The joy of colour ringing is that it can open the window on the enchanting journeys of individual birds. By finding and reporting a banded bird, you can aid science and (to my way of thinking) better connect with the natural world. I have to admit, reporting colour ringed birds is not something I have devoted much energy to in the past. I will in the future.
On the 1st January I spotted a colour ringed sanderling, with two red rings on the right leg and red above lime green on the left. Later that day I sent a tweet requesting information on where the bird might be from. Jeroen Reneekens, a shorebird ecologist, kindly informed me that ‘sanderling with lime (light green) flags and metal tarsus are part of Colin Corse’s scheme.’ Wanting to find out more, an e-mail was sent and almost by return Colin provided a pdf report on the life history of ‘my sanderling.’
With a ringing date of 29th April 2018, it was first resighted in north-east Iceland (Sigurdarstadavik) 22 days after it was captured on Sanday, Orkney. A journey of 1,060km. On the 4th October 2018 it was recorded in Birchington, Kent.
In 2019 the bird was recorded on Sanday and North Ronalsday in late April and early May. Then in July of the same year it was seen back in Iceland, followed by a September sighting at Swalecliffe, Kent. In 2020 it was reported four times, once in Orkney and three times in Kent (twice from Birchington and once in Margate). In 2021 the bird had obviously invested in a cloaking device, because it wasn’t reported at all!
Then, on the 1st January 2022, perhaps after a fault in its cloaking device, I recorded it back on the shores of the north Kent coast, 1,343 days after the bird was first captured. It just shows how faithful some birds are to their wintering grounds.
Sanderling breed in arctic north America, Greenland and northern Siberia (BTO). Therefore, if the round journey between this bird’s Iceland staging area and its north Kent coast wintering ground is a minimum round journey of c. 3,950km each year, this bird could easily be migrating 4,500km or more each year.
What I really like is that my honeymoon in Iceland was in 2018, the same year ‘my sanderling’ was first caught. Perhaps our paths have crossed unknowingly before?
I would encourage anyone to look for and report colour ringed birds. It’s utterly enthralling to find out about the history of an individual bird, and the data derived from resightings can only help us better protect them. In doing so, it also connects people who live along their flyways.
Thanks to Kevin Duncan who also provided a link to https://animaltrack.org, should you find a colour ringed bird.
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