Devon and Cornwall Wader Ringing Group

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Dunlin 20191116 Dawlish Warren DCWRGDunlin colour-ringed on 16 Nov 2019 © A J Bellamy

High Tide 3.60m @ 20:53, Sunset 16:10, Rendezvous 16:00

The 16th November brought another nocturnal suitable height spring tide and with it our next mist-netting session. Conditions looked favourable with light cloud and no wind, so the team were hopeful for a useful catch despite the bright moon. The target for the mist-netting sessions of juvenile Oystercatchers remained, with 8 GPS-UHF tags still to deploy for winter 2019/20.

The team assembled at 1600, met by session leader Nik Ward who was suffering with the most non-existent streaming cold imaginable (get well soon Nik). Well 1600ish…all except Ryan Burrell and Thomas Weston who were 30 minutes late, though they were let them off as they had driven straight to Dawlish from the Solent via the DCWRG kit store, as they had been cannon-netting at dawn for a tracking study with Farlington Ringing Group and GWCT.

Greenshank 20191116 Dawlish Warren DCWRGGreenshank ringed on 16 Nov 2019 © A J BellamyThe mist-nets were set around the island roost, in an effort to maximise the chances of catching juvenile Oystercatchers, tape lures deployed then the team waited for the tide to bring the birds to roost. As the tide rose, single Dunlin were caught, ringed and colour-marked then just before high tide, a juvenile Knot and Greenshank were both caught. The latter being the first Greenshank caught on the estuary since the restart of DCWRG last year.

Although, no juvenile Oystercatchers were caught, getting the ball rolling on our Dunlin colour-mark project was great! We have our fingers crossed that resighting data from this project will provide further information on the site use and survival of Dunlin using the Exe Estuary as with the Oystercatcher Project. Plus, we of course needed to provide our committed team of observers with more of a challenge as they appear far too successful at reading Oystercatcher colour-rings. This was the thought at least, but it did not last long with Lee Collins, one of our key ring readers, resighting Dunlin “xx//Bw(AE) – xx//Rm” the next morning. Hopefully, this resighting will be the first of many.

Thanks as always go to all those involved from DCWRG, Natural England for purchasing the colour-rings and Teignbridge Council and Warren Golf Club for their on-going support of DCWRG projects.

Aims

The aims of the Devon and Cornwall Wader Ringing Group are to study the wading birds that live in, or pass through, Devon and Cornwall.

We hope to undertake fieldwork approximately once a month, mainly at weekends, involving either mist-netting or the use of a cannon net. Members of the group live across Britain, although many are based in Devon. A key site for fieldwork is the Exe Estuary and in particular Dawlish Warren National Nature Reserve, where we have a project on colour ringed Oystercatcher.

Birds are marked with individually numbered metal leg rings and, to aid relocation without the need to recapture them, with colour rings. Under special license we are also fitting GPS tags to a small number of birds to help understand the way they use the habitats around the estuary through the winter and at different states of the tide.

Links

The Dawlish Warren Recording Group publish regular updates on the birds seen at Dawlish Warren.

The county bird clubs are Devon Birds and the Cornwall Bird Watching and Preservation Society.

Bird ringing in Britain is licensed and coordinated by The British Trust for Ornithology. More information on why we ring birds and why we use colour marks on our study species can be found here. Bird ringing in Europe is coordinated by EURING.

The definitive database of all colour-marking schemes for waders in Europe and the East Atlantic flyway is available on the International Wader Study Group website. All editions of their publications (Wader Study, Wader Study Group Bulletin and International Wader Studies) are available online

For species other than waders the European colour-ring Birding website, voluntarily maintained by Dirk Raes, should be useful.

Join us

The group welcomes volunteer ringers from anywhere who are interested in taking part in the fieldwork, although membership of the group is open to all, whether or not you hold a bird-ringing license. Please bear in mind that we need to have a good balance of experience across the team for each session, but we do our best to accommodate and train the less experienced.

The current membership fee is £5 per year, running from November to October. You can register and join here.

Acknowledgements

The group operates with the excellent support of Teignbridge District Council and Devon Wildlife Trust as landowners of Dawlish Warren. Warren Golf Club kindly allow access across their land.

We are also grateful to he RSPB and David King for allowing us to operate on their land at Exminster Marshes and to Torridge District Council for co-ordinating permissions at Northam Burrows.

The value of the projects would not be fully realised without the excellent re-sighting work undertaken and publicised by the Dawlish Warren Recording Group.

We are grateful to Natural England for funding the rings and GPS tags, and for providing staff time for ongoing management of the projects. We are also grateful to the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (GWCT) for staff time for fitting the GPS tags, organising the project and dealing with data. Devon Birds have generously provided some funding for colour rings.

Header images on this website are licensed under the Creative Commons license by the photographers.

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