Wonderful Welsh Waxwing

Got a response from both Raymond Duncan and Tony Cross today about the colour-ringed Waxwing I found yesterday. Turns out it wasn't a Scottish-ringed bird as I'd expected, but a Welsh-ringed bird! Thank you both for your swift responses.

The bird was initially trapped and ringed on 25th November 2012 in Newtown, Powys in mid-Wales before being re-trapped and fitted with colour-rings on 9th December 2012 at the same location. The sighting that Ollie and I made of the bird yesterday in Strensall, York was the first re-sighting of this bird.

Tony and his team have colour-ringed exactly 100 Waxwing this winter so it will be interesting seeing more results as the birds start moving about more (as they seem to be doing currently!). See Tony's (and teams) excellent Ruffled Feathers ringing blog here - with some specifics on Waxwing here.

I've put a rough map together (below) - it makes the movement approximately 142 miles in approximately 55 days on a bearing pretty much Northeast - heading home already?


View Waxwing Movement in a larger map

As I've said before this information really shows how important/useful colour-ringing birds is. How many of us would have just assumed that these birds arriving in York would be heading southwest after the recent poor weather further north/on the continent...

Local birding today was restricted to the LDV though I did get a nice year-tick in the form of a 1st winter Mediterranean Gull, found by Jono. Excellent photo and some details on Jono's blog. Thanks for the call!

Other bits and pieces included two Egyptian Geese and 148 Greylags at North Duffield Ings (lots of wildfowl here). 225 Pochard on Bubwith Ings (great count!). Also had 2 Barn Owl and a Peregrine. Unfortunately the red-head Smew that flew over Bank Island with two Goosander and probably dropped onto Wheldrake Ings couldn't be re-located - mainly probably because it is currently impossible to get onto the Ings!