Southern Colour Ringing Group

22 May 2020

Thanks to some very unsavory charachters who spent a night out on Heron Island at Glen Faba we wanted to go out and check to see if any wildlife crime had been committed so myself and one ranger from the Park took the large boat (enabling us to stay 2m apart!) out to the island to see if there was any damage. Fortunately there was no damage and most of the Herons had fledged. The other really good news is that there were at least 10 pairs of Little Egret at varying stages and I was able in the permitted time to ring three broods. Unfortunately 4 out of the 11 birds were too small to take colour rings and were ringed abouve the tarsus with a metal ring only.

It is unlikely that we will be able to make a visit to the colony at Walthamstow this year so this may be the only birds we ring this year.

16 May 2019

Final visit to Netherhall to complete the Little Egret ringing. Two bonus Grey Heron were ringed as well. All birds processed and returned safely. One bird was found on the floor and appeard not to be in full health probably falling out of the tree before ready to fledge. We put it back up near a nest in the hope an adult may come back to feed it.

15 May 2019

We made our second visit to Walthamstow Wetlands today to cover the best period for Egrets. There was a real mix of ages with some large fledged birds and still some nests with eggs. It was also noted that there was a higher than normal mortality with a lot of dead young many quite small. We assume the cold and wet weather two weekends ago probably was a big problem for these small chicks and there were at least 4 full broods with dead young around 3 to 4 days old and three dead young that were quite large and clearly had been blown out of nests or tree tops. Many of the nests that had fledged two to four young also had one dead young (probably the smallest bird in the brood) so in terms of the success for this year despite rigning 29 young Egrets today it is in reality from 30 nests quite a poor total..Huge thanks again to the London Wildlife Trust and in particular Charlie and Nadia who came out and helped ringing Egrets and climbing trees as well as sorting the boat out. Great team effort by all attending.