I took over from Mike Tyler as the Leader of the Group at the Annual General Meeting and have been asked to provide something about myself and my plans for the group.
I began ringing informally at about the age of 12. My father was an honorary head warden for the local nature reserve where I grew up in Warwickshire, and was asked if the reserve could be used for ringing activities to support a local evening class. He replied that this would be fine as long as he could come along! I went too and so my ringing began. I started training properly at around 14 and got my C permit just before I left for university at 18. I have held a ringing licence, since my first trainee permit, for 46 years.
In recent years I have been ringing on the Axe Estuary and on various sites in Devon, primarily, in recent years, working with Peter Bennett on the Pebblebed Heaths looking at Dartford Warblers and Nightjars. These projects unfortunately ended about 2 years ago.
I have been living in Cornwall for 7 years but have now retired from work as a Chief Examiner of A level Chemistry and can devote more time to ringing. My daughter lives in Newton Poppleford which means I can combine ringing activities with visits to her and to use my season ticket for the Exeter Chiefs!
I see the group having four main roles.
One is to provide a measure of general population on the Wetlands over time. We can do this by continuing our general ringing, but we have some plans to try to make our activity more measurable by carrying out ringing sessions in a similar way from year to year.
The second is to consider species of particular importance on the Wetlands. We have been working on shelduck for some time, and as a result have also caught and colour ringed a number of black tailed godwits. I hope to continue this work and perhaps expand to other duck species and waders.
Training the next generation of ringers is an important role which the group should undertake, and we are currently seeing a number of new ringers starting to work with us.
The final task is to explain our work and our findings to the public. We do this through our interactions with visitors to the Wetlands during our sessions, by communicating our findings to the Wetlands management, by attending various shows and, of course, through the blog!
The recent addition of new areas to the Wetlands has opened up some interesting possibilities for our ringing activities. I am hoping that we will be able to continue with our current programme (bird flu permitting), but I am also hopeful that more opportunities for a variety of different activities will make themselves available, focussing on both the new areas, particularly for waders and duck, but also on some of the old areas to look at some new projects, perhaps including work on mallard and sand martin.
Please keep an eye out for news on the blog!
Ian Stanbridge – Leader AERG
