From Fleetwood To Fair Isle

This isn't a tale of a pilgrimage from Fleetwood to the most famous bird observatory in the world! It is just a post to let you know of a cracking recovery we just received from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) regarding a Lesser Redpoll.

The information came through yesterday that a Lesser Redpoll that we ringed at Rossall School, Fleetwood on 7th April 2013 had been controlled (captured by another ringer) on Fair Isle on 22nd June 2015!!! That was amazing enough in itself as this is the first bird we (Fylde Ringing Group) have had go to Fair Isle. However when I looked the bird up on Integrated Population Monitoring Reporter (IPMR - the software used to record ringed birds in the UK) I could see that on 25th May 2014 this bird had also been controlled at Grantown-On-Spey in northeastern Scotland. Grantown-On-Spey is 381 km  north of Rossall School and Fair Isle 632 km north. See Google Earth image below.

 Click to make it bigger.

Often these 'recoveries' throw up more questions than they answer. What was this bird doing on Fair Isle on 22nd June? It wouldn't be breeding there as there isn't the Birch woodland habitat on fair Isle that they require. Was it heading further north and east into Scandinavia, or was it on it's way back from Scandinavia having perhaps failed to breed? We'll never know, but it is a fantastic piece of data nevertheless.

A, but not 'the', Lesser Redpoll