Some of you may remember that Lisa and I found a color-ringed / satellite tagged Curlew in Castlemartin Corse on 6th January (at the east end near the church – referred to by this post).
As suspected we didn’t get all the rings, but with the ones we recorded and with the help of some nice people we tracked down the bird: it was ringed in Germany! More specifically, it was called as a breeding adult on 3 May 2022 in Amstvenn in northwest Germany near the border with the Netherlands.
Even better, the satellite tracker provided some great information that I thought was just fun. Steffen provided the following two screenshots, showing the migrations made by this bird, and a close up of its movements in Pembrokeshire. If I read it correctly, it was here for its 2nd winter, and is still here. It has also been to Gann several times. This means that, this winter, Gann hosts birds ringed in England, the Netherlands and Germany (at least).
I really love how this work and this bird have connected people across Europe, and it just shows how important our wetland sites (in this case Castlemartin and the Gann) are, not just to birds that breed here, but to the birds that breed far away. .
If anyone sees this bird again, please report it to Steffen Kaempfer at Osnabruck University ([email protected]). The correct order of color rings on this bird is left tibia: metal over white over orange, right tibia: orange over orange over white.
