Welsh Cormorant on the boating lake

The good thing about Cormorants is that they're big, so have big rings that with patience can be read on confiding birds. In the last couple of years we've had reports of two birds from Little Saltee Island, Co Wexford: a chick from 2106 seen at Helston Boating Lake in July 2017 and a chick from 2010 seen at Swanpool in December 2018.

The latest though was a bird ringed as a chick on Puffin Island, Anglesey last year that was photographed on Friday at Helston Boating Lake.

Thanks to Terry Thirlaway for the photo and for passing the info on.

Welsh Kittiwake moves house

We're quite used to seeing colour-ringed French Kittiwakes in our Cornish colonies (24 different birds in the last five years), but birds from elsewhere are few and far between. In Cornwall, birds have been found dead originating from Norway (Porthtowan in 2013), Northumberland (two birds), Northern Ireland (two birds) and Wales (two birds). So it was a pleasant surprise to find a red-ringed bird in the colony at Portreath yesterday, which I knew was from Puffin Island, Anglesey. At first it wasn't clear if it was AXE or AXF, but after some patient sitting and watching (such a hardship on a sunny clifftop) it eventually shuffled and revealed it was in fact AXF.

Thanks to Steve Dodd for the quick reply on the bird and it was another surprise. I presumed this would be a bird ringed as a chick a few years ago, moving colony, but EY22283 was ringed as an adult female on the island in July 2016. It's not clear if this was a wandering bird when ringed rather than a breeding bird, but it does look quite settled at Portreath now!