Dippers and French Kittiwakes

The end of last week saw a couple of group members back out ringing the local Dippers in Idless Woods. This has turned out to be their best year yet, with very healthy broods of four and five to ring. We were also able to catch a couple of the adults (male from one pair and female from the other), so it'll be interesting in future years to see if these are regular birds.

We also took the chance of a fine day to head down to the Kittiwake colony at Trewavas Head, which involves a bit of a scramble, a climb and some dodging of waves! But it's always worth the effort, with good numbers of birds on the ledges.

We were also able to resight 18 colour-ringed birds, including three French-ringed birds. Two of these had previously been seen at the now almost-abandoned colony at Rinsey Cliff, so it was interesting to see them moving down along the coast. One of our own colour-ringed adults from Rinsey (ringed last year) had also switched site, so it'll be interesting to see how many of these stay to breed.

OWM-RNN was ringed as a chick at Point du Raz, Finisterre in 2007,
being seen at Rinsey Cliff in 2012 and twice in 2013 and now at Trewavas Head

BM-BRB will be another French bird, but seems to be missing a colour ring.
Luckily, with a bit of patience we were able to read the metal ring number so all is not lost!