Friday 8 March 2013

Reed Bunting mystery

Hi

A horrible claggy, foggy and wet day meant that nothing particularly different was found today.

News came through today of a Reed Bunting ringing recovery.  A male bird was trapped and ringed at Hanging Houghton on 20th March 2010 and re-trapped again at Hanging Houghton on 22nd March 2011.  On 2nd February this year, this bird was caught again but this time at Stortons GP on the south side of Northampton.

During the last two winters a feeding station has been maintained at Stortons GP and the feeders etc attract good numbers of Reed Buntings. The difficulty is to ascertain what these records actually demonstrate!  Is this bird simply an individual which spends much of the year wandering around the county and takes advantage of easy food sources?  Or is it a bird which winters to the south and drops in to the county on its way north, now finding the feed station at Stortons GP to its liking?  It will be interesting if this bird is caught again - all the records are currently biased towards late winter/early spring.  Where does this bird breed I wonder?

Regards

Neil M

1 comment:

Douglas Mcfarlane said...

Hi Neil,
I know my mate Ben had a Reed Bunting in spring near Summer Leys, it had been originally ringed at Dungeness, Kent that winter.