Tag: Black-tailed Godwit

Black-tailed Godwit

29 and counting

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On the evening of 8 November 2025, WWRG caught 20 Black-tailed Godwits while mist netting at Terrington. One of them was a very special, colour-ringed bird that sets the BTO longevity record every time it is seen.

Metal ring EP85107 was added to a juvenile Black-tailed Godwit on 30 August 1996, in a cannon-net catch at Holbeach, Lincolnshire. It was the first godwit to arrive at the processing team and Jenny Gill added a set of white and green colour rings, turning it into W-GW/W. Jenny was just starting a post-doctoral project at the University of East Anglia to investigate how the expanding population of godwits was spreading into new sites, and needed to be able to recognise individuals. Over sixty birds were colour ringed on that day. Subsequently, there were winter sightings from Ireland, France and Portugal but many of these colour-ringed individuals were found on the estuaries of East and South England, which is where Jenny’s field studies were to be based.

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Practice tag attachment on an Oystercatcher, by Chantal Macleod-Nolan

Fieldwork February 2020

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Weather forecast:

Storm Dennis!
Saturday – strong winds with showers
Sunday – strong winds with rain

Recce and plan for the weekend

The plan for the weekend was for a cannon-net catch on either Saturday or Sunday morning depending on the findings of the recce team on Friday morning. One of the aims for the weekend was a trial for catching waders on a non-spring tide – the tide heights were considerably lower than those for a normal catching weekend. Mist netting was not an option for the weekend due to the tide heights.

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Knot on the tide edge

Foreign visitors

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Over the last two or three years WWRG has increased its efforts on the resighting of colour-marked birds, recognising that this provides valuable data in terms of the number of recoveries and the information gained on the movements and survival of birds that have been ringed. Previous blogs have outlined the fieldwork undertaken by WWRG in the last quarter of 2017, including colour-ring resighting, particularly the ‘Colour-mark resighting bonanza’ weekend of 6–8 October when 146 sightings of 88 birds were made over three tides.

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Dunlin, by Jenny Spencer-Jones

December mist netting

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Friday 1 December

A few hardy people met on Friday evening at the fieldwork base in preparation for an early morning mist-net catch at Gedney. The small team included three people who were on the Wash for the first time. Aron and Alyce had been out on the marsh in the afternoon to plan the catch and to leave guiding sticks to help the team to find the route later in the dark. Aron and Alyce had also prepared supper for those that wanted food and plans were made for timings with a realisation that a 04.37 high tide necessitated leaving the base at midnight! The equipment was packed into three cars before the team headed to bed for a short sleep.

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Setting mist nets, by Jenny Spencer-Jones

Fieldwork November 2017

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Friday 17 November

This was a second weekend for the group with no opportunity for making a cannon net catch. However, there was a double opportunity for mist netting, along with the usual colour ring resighting on one tide. The mist netting sessions were initially planned for the high tides on both Saturday morning and Saturday evening but, as with all WWRG field trips, this was dependent on the weather.

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