A team of seven ringers went to Harty on Sunday and managed to catch 104 birds. This is the first big numbers catch of 2013, demonstrating that the Dunlin have at last arrived in big numbers. Conditions for catching waders were ideal, with a mild, dark moonless night and a very light northerly. We were all kept busy and warm erecting eight nets then extracting and processing the birds.
The catch was dominated by Dunlin, but with sufficient larger birds to make the catch interesting, the following birds were caught:
- Teal 1 (adult female)
- Avocet 2 (juveniles)
- Grey Plover 1 retrap (adult)
- Lapwing 1 (adult male)
- Dunlin 73 plus 8 retraps (52% adults)
- Bar-tailed Godwit 7 plus 2 retraps
- Redshank 6 plus 3 retraps
Total 90 new plus 14 retraps
The retraps were of interest.
- Grey Plover was from October 2012
- Dunlin
- 1 from earlier this autumn
- 1 from February 2013
- 4 from November 2011
- 1 from November 2008
- 1 from November 2002 which was retrapped in October 2012. This bird is over 11 years old from its initial capture as a juvenile in 2002.
- Bar-tailed Godwit - two extremely different retraps:
- a juvenile from earlier in the autumn,
- our oldest ever Bar-tailed Godwit, ringed as an adult on 8th November 1999, this is just over 14 years between ringing and retrapping.
- Redshank
- 1 from February 2013
- 1 from October 2011
- 1 from September 2010, that was ringed as a juvenile