 2008 - male) was originally ringed in Cromane, Castlemaine Harbour, Co. Kerry on the 26th of March 2009.  It has been recorded 25 times since, mainly in 4/5 sites in south Cork and was recorded in Lough Foyle last winter.

TUWB

UULY (born 2005 - female) was originally ringed at Alftanes, South-west Iceland on the 15th of May 2006 and has been re-sighted a staggering 90 times!!!  Most of these sightings (55) come from around the original ringing site which is in close proximity of the Icelandic capital - Reykjavik.  She has been re-sighted every year in the last 11 years and nine individual years in Iceland and five years at the Myroe Levels.  

UULY

At Fair Head the target species were the Greylag Geese with a portion of these being local breeding feral birds.  I found 183 birds in small flocks with two bearing orange coded neckbands plus an almost pure white leucistic bird.  Both birds had been ringed in the Western isles of Scotland on Islay.   

NDD (yellow) was ringed on the 11th of November 2011 as a juvenile female and now appears to be resident on Rathlin Island/Fair Head.
NCL (green) was ringed on the 21st of January 2015 as a juvenile.  It was recorded with a brood in its first summer on Colonsay to the north but returned to Islay for the winter.  It was first recorded in Northern Ireland on the first of February this year.   

Greylag Geese NDD (yellow) & NCL(green)

French recovery via a Long-eared Owl

Hot on the heels of the Sand Martin movement to France we have received news of another French recovery although it wasn't what we were expecting.
The bird in question refers to a mystery small French ring which John had found inside of a Long-eared Owl pellet on the Ulster University Campus in Coleraine back in April 2011.  Following a few years of trying to get the ringing details, even sending messages in French, we had written off receiving them.  We had thought the most likely species would have been something like a Lesser Redpoll, Sedge Warbler or perhaps a Siskin.
As it turns out it was another Sand Martin originally ringed at Lagunage, Rochefort, Charente-Maritime on the Atlantic Coast roughly 112 miles to the south of last weeks bird.  It was originally ringed on the 20th of August 2006 during an evening roost catch at a minimum distance of 1101km from Coleraine.  It was aged as a youngster in 2006 so it could have made as many as ten flights between Northern Ireland and Sub-Saharan Africa.  John is quite confident that the pellet was fresh when he found it as he had been watching the LEO nest above.

Sand Martin movement from France

This was actually the second recovery John has found in LEO pellets at the University and it's a great reward for his efforts.  The other bird was a Siskin which had originally been ringed at Gibraltar Point in Lincolnshire on the east coast of England.  

Post 100!

The BTO sent through some good news to say that one of our Sand Martins was controlled in France on its first migration south.  The bird was originally ringed at our Grangemore Sand Martin colony on the 18th of June 2016 and wound up at Tour aux Moutons, Donges, Loire-Atlantique, France 52 days later, travelling a minimum distance of 932 kilometres. 

Sand Martin control to Donges, France


I promised to give details of one of our Oystercatchers that turned up in Dublin ages ago and I have finally got around to processing it.  It was ringed as a recently fledged bird by Ken back in June 2004 at Croaghan Islet, Mulroy Bay, Donegal which was a former gull/tern breeding colony before it was decimated by American Mink.  We are unable to say where it has spent the past 12 and a half years of its life but it was still going strong at South Lagoon, Bull Island, Dublin on the 29th November 2016.  The minimum distance travelled is 228 kilometres although it is highly likely that it passed along the coast on its way to Dublin.  The oldest Oystercatcher recorded in the UK was over 40 years old, so some way to go for this bird to be a record breaker.

 Oystercatcher movement to Dublin

It had been over a month since our last visit to Castlerock, when John, David, Dineka and I dragged ourselves out last Sunday.  It was a cold start sitting at 3 below, with a very hard frost, which had even turned the normally soft estuarine sand to a hard cake.  It heated up a bit in the clear sunny skies but perhaps not the best for mist nets.  There are still thousands of berries remaining on the bushes to keep the birds interested but it looks like they are starting to drop now.  The flock of c40 Fieldfare were still scattered through the bushes with plenty of Bullfinches for company.
The Fieldfares are still giving us the run around and we failed to catch any but we did catch a few Blackbirds and Bullfinches.


Castlerock Golf Club 05/02/2017  
                                New      Retrap
Blackbird                  3              1          
Bullfinch                   2              1
Dunnock                   1
Goldcrest                                  1
Robin                        1               1 
Song Thrush            1          
Wren                                         1 

Total                          8              5            

Bullfinches             DS


There have been a further two ringing training sessions in Antrim with Copeland Bird Observatory.  The catches have been rather low with not many birds visiting the feeders throughout the winter.  We did get a bit of excitement on the first visit when a flock of Waxwings had appeared in the car park but unfortunately they had been chased off by a pair of Mistle Thrushes by the time we arrived. 
The Observatory opens up again next month so all focus will be back on the island.


I have spotted and received details of 16 colour-ringed geese over the past few weeks and will update on those in a later post.