Some of the most popular events at Minsmere each year are the Waveney Bird Club's regular ringing demonstrations. These offer visitors, young and old, a great insight into one of the most important aspects of the scientific study of birds.
By catching birds in carefully designed nets, specially trained birdwatchers can measure and weigh the birds, giving valuable data on the health of the populations. The birds are then fitted with numbered rings so that if they are subsequently re-caught or found dead we can learn more about their movements and longevity.
While the ringing demonstrations are a great way to introduce visitors to bird ringing, most birds are ringed as part of long term scientific studies. One such regular study is known as the Constant Effort Sites scheme, or CES. This involves regular ringing at the same site throughout the year, and as well as the demonstrations, the Waveney Bird Club have run a CES programme at Minsmere for several years.
A lot of the birds that ringed will never be relocated, but sometimes we learn about interesting life histories of individual birds. Take, for example, chiffchaff number ECE524. This tiny warbler was first fitted with a ring during a CES ringing catch at Alton Water in SE Suffolk on 21 August 2014. It was aged as a bird born earlier that year. It may have been born near Alton Water, or could have been ringed during its migration south.
Chiffchaff by John Bridges (rspb-images.com)
ECE524 was retrapped by the Waveney Bird Club at Minsmere on 7 April 2015, 46 km from where its ring was fitted. We don't know whether it had spent the winter in SE England or farther south, most likely in Spain or Portugal, but as many young birds fail to survive their first winter it was great to see this one return to nest.
Nothing more was heard about ECE524 until 16 March 2017. That day the Waveney Bird Club ringed a few birds whilst setting up their nets for a demonstration for the Minsmere Wildlife Explorers group the following Saturday, and remarkably, they re-trapped ECE524, close to the Discovery Centre where it appeared to be singing and establishing a territory. This means that ECE524 has now returned for it's third breeding season: quite some feat for such a tiny bird - it weighed just 7.6 grams when caught last month. As it has been trapped here twice, it is tempting to think that ECE524 may have fledged from Minsmere sometime during 2014.
Another ringing study by the Waveney Bird Club at Minsmere is the sand martin Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) scheme. That, too, has yielded some interesting stories. Three French ringed sand martins were caught at Minsmere last year, as were birds ringed in Kent and elsewhere in Suffolk. Perhaps the most exciting though was a youngster ringed as a chick on 1 June last summer in the sand martin colony at WWT London Wetland Centre. Incredibly, this young bird was re-caught here at Minsmere less than a month later, on 27 June, after travelling 95 miles north. Quite why it flew so far north on fledging is unknown, but it's a great example of how birds can readily move between different colonies.
Juvenile sand martin by Jon Evans
The Waveney Bird Club will be running another ringing demonstration at Minsmere tomorrow, Thursday 13 April, and then again every Thursday during the school summer holidays. Will they catch ECE524 again, or will there be any more exciting stories to tell. Highlights of recent ringing demonstrations have included sparrowhawks, great spotted and green woodpeckers, bearded tits and treecreepers, as well as numerous blue and great tits, chaffinches and chiffchaffs.
Green woodpecker being ringed (photo by Ian Barthorpe)
Whilst visiting Minsmere for tomorrow's demonstration, don't forget to visit the hides and nature trails in search of the wide variety of wildlife that's been seen today. Highlights have included otters, adders, bitterns, marsh harriers (mating), Mediterranean gulls, a Caspian gull, greenshank, spotted redshank, knot, avocets, stone-curlew, wheatear, blackcaps and sedge warblers.