A team of ringers went to Harty on Thursday evening and managed to catch 79 birds. A different sort of night, very dark with moisture in the air on a very light south-easterly, but no dew and a temperature always just in the plus. The salt-water pools were frozen over with about half an inch of ice, reminding us how cold it had been over the previous couple of nights. Because of the icy conditions we only erected six nets as we were unsure how the catch might be affected by such conditions. All worked well in the end.
The catch was as follows:
- Teal 2 (both adults; one male and one female)
- Grey Plover 2 (both adults)
- Knot 2 (one adult and one juv)
- Dunlin 56 plus 2 retraps and a Spanish control (only 8 juveniles)
- Bar-tailed Godwit 5 plus 2 retraps (all adults)
- Curlew 2 plus a retrap (all adults)
- Redshank 4 (3 adults & a juv)
The Dunlin with a Madrid ring is the first that we have caught from Spain, although there have been several recoveries of our Dunlin in Spain.
Of the Dunlin retraps one was from November 2009 whilst the other was from January this year.
The Bar-tailed Godwit retraps were from October 2008 and December 2011, but the Curlew was from a memorable night in 1994 when, as well as this Curlew, we caught 25 Bar-tails at Shellness.