A while ago I blogged about our tree sparrow ringing project that we have been running up on Phase 1 since December 2012. In addition to this we have now started a new project, focusing on our sand martin colony on Phase 2. The colony has been a real success story here at Langford. Within a couple of weeks of the bank being built in March 2012, the birds had moved in with around 140 holes excavated throughout the breeding season. After flood damage over last winter, the bank was repaired in April 2013 and within days of repair work completion, the birds were back excavating burrows. There are around 220 holes in the bank this year and with the project being such a success, it was suggested that we do some ringing.
Our sand martin ringing is part of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) scheme. Each RAS scheme aims to ring and in subsequent years retrap, at least 50 adults of a particular species in order to calculate their survival between years. Sand martins are a popular choice of species for RAS schemes, as they are easy to catch in numbers and have a high-breeding site fidelity. Indeed there are several RAS schemes for sand martins running throughout the UK.
As this is the first year of our RAS scheme, we have no survival data yet, but we have had some interesting catches within the 203 birds that we have encountered so far. The first was a previously ringed bird most likely to have been ringed as a juvenile in 2012 at Rutland Water. Another ringed bird is thought to have been ringed near Sleaford, Lincolnshire and is around 4-5 years old – quite a long lived individual. And the third is perhaps the most interesting – on Friday last week, we had a bird bearing an Italian ring. It is always exciting to come across a foreign ringed bird, but up until 2010, only 15 Italian ringed sand martins had been recovered in the UK, making our bird quite unusual. We will know the exact details of these three birds in a few weeks time, when the data has been processed by the BTO and the Italian ringing scheme.
Many thanks to our ringer in charge, John Clark for organising the RAS and to all the ringers who have helped with the scheme.
For more details about bird ringing or the RAS scheme, please contact either myself or Michael Copleston on our office number, 01636 893611, or visit the BTO website at www.bto.org.