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Sussex Ornithological Society sponsors tags
Date: 09/06/2006
Sussex Ornithological Society sponsors tags
The Sussex Ornithological Society (www.sos.org.uk) recently made a generous donation of £500 to the project to fund some of the tags. The money was part of a sum raised by members who participated in the sponsored New Year Bird Race.
The birds chosen to receive sponsored tags all have on their left legs a green ring above the knee and a red one below. The tag is also on this leg. On the right leg the rings are above the knee, and the five birds are red + green, yellow + orange, orange + black (called Niger), red + black and yellow + lime. So in notation they are: G//R+RG, G//R+YO, G//R+ON, G//R+RN, G//R+YL.
There is a picture of RN showing the tag, taken by Brian Fellows a local observer, on his website.
http://www.brianfellows.clara.net/0-477-greenshank-cr-gr-rn-emsworth-29.08.06.jpg
So far all the birds have been tracked to their roost site on the Deeps, and all except YO to intertidal feeding areas to the west. YO was located on the east side on 4 September. Some of the results for the western side have been at night, which shows one of the values of tagging as opposed to observing. Tagging also picks up birds feeding well beyond telescope range, or in hidden channels. We also have an automatic datalogger on Thorney Island which records the birds at regular intervals.
Obviously we do not know how long the birds will stay in the area. The tags should last long enough that if they remain over the winter we should keep tracking them. But the volunteer observers are making a special effort to carry out tracking missions during the next few weeks in case the birds move on. We will keep you posted!
