Tuesday 7 August 2007

More on the arctic tern


Mark Grantham, of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the organisation that runs the UK bird ringing scheme, emailed to say:

"This is only the ninth record of a ringed Arctic Tern from Sweden to the UK, and this is since 1909! There was one sighting in 2001, but before this the last one was in 1992.

Please mention that if anyone does find a ring to report it to http://www.ring.ac/ and they'll then receive details back about 'their' bird.
The BTO's leaflet about ringing can be seen at:
http://www.bto.org/ringing/resources/displays/bird-ringing.pdf

The oldest arctic tern we have is a bird of 29 years and 10 months, though there are Danish and German birds both of 30 years 10 months old and yes, that American bird has reached 34 years of age!"
Nick B

Ps. The map doesn't yet show our Derby bird because we don't know exactly where it was ringed yet......apparently, some dots indicate more than one bird and there are indeed eight records showing!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fascinating news.
A few years ago I was lucky enought to visit the Shetland Islands and saw some of these brave little birds (sadly, they are having problems with the shortage of sand eels).

Kate, Derby