Deserving their own post, these species, and primarily Barn Owl, make up the largest proportion of our recoveries. We ring a lot of chicks and they often retrapped by ringers or they meet their end where they are readily found beside the road.
Most Barn Owl recoveries involve birds ringed as chicks which are found dead within a year or so, usually less than 20km from where they hatched. A few that do not fall into this category are detailed here.
Longer local recoveries received included birds found after 2yrs (1), 3 yrs (5), 4 yrs (2), 5yrs (2), 6yrs (3) and 9yrs.
Those moving further afield included two chicks from Lincs, one found a year later 29km from where it was ringed and another 36km away after 6 years. One of our chicks moved 22km into Lincs in 174 days and another chick moved 36km within Notts after 3 yrs. A chick from Leics had travelled 40km into Notts after 2 years and 1 chick ringed in Elston in July 2019 was found dead in Bedfordshire in May 2020, some 115km away.
A Tawny Owl chick ringed at Holme Pierrepont in May 2019 was found wounded by a railway in Clipstone 21km to the north in June 2020.
Of the three Kestrel recoveries received, one was local and another old - a chick ringed near Kinoulton in 2011 became a road casualty near Hoby, Leics over 9 years later. The third was also of interest – a chick ringed in June this year was found beside a Heathrow runway a couple of months after fledging having travelled 181km. The finder, Mark Pauline, takes up the story:
“I had come on shift at Heathrow airport at around 06:45 and was asked to carry out an inspection on our southern runway at about 06:50 as soon as I came on shift. We have a piece of equipment called a FOD radar which monitors are runway surface and detects objects that should not be present on the runway surface itself. This particular morning the radar had activated and it shows us an image of what it has detected and it happened to be your Kestrel to which I went onto the runway to retrieve. The bird was whole with a very minor injury and it looked to me as though the kestrel had been jet blasted from an aircraft which does happen if hovering near to the runway edge over the grass areas. For information we do have quite a population of kestrels on the airfield at the moment.”
Jim’s response was as follows:
“I've read up on juvenile kestrel dispersal, and late fledging females are more likely to disperse further afield, and this bird fits that scenario on both counts. This is often driven by poor food supply, and we have very few small mammals breeding this year after the extreme winter floods - in Nottinghamshire - and hence poor breeding from the owls and kestrels. Your photos indicate female. Even so, this movement of 181 km is way beyond the median of 50 km for chick dispersal in their first winter. One fears this will become less unusual with climatic events increasing.”
That catches us up with recoveries from over the past nine months or so.
Pete
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