North Lancashire Ringing Group

• Number of Birds Ringed By North Lancashire Ringing Group 1957-2003
• Ringing Totals 2002
• Ringing Totals 2003
• Ringing totals 2004
• Ringing totals 2005
• Ringing totals 2006
• Recent Ringing Recoveries

About the Group

The North Lancashire Ringing Group traces its roots back to 1957, when two of the present members started ringing in the area. It was formed to study the birds of the Lancaster and District Birdwatching Society's area, using ringing as a research tool. At the moment we have 12 members, who operate at several sites within the area. Projects include studies of the breeding birds and movements at Heysham Nature Reserve, Bearded Tit ecology at Leighton Moss RSPB Reserve, breeding of Swallows in farms and the survival of Sand Martins on the River Lune. Fine nets, called mist nets, are used to capture birds so they are unharmed. They are then taken out of the net by skilled ringers, before being fitted with a unique numbered ring which identifies the bird. Details such as age, sex, weight and wing measurements are taken quickly and carefully. The bird is then released.

Members of the Group have ringed a total of at least 210,000 birds since 1957. These have generated somewhere in the region of 3,500 recoveries (reports by members of the public or captured by other ringers), a lot of information. This short summary below details some of our more interesting results.

The Redwing is a reasonably common winter visitor. Our ringing has shown that our birds breed in Scandinavia, with reports from Finland and Norway in the breeding season. Birds ringed in the winter in our area have been reported in following winters in Italy (2), Greece, France and Portugal and most surprisingly in Azerbaijan, close to the Caspian Sea and almost in Iran! The recoveries in France and Portugal may be birds that have moved south in the course of a winter, perhaps driven south by cold weather in Britain. The other recoveries prove that redwing can change their wintering areas from one year to the next. Was this due to their mating with a bird that wintered elsewhere and they retained the pair bond through the winter necessitating a change in wintering area for one partner? Certainly it was probably better to winter in Britain, for in all cases the birds were shot when wintering abroad!

Many of our wintering Blackbirds have been proved to be winter visitors, with recoveries in the breeding season in Norway (5), Sweden (4), Denmark and North Germany (2). There is no evidence of birds moving to other wintering areas in following winters, as there is in Redwing.

Lots of effort has gone into ringing waders on Morecambe Bay. In the early days this meant nocturnal mist netting sessions out on the sandflats. This was later replaced by cannon netting, which resulted in much larger catches during more sociable hours. We have now been able to work out the migration strategy of Knot. These birds, so much a part of the winter scene on Morecambe Bay, breed in Greenland, where we have had 29 recoveries, most of them on the North American side of that vast, mainly ice covered country. Two recoveries on Ellesmere Island, Canada, (one ringed as a nestling) raises the question as to why they cross the north Atlantic to winter in Europe, when it seems easier, (as part of the population does) to move down the East coast of North America. Eighty two recoveries in Iceland (all bar 3 of birds caught and released), prove they use Iceland as a re-fuelling halt on both the spring and autumn migration. In late summer, almost all our wintering Knot moult along the shores of the North Sea, especially the Waddenzee in the Netherlands, and the Wash. They move to the west coast over the autumn and early winter, and set off from there in early spring, back to Greenland and Canada via Iceland.

We tend to think of birds migrating quickly in a purposeful way. Colour ringing has shown this is not always the case. A Mediterranean Gull hatched in Holland moved to Dorset, Cornwall, Kent, Dyfed and Donegal, before breeding on the Allen Pool at the Leighton Moss and Morecambe Bay RSPB Reserve four years after ringing! The black winged stilt which spent two days on the Eric Morecambe Pool in June 1993 was seen next day in Oxford, two days later in Kent, then after two more days in Suffolk. It had been born in France and had spent its first spring in Holland!

One of the birds closely associated with the Lancaster and District Bird Watching Society is the Pied Flycatcher. Nest boxes, put up in the 1960s & 1970s by Society members, were instrumental in establishing the bird as a breeder in North Lancashire. The Ringing Group has continued these schemes and a total of 4,541 have been ringed since 1967, most of them as nestlings. One fondly thinks that the nestlings that survive will return to breed in our area. Ringing has established that although some do return and breed locally, quite a lot move to breed on their return in other areas. Our birds have been found nesting in Cumbria (8), North Yorkshire (2), Durham, Northumberland, Shropshire, Wales (4) and Scotland (3). The furthest movement was one hatched at Claughton and found breeding on the shores of Loch Katrine 268 km to the north. Others are even more adventurous. One from Aughton was caught, presumably on passage, the following early May in North Holland and then was found breeding in June in Denmark; another was found breeding in west Germany.

Heysham Nature Reserve has been a focal point for ringing in the area. Perhaps the most outstanding finding here has been the discovery that many of the species we usually consider sedentary, do wander quite a lot. Interesting recoveries include a spring Wren found a year later in Cheltenham 247km south. Most surprising though were 2 Long-tailed Tits ringed on 2nd October, which were caught 19 days later in Central Scotland, 306 km to the north. Rather a strange time of year to be moving north! Speed of movement is shown by a Goldcrest ringed on 18th October and caught next day on Anglesey, 138km south-west. Perhaps the most spectacular Heysham recovery was a winter ringed Water Rail, found in Russia the following June. To see a Water Rail fly a few yards is quite unusual; to think of them flying this distance is remarkable.

Of course, much ringing effort is directed to understanding the survival and productivity of birds especially those perceived to be under threat. One of our major contributions has been the Bearded Tit study at Leighton Moss. Over 9 years the adult survival at ca 53% has been similar each year, but juvenile survival to the next year has varied between 9% in 1992 and 60% in 1997.

Ringing over such a long period has revealed changes in populations. Perhaps the most explicit are our ringing numbers for our two breeding buntings. In 1965 we ringed 66 Yellowhammers on a small farm at Warton, they were mainly coming to seed in winter. We haven't ringed a Yellowhammer since 1986, when we ringed just three. There are just no birds to ring these days. Reed Bunting ringing at Leighton Moss peaked at 259 in 1979. Last year, with similar effort, we caught only 25. In both species it appears that the lack of winter feeding areas has caused the decline. In the 1950s and 1960s, up to a third of fields were arable in our area, providing a plentiful supply of weed seeds and waste grain, now it is almost complete grass farming for cattle and sheep, with no arable, and so few weed seeds.

The ages that birds attain is also of great interest. Our record is a Lesser-black-backed Gull ringed in 1965 as a nestling and culled on the Tarnbrook Gullery 35 years later! We have a 7 year old Bearded Tit still going strong. A Mute Swan lived to 21, a Shelduck to 11, a 10-year-old Knot and a 9-year-old Blue Tit. A more careful search of our retrap records would probably reveal many more old timers!

Ringing also reveals how birds die. Of 24 Robins reported as dead, no fewer than 9 were killed by cats, 2 were road casualties, avian predators killed 3 and 2 flew into windows. These results are probably biased, as a bird killed by a cat is more likely to be found by someone than one killed by a Sparrowhawk, but they do show the toll that our moggies take. Some interesting causes of death are also revealed, how did a Starling drown itself in a toilet in Todmorden, or why did a Reed Warbler fly into a patio window in Liversedge, Yorkshire?