A record bird
Lock's Common, Porthcawl.
The front bird is ringed. I contacted Adrienne Stratford to find the details and received the following:
My goodness – I’m totally blown away.
This bird (Rt: Lime/BTO Lt: Green/Blue “9U”) is a young female, ringed as chick this year, by Tony Cross, on the North coast of Anglesey!!! This is a distance of 219 km, which is almost double the previous maximum we have recorded – it’s only 100 km from Anglesey to the Isle of Man, where a handful of “our” birds have been recorded. She couldn’t have travelled further within Wales if she’d tried. But no prior history I’m afraid – she was ringed on 9th June, seen fledged with her 3 siblings on 2nd July – I wish we knew all the locations she’d passed through en route… and why!
The colour-ringing is all part of a long-running study of choughs in mid + North Wales by Tony Cross + myself, with life histories recorded for many of these birds, shedding light on their movements, social + nesting behaviour, longevity etc. Our young birds often travel quite widely in their first few years, but of 5,000 chicks ringed over 25 years in mid + North Wales, and with 30,000 individual sightings, only nine of these birds have been recorded further than 100 km from their nest of origin. So yours is an amazing record – we’ve never had a Glamorgan record before, even from Ceredigion – the southernmost county of our project area, and only a few records in Pembs and one in Carmarthenshire.
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So this was a record bird then!! Great to have got an image of it. Absolutely amazing that out of 30,000 sightings, this is the one that has got furtherest. Made my year!!!