Saturday 14 July 2012

Stormie control at Mwnt

Mwnt is now established as our migration ringing site for  Northern and "Greenland" Wheatears, but last night the target was Storm Petrels to start providing more information about the birds in this part of the Irish Sea. It would be interesting to establish if these are passage birds, or are they on feeding trips from their breeding colonies on the Pembrokeshire Islands.
In a brief respite before the next rain band we only had the net open for half an hour and caught 2 new Storm Petrels and a control. The ring on this control looked new and was only a few hundred numbers different from the rings we are using currently so not an old ringed bird. Hopefully we will get the ringing details on this bird soon.
As well as continuing to catch Storm Petrels  at the established site at Strumble Head which has historic data we plan to develop Mwnt as a long term project, and possibly other suitable local sites.
Thanks to the National Trust for giving us permission to ring and survey the bird species at Mwnt.

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