Colour-ringing comes good

After a summer of colour-ringing effort, it always pleasing to have the first reports from birders of a couple of our birds. First up was House Sparrow A31, photographed at Old Lizard Head on 30th July. This was too far from where it was ringed, but nice to see such a great photo of one of our birds 'in the field'.

Thanks toTim Bunce for the excellent photo of A31

Then just today we received a report of W:029, a Herring Gull ringed as a chick on the roof of a Falmouth Industrial Estate in July. This bird had foregone the promise of pasties, chips and bins in Falmouth and relocated to Stithians Reservoir, just 10km away. Again not a very long movement, but certainly an interesting one.

Other ringing recently has been a bit hampered by the weather... But between us we've managed a few Storm Petrel sessions, catching good numbers of birds (over 200 for the year now) and also birds from France and the Channel Islands. The latter is notable, with just 11 previous reports of Channel Islands-ringed Storm Petrels in the UK.

A rather poor composite of the 'Jersey' Storm Petrel ring

CES this morning at Gunwalloe was the first productive one for a while, with just under 50 birds caught, including good numbers of passage Sedge Warblers on the first net round. It was also nice to finally catch up with a Cetti's Warbler, the first of the year on CES! Numbers worryingly seem to have been on the decline at the site, with four birds caught by 20th August 2012 and 15 by 20th August 2011.

Despite a missing central tail feather, this juvenile still showed just nine more
- pretty unique in the British bird world.