He confirmed that the four birds we caught last month were all ringed in 2014 on the Molene archipelago, where he's been running the ringing programme since 1997. In that time he's ringed over 18,000 birds and on just three nights last month they caught 688 birds - all in two nets without a tape-lure! But these are breeding birds and he was able to confirm that most of the birds we are catching in Cornwall are wandering non-breeders, which once settled at a colony will rarely wander far from it. One good example is 2683074, ringed at Lizard on 8th July 2013 and recaught on Banneg in the Molene archipelago just three nights later. Interestingly, it was then caught incubating an egg on the nearby colony of Enez Kreiz in 2014 and was also recaught there by Bernard just yesterday, this time incubating a small chick!
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| The Molene archipelago lies off the French coast and is home to France's largest breeding population of Storm Petrels. The three main islands are shown below, with the density of breeding birds shown by the coloured grids (or kernel maps for the two right-hand maps). |
Many thanks to Bernard for the update on their ringing programme on the islands and it certainly inspires us to ring more birds here!
