Colour Ringing Success.

 Today 29 Common Tern were colour ringed at Watermead Country Park. This brings the years total to 34.

The nesting rafts have all been very successful. A massive thank you to Dale and Jenny for their fantastic help.

Common Tern Colour ringing begins.

 Today we started our Common Tern colour ringing project. A total of 4 chicks were colour ringed, but with more to follow in the coming weeks.

They looked rather smug with their new "Bling"!
We are using engraved colour rings, which are placed on the left leg, a metal on the right. They are Lime green ,with a black code. The code is U00 to U99. 
We are looking forward to plenty of future sightings of these pioneers!
We have several questions that we wish to answer from this research. Hopefully we will find out more about the migration routes of our WCP terns. Are there important stop over sites where our young terns linger on their long journey south? Will individual terns return next summer and will they use the same raft? Which water bodies locally will our terns use for feeding? How far might they travel in order to find food?
To report colour ringed birds go to the European colour ringing website at www.cr-birding.org This site is currently being updated ,but links to the various species can be found here.

Cute Kestrels.

 Four Kestrel pullus were rung at Thornton. They have again used the box we put up in an oak tree.

It is very rewarding when a box you have made and erected is deemed, Fit for Purpose!