Spent 3 hours at the feeding area today and located 11 Colour Ringed Red Knot(my highest total in a sitting/roost/day), but could only get details of 8 birds.5 presumed Dutch/German and 3 presumed Norwegian including 2 new Readings and a re-reading of LYC from 28/11/09. Today the feeding area was quite different to anything I have witnessed before. As I arrived there was around 300 Knot roosting on the edge of the saltings but then as the tide retreated around 900+ birds came in making around 1200+ birds feeding, however, where as the birds usually feed along the tide-line as the tide retreats, today they really concentrated on one certain patch of wet mud and ignored the the tide line, also today over 40 Oystercatcher's came in to the same patch as the Knot were feeding in, which I have not witnessed before,then shortly after a small group of Ringed Plover also came in to feed, all ignoring all other areas of mud and the tide-line and just purely concentrating on this one patch of wet mud. I presume that there must have been some large rise in the prey items that were just purely concentrated in this area of mud such as Rag Worm and Molluscs and small crabs as I did see several Oystercatchers feeding on these.
As per the photo above you can clearly see the colour ring combination but it is only when you zoom up and look again does the Red Colour ring on the Left leg become more visible as in the photo below.
Today's Colour/Flag ring details are as follows:Knot 1) Metal ring over Tarsus,Red Flag over Blue Colour Ring over white Colour Ring Right leg and White Colour ring over red Colour ring Left Leg.
Knot 2) Red Flag over Yellow Colour ring over Red Colour Ring left Leg and Blue Colour Ring over Red Colour ring Right Leg
Knot 3) Yellow Colour ring over white Colour ring Left Leg and Green Flag over Yellow colour ring over Green Colour ring Right Leg
Knot 4) Red Flag over white Colour ring over Blue Colour Ring Left Leg and Metal Ring over Yellow Colour Ring Right Leg
Knot 5) Yellow Colour Ring over Yellow Flag Left Leg and Metal Ring over White Colour Ring left leg.
Knot 6) Yellow Flag ring with letters CJU Presumed Norway bird.
Knot 7) Yellow Flag ring with letters LYC (still present from last week)
Knot 8) Yellow Flag ring with Letters MLT This reading I am not 100% of the middle letter as it was smudged, looked like the ink had run, or it was covered in some kind of oil. I stayed on the bird as long as I could and watched it walk through water but this didn't make the middle letter any clearer, as far as I am aware Id say the the first and third letters are correct and I am fairly confident that the middle letter was L but not 100% due to the smudging/discolouration.
All details have been emailed to the relevant ringers and I have already heard back from Jim in Norway. Part of the email with details below:
Thanks very much.
Reportings from other parts of England seem to be drying up. This is a great pity as we need the sightings of the individuals so we know which birds are surviving. The trouble is once people know that the yellow flagged birds are coming from Norway in any case they think there is no point in recording new sightings – and yet every sighting is important to us.
7469840,Red Knot,CJU,18.05.2007,17:57,0,748,1077,15:55,0,663,955,122,Igaldas,70 13,44N 24 56 31E, Ad,0,171,35,136
7502894,Red Knot,MLT,27.05.2009,17:50,0,743,1070,Mårnes,70 24 03N 25 32 59E,Ad,170,32,176
The M series were all used on the 27 May 2009 – so at least we can be certain of the marking date and place, if not the individual bird
I have no other sightings of these birds.
