Devon and Cornwall Wader Ringing Group

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Things didn’t exactly go to plan for the planned cannon net catch on the weekend of 10-11 November. After delaying from the Saturday due to severe weather and a failed fire on Sunday, we reset and assembled a slightly smaller team to try again on Monday.

Oystercatcher with GPS tagOystercatcher with GPS tagWe did catch 53 Oystercatchers - a reasonable sample of birds - considering there were still problems with the firing system or fuses. All, including an old 'wasp' ringed retrap, were metal ringed and colour-ringed. Most importantly, 10 GPS tags were deployed and birds will be out there now collecting data. A fix on their exact position will be recorded and stored on the tag until it comes into contact with the base station, when it will download all the stored data.

Arrangements are being made to position the base station receivers, and a schedule for data retrieval is being established. In addition to the yellow un-coded ring above the blue coded ring on right tarsus, the GPS-tagged birds carry an blue un-coded ring above the metal ring on the left tarsus. Any sightings of any colour-ringed birds, and especially the GPS tagged birds can be emailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Massive thanks are due to everyone who turned out over the two days and in particular to Steve Ayres and Sama Euridge for helping us take kit down and to Stephen Edwards for helping us move kit off again. The support from Teignbridge District Council, despite having to deal with the erosion issues caused by the storm, has been very welcome. Thanks also to Jon Langmead and the staff at the Warren Golf Club for allowing us access through their course.

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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