With the help of staff and volunteers from the RSPB Exe Estuary Reserve, some children at The Topsham Primary School have become members of a Godwit Club. The children have been meeting after school to study the amazing migration patterns of the Icelandic Black-tailed Godwits. These beautiful wading birds breed in Iceland during the summer months and then travel to the warmer climates of northern Europe for the winter. Due to the abundance of food, the Exe estuary is a very important wintering site for the godwits, with hundreds of birds visiting each year.
The Topsham Godwit Club is part of the International Schools Godwit Project which has grown out of Operation Godwit. Operation Godwit is an international project led by a team of scientists who are trying to establish if there is a link between what the birds do on the wintering sites and breeding grounds in order to understand the factors that regulate the population size of a migratory bird species. To find out more about their life cycles, including their migration patterns, they needed to be able to identify the Black-tailed Godwits individually. One of the best and safest ways of doing this is by placing a unique combination of coloured plastic rings on their legs. This is effective because Godwits are large birds with long legs so the colour combinations can be read with binoculars or a telescope without having to catch the bird again.
The project relies on bird watchers and interested people reporting sightings of the colour ringed godwits. This is where children from the schools, including The Topsham Godwit Club come in! On Tuesday 30th November 2010 the Godwit Club walked down to the RSPB hide at Bowling Green Marsh, to be greeted by about 200 Black-tailed Godwits on their arrival. The children keenly scanned the birds’ legs using binoculars and telescopes desperate to find a colour ringed bird to report. Sadly, none were spotted but maybe there was one in amongst them which we missed! As it was high tide there were also many other birds using the marsh so there was plenty of birdlife to see, as well as an appearance by a fox and two deer!
The other exciting visitors to the hide that day were the film crew for the BBC’s Countryfile programme. They were filming on the Exe estuary and heard about the great work the Godwit Club have been doing so popped along to see what they were up to. Excitedly, the children explained to Julia Bradbury and David Lindo all about the project and why it’s important more people know about reporting sightings of colour ringed Black-tailed Godwits. They also showed them the posters they made and were putting up in the hide to raise awareness and asking sightings to be reported to the school. This featured on Countryfile, on Sunday 12th December 2010. Click here to watch the programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wstlg
Back at school after the visit the children logged straight on to the internet to email the schools in Iceland and Ireland to update them on their trip to the hide. The children have enjoyed finding out about what the other schools have been up to and sharing their interest in this amazing wading bird which visits all of their countries during the year.
Earlier in the term, the Godwit Club also spent time plotting the movements on maps of individually colour ringed Black-tailed Godwits which had visited the Exe estuary previously. They were amazed to see that there were many sightings for individual birds over a 10 year period, and they were particularly impressed that the same birds had returned to Bowling Green Marshes many times. They are now hoping one of these birds will return over the next couple of months so they can add new data to their maps and email the scientists with some more current sightings for their database.
If you see any colour ringed Black-tailed Godwits please report them to the RSPB Exe Estuary reserve or directly to the Godwit Club: godwit@topsham.devon.sch.uk