One Woodcock....four seasons later

Woodcock EX94433...was ringed as a juvenile at 2300 on 27th December 2011 at our Crymych site.

At 2200.. EX94433 was the fourth Woodcock captured last night.
The first adult of the evening, and had been ringed 380m away in the adjacent field. This bird has not been caught since, and is one of c80 Woodcock ringed on this site in the past five winters.

You will have seen from previous posts that we use a geolocater in the field to enable us to record the exact ringing location. The red line indicates the distance between ringing (red) and recapture (yellow). The green line is our path last night.
We also carry IPMR (Integrated Population Monitoring Reporter) in the field, all 31,449 ringing records as an Excel spreadsheet...

Having access to ringing data in the field cemented our enthusiasm. We knew that EX....birds were "history", and we soon discovered that EX94433 was our best recapture, almost four years on !!

It was one of 9 Woodcock caught that night which we wrote about in "Blown away by 9/9!"

Four new Woodcock last night, one adult, three juvenile and the one recapture. One Meadow Pipit was also ringed. Crymych is one of our four main winter Woodcock survey sites on sheep pasture in North Pembrokeshire. It is our second highest at 170m and so far this winter is where we have seen the most Woodcock.