Ringing on 5th September

On 5 September a minimal team (two of us!) ringed around the Discovery Hut. We set four mist nets. We also set up a couple of Potter Traps in the hope of catching a moorhen. Potter Traps are small cages with a trap door that is set off when a bird walks in to the trap. The AERG has recently joined a national moorhen colour-ringing project which aims to better characterise the the UK moorhen population, especially in relation to the movement of birds between the UK and mainland Europe. The project is co-ordinated by the Waterbird Colour-marking Group (https://waterbirdcolourmarking.org/moorhen/) who describe the project’s aims as follows. Despite being common, widespread, and familiar, the Moorhen is an understudied species in Britain and Ireland. There is limited information available on its movements at local, national, and international levels. While Moorhen are generally considered to be sedentary, previous ringing recoveries have shown that migratory European birds join resident birds in Britain and Ireland in the winter, and birds ringed in Britain and Ireland have been found on the mainland Europe, indicating movement to the continent. However, these movements have not been effectively recorded, and metal ringing alone does not provide sufficient data on regular or annual movements. Colour-ringing enables ringed birds to be easily reported and we will aim to encourage visitors to Seaton Wetlands to report their sightings of our colour-ringed birds which will help us to understand the dynamics of our local wetlands moorhen population as well as feeding into the national colour ringing project. In addition to the metal BTO ring that we fit to all birds that we capture, moorhens ringed as part of this project also receive an orange colour ring inscribed with three black characters. Our efforts paid off immediately with the capture of a juvenile moorhen which was duly fitted with colour ring number S00.

A total of 33 birds were caught including a lovely male Stonechat

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This stonechat was aged as a 3 - that is this year's bird - and one of the features of a first year bird is the colour of the greater coverts which have been replaced and are clearly darker than the browner juvenile primary coverts.