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This page is run by volunteer contributors as a source of news for everyone interested in the birds of Lundy, in the Bristol Channel, UK.
If you have news to report, please consider signing up as a contributor or send in your sightings here.
See also the companion website The Birds of Lundy for comprehensive updates to the 2007 book of the same name.
Bird recording and ringing on Lundy are coordinated by the Lundy Field Society and general information about visiting the island can be found here.

Friday, 24 July 2015

Amazing Chaffinch ringing control

This record of a 2009 Lundy-ringed Chaffinch recaptured in Norway in 2012 was of interest in its own right:
  • First-year female Chaffinch ringed on Lundy on 14 October 2009 (ring no. L026586); controlled (= recaptured) at Bømyra, Randaberg, Rogaland, Norway (a few km NW of Stavanger) on 23 April 2012 (922 days from date of ringing; 1,086 km from place of ringing; bearing 37°).
But remarkable news came in recently that Chaffinch L026586 was controlled again in April this year... at exactly the same place in Norway! Now in her seventh calendar year – a venerable age for a Chaffinch, given that typical lifespan is 3 years – she has presumably undertaken 12 long-distance migrations (six in autumn and six in spring) between her Scandinavian breeding site and winter quarters in the British Isles or further SW. What a bird!

Chances are that Bømyra is the bird's breeding area (or very close to it), since the odds of a Chaffinch on migration being captured twice at the same place must be vanishingly small (if anybody knows of evidence to the contrary, please get in touch!). Certainly online satellite images suggest that there is plenty of potential Chaffinch breeding habitat in the area.

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