We all know that some of the birds we see every day have exciting lives - think of the Swallows we see round our houses in the summer that spend their winters in South Africa - but many of our birds have exciting tales to tell. Ringing helps us uncover their remarkable journeys.
Lapwing
This beautiful wader, with its evocative display and song, breeds on farmland and moorland in summer and then moves to estuaries in winter to feed on the abundant invertebrate food. Most young birds will return to the area they were born in the summer months, but ringing has revealed that they sometimes choose to nest in other countries as well.
Lapwing BT32114 completed a lengthy journey from Fennoscandia to the UK:
- Ringed as a chick at Toysa in Finland on 9 June 2005
- Refound Frampton-on-Severn in Gloucestershire on 29 January 2009.
This is a distance of 1,978 km and is only the 13th Finnish ringed Lapwing to come to the UK or Ireland!
Stonechat
Stonechats are very confiding birds, but for ringers, they are notoriously difficult to catch. This means that there are comparatively few birds ringed, and most of them - about 85% - are ringed as chicks or young birds. Although some Stonechats spend the winter with us in Britain, part of the population migrates through Europe to North Africa, including Stonechat T495090:
- Ringed shortly after leaving the nest at Alderholt in Dorset on the 18 July 2006
- Caught by a Spanish ringer in Laguna de Petrola in south-east Spain on 5 November 2007, probably on its southward migration.
This astonishing recovery showed the Stonechat had flown more than 1,300 km from its nest site.
Spotted Flycatcher
Like many of the migrants that visit us each year from Africa, the Spotted Flycatcher has shown recent declines in numbers. In the 1970s, the Spotted Flycatcher population was potentially six times greater than that of today. Birds ringed in Britain and Ireland have been found as far south as Central Africa, like Spotted Flycatcher B982864:
- Ringed as a chick at Cashel, Tipperary, Ireland on 23 June 1984
- Sadly captured in Cuimba, Angola, on 20 January 1988, to be put into a museum as a specimen.
This is the only recovery of a Spotted Flycatcher in Angola, and amazingly, this bird was four years old. Because Spotted Flycatchers make a migration south and then back again every year, this bird could have flown more than 49,000 km in its lifetime, which is further than flying right around the Earth along the equator on its little wings.