A recovery "worth a blog of its own!"

Back in 2019 we had a sustained period of relatively dry and calm weather around this time of year. With good numbers of Redwing and Fieldfare in the country that led to our best ever year for Redwing with a year record of 147 birds ringed. To put that into context we have only caught more than 50 in a year on 3 other occasions and the catch of 147 in a year, at that point, made up more than a quarter of our all time Redwing total. That year we also broke our day total record with a catch of 14 on three occasions! Details of the Redwing roosts in 2019 can be found here, here, here and here.

Late in the 2019 season Jerry and Peter were discussing what a good year it had been when Jerry remarked that "we should have some controls out of this lot". This comment has been revisited on multiple occasions as, to both Peter and Jerry's amazement, we didn't get any subsequent controls.

Until now - last week a Redwing control arrived from the BTO. It was finally of a bird caught in the 2019 bumper season and was only our third ever Redwing recovery. The previous two were a bird ringed in 1978 (we only ringed 4 that year) that was shot in France in 1979 and a bird from 2017 which moved 200kms to Rutland in the 10 days after being caught. The map below shows these two controls with the "new" third bird also present.

Redwing RL67323 was ringed as a first year bird (by Rachel and Jerry in the Scrub) on 19 October 2019, and flew into a window at Kovero, Joensuu, Kuopio, FINLAND on 30 August 2022 - 1046 days, 2336 km, 60 degrees. This is our first bird of any species recorded in Finland. It is also only the 3rd Welsh ringed Redwing to be recovered in Finland, with the previous two from the same site - Carreg Fawr in Gwynedd, with one in each of the 1970s and 1980s. Four Redwing have been caught coming the other way from Finland to Wales.

Jerry's comment this time was "that's worth a blog of its own" and he's right! A very good record that has come through just in time to motivate us for this years Redwing season!