Eleven Spoonbills were the highlight on
Brownsea Island today, with at least four still showing their juvenile black primary tips in flight as they circled the lagoon. One bird was also colour-ringed (large blue ring over small gold metal ring on left leg, large yellow ring on right leg)
though trying to read the letters/numbers at dis
tance was like having a really difficult eye-test. I failed. Not as difficult, however, as trying to negotiate the baffling array of colour-ringing schemes for Spoonbill described on the European colour-ring birding website, though I think I worked out that the best thing to do is to e-mail a man called Otto of the Dutc
h Working Group for Spoonbills. He can apparently tell me where it's from or put me in touch with another Spoonbill-ringer who can. Imagine pulling one of those out of the nets at Culverwell...Large numbers of
Avocet and
Blackwits also present (had kids with me, so a count was out of the question), plus an
Autumn-watch cameraman sitting motionless in a tent hide all day, and brief but
tickable views of That-Jeremy-Hardy-off-the-telly.
Eleven Spoonbills were the highlight on Brownsea Island today, with at least four still showing their juvenile black primary tips in flight as they circled the lagoon. One bird was also colour-ringed (large blue ring over small gold metal ring on left leg, large yellow ring on right leg) though trying to read the letters/numbers at dis
tance was like having a really difficult eye-test. I failed. Not as difficult, however, as trying to negotiate the baffling array of colour-ringing schemes for Spoonbill described on the European colour-ring birding website, though I think I worked out that the best thing to do is to e-mail a man called Otto of the Dutc
h Working Group for Spoonbills. He can apparently tell me where it's from or put me in touch with another Spoonbill-ringer who can. Imagine pulling one of those out of the nets at Culverwell...Large numbers of Avocet and Blackwits also present (had kids with me, so a count was out of the question), plus an Autumn-watch cameraman sitting motionless in a tent hide all day, and brief but tickable views of That-Jeremy-Hardy-off-the-telly.
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