Want to see a Whimbrel? Den mark it with a colour ring

It's always a pleasure to hear the Whimbrel's distinctive call when flying over and it's very special when one is caught (see online reports). Relatively few are ringed in Britain & Ireland and with the addition of colour rings the reporting rate has increased substantially. The pie chart below shows how few dead birds are found in relation to the number of reports received of colour rings.


The Mid Wales Ringing Group started a colour ringing project in 2010 to try to answer some basic questions regarding Welsh birds in particular, like movements, staging areas, survival and site faithfulness. Some of these birds have been reported (dead and alive) in quite a few areas including Scotland, France and North Africa.

A Whimbrel wearing a Mid Wales colour-ring combination was recently reported in Denmark. The BTO online reports show this to be only the fourth BTO-ringed Whimbrel to be reported in Denmark. Yellow D74 was ringed on 30 April 2016 at 2:50 am and 72 days later it had travelled a minimum distance of 1,059 km to Storevorde, Denmark.

If you were hoping to see a BTO-ringed Whimbrel outside Britain & Ireland, there is a much greater chance of seeing one in Guinea (195 reports), Guinea Bissau (224 reports) and Iceland (366 reports).



Colour-ringed Whimbrel photo taken by Jens Veilgaard Vendelbo

Whimbrel photo taken by Jens Veilgaard Vendelbo

So if you ever see a Whimbrel, or any other wild bird for that matter, report it at www.ring.ac. The information will be very useful and could hint towards a new movement or behaviour.

For more information on this and other Mid Wales goings on, click here.

New Whimbrel longevity record

Allan Perkins writes:
This summer I spent 3 months on Fetlar, Shetland, studying the breeding success of Whimbrel to help investigate their 'recent' declines. Previous studies by Murray Grant on Fetlar and Unst in the 1980s had involved catching and colour-ringing adult Whimbrel, to monitor brood survival and returning rates of adults from their tropical wintering grounds in subsequent breeding seasons. During 1986-88, 97 Whimbrel were colour-ringed and of those the returning rates were high - c. 89% seen the year after ringing - and most birds returned to breed at the same site used in the previous year. Sightings of some of these birds on Fetlar continued up until the mid-1990s, but none had been recorded since then.


It was on 9 May, this year when I first saw one of these colour ringed birds feeding on the short cliff-top turf of Strandburgh Ness, at the extreme northeast tip of Fetlar. Frustratingly it wasn't until 31 May that I managed to get good views of the colour ring combination and amazingly it was a bird ringed in the 1980s.


The bird was identified as EK92102, ringed as an adult breeding on Fetlar on 1 June 1986, and sexed as a male from subsequent observations. Given that Whimbrels do not normally start to breed until they are two or three years old, this bird must be at least 26 years old, making it the oldest known Whimbrel in the world! This surpasses the previous longevity record of 16 years, held by a Whimbrel ringed as a chick on Mainland Shetland in June 1979 and shot in northern France in August 1995.

EK92102 was last recorded in 1995, but it seems likely that it had been returning, undetected, to Fetlar each year since then. Maybe it will return again next year for potentially its 26th breeding season.

Thanks to Allan for letting us know about this bird and also to Murray Grant for the lower photo.

Longevity gets even longer

Dave Okill writes:

"During the summer three ringed birds have turned up in Shetland that have beaten the age records in the BTO files for the longest living individual of that species.

The first was a Storm Petrel. Originally ringed on Fair Isle on 29 July 1974, it was then recaught on Mousa 26 May 2010, making it just short of 36 years between ringing and being found again. As Storm Petrels don't usually come back to the North Atlantic until they are 2 years old, then it's likely this bird was at least 38 years old. The previous oldest recorded Stormie was 31 years and 11 months old so this record has increased the longevity considerably.

The next was a Whimbrel on Fetlar that was posted previously here.


The third was a Red-throated Diver. A bird that I'd ringed as a chick on Unst in 1986 was found breeding a couple of kilometres from the site where it fledged, now 24 years old. Male Red-throated Divers starting to breed usually return to a site close to where they were hatched but females disperse more widely.

As all of these birds are still going, it could be that if we hear of them again they will extend the records further."

Thanks to Dave Okill for letting us know and to Malcolm Smith for the photo.