Tag: shorebirds

Resighting birds at Snettisham, by Sara Miller

Fieldwork March 2020

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Once everyone had assembled on Friday evening (and after a delicious dinner – thanks Ron!), Gary and Lou led the Wash Wader weekend and gave the briefing, making sure to ask everyone to wash their hands regularly with the growing Covid-19 situation. They explained that the aim would be to cannon net a small number of Turnstone on Heacham North North which had been seen during the recce that they had done with Cathy that morning. They’d also seen large flocks of Oystercatchers however as they have been targeted previously, it was decided that the priority would be to colour ring Turnstone. The trailer was packed the night before and the team set their alarms for 04:15.

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Releasing a Ringed Plover, by Cathy Ryden

Fieldwork – early August 2019 – Norfolk

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Thursday 1 August

Lou, Gary and Jean recced on Thursday morning, getting up at 05:00, leaving at 05:30 and arriving at Heacham North North at 06:10. They found 40 Turnstone spread out along with a few Sanderling and saw 800 Oystercatcher on the bend on Heacham South which were tightly clustered until 08:10.

Not much was present on Snettisham beach. Some of the fields behind the sea wall had been cut for hay and baled. The field between the two sea walls had 50 Curlew in, at least five of which had colour rings on. At 08:10 there was another 90 Curlew in the field by the road, which then flew and joined the other 50. There were 1,000 Black-tailed Godwit roosting in the newly landscaped field by the RSPB car park at 09:15, with another 1,000 Black-tailed Godwits feeding amongst the cut hay with 20 Curlew in the field next door.

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WWRG in China 2019

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From almost the beginning of our now over 60-year history, members of the Wash Wader Ringing Group have travelled around the world to help others with wader-catching projects. Part of this work at present involves helping with work on the critically-endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper (SBS; https://www.saving-spoon-billed-sandpiper.com/). This autumn, group members were again part of a team led by Professor Chang Quin of Nanjing Normal University, working in Jiangsu, China. The aims of this year’s autumn passage work were to catch and mark SBS, satellite tag a small number, scan flocks of SBS to work out the proportion of marked to unmarked birds to add to our estimate of the numbers of birds using the area (https://www.waderstudygroup.org/article/12026/; https://www.waderstudygroup.org/article/12091/) and to mark and measure a range of other species.

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Clive, Daphne, Mike and Steve, by Cathy Ryden

60 years young

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Members of the Cambridge Bird Club first started taking interest in the waders using The Wash in the early 1950s. Initially, this interest focused around monitoring and counting the wader populations in winter, but soon included catching attempts using mist nets and clap nets. The Wash Wader Ringing Group was formed during the summer of 1959 when a team, including Clive Minton, persuaded Peter Scott of the Wildfowl Trust to lend them their rocket nets to try catching large groups of waders on ploughed fields; the Group took their first rocket net catch, at Terrington in Norfolk, on 18 August 1959, exactly 60 years ago today. 

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Grey Plover, by Rob Robinson

Grey Plover migration

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The symbol of the Wash Wader Ringing Group is the Grey Plover – fittingly as we have ringed nearly 60% of the Grey Plover ringed in Britain & Ireland to date. However, we have recorded fewer than 50 international exchanges, so our knowledge of where they go is limited – as it is in the rest of NW Europe. 

To address this knowledge gap, researchers on the Waddensea have satellite tagged and followed 11 Grey Plover caught there and have gathered much more detailed information. The satellite tracks show individuals going up to Yamal and Taimyr (Russia) to breed, with wintering locations including the Waddensea, Ireland, France, Portugal and Guinea Bissau. This fascinating paper is free to view on the journal website.