The boys are back in town

Took a morning off today to spend some time looking at Twite in the Nant Ffrrancon area. Luckily I was joined by Steve Culley and Dafydd Roberts from SNP.

We found a small flock coming down to a site which is being baited as part of the RSPB/National Trust/Snowdonia National Park/ BTO/Flintshire Council and Deeside Naturalists, monitoring and recovery programme.

Several years ago we had assumed that many of the wintering birds on the North wales coast were from the indigenoud breeding population. Then in 2010 a small flock was caught and ringed at Pensarn and in their midst was a ringed bird from NW Scotland.  Colour ringing of a small proportion of ther Snowdonia population the following spring then led on to disciovering they all go east and winter mainly on the Dee estuary at Connah’s Quay Nature reserve. Howeevr this did not account for all the birds at CQNR and some forther colour ringing and ring reading showed that a high proportion of these birds were from NW Scotland.

This morning we controlled two birds originally ringed at CQNR, read the ring combinations on another from there, and surprise to us all a bird ringed this spring in the small Derbyshire population, which seems to be re-establishing itself due to work done by various partnerships in England.

So if you are out and about in Nant Ffrancon please keep an eye open for our Twite, and if you can read any colour combinations, or just sightingsof any Twite, please report to kelvin.jones@bto.org, or by phone on 01248 383285