Storm Petrels tell a story!

For over 20 years now, we have been visiting a small uninhabited island ( we call it 'Ron') off the coast of Sutherland on the north coast of Scotland to ring seabirds--especially Storm Petrels. There is a report from this year's trip on this blog about our trip in mid July 2019.

These birds are very mobile. Once young birds fledge they fly down to the west coast of southern Africa, where (we think) they spend a few years maturing, in association with the adult birds which also spend our winter off the south coast of Africa. Eventually when ready to breed they fly north during the summer and then reputedly fly around potential breeding colonies around Britain, Ireland, Faeroe and Norway. Ringing returns support this and we have lots of recoveries of birds visiting several sites as they wander around looking for breeding sites, as well as lots of re-trapped birds from our island once they have found a mate, a nest site and settle down.

This year we caught a bird carrying a ring which had been put on the bird in Portugal. The data from this bird has just come through:-

Although its a bit difficult to read, the essential info is that the bird was originally ringed near Faro on the Algarve coast on 6th June and we caught it just 36 days later on 12th July on Ron 2400 km away.

 Kevin happened to be searching through the archives and found another, remarkably similar occurrence:-

Another Storm Petrel we caught on 8th July 2016, had also been originally ringed near Faro 34 days earlier!!

These are the kind of remarkable coincidences which over the years have enabled ringing data to help put together  the wonders of bird migration. These two records give credence to the idea that these  birds move north during early summer--apparently hugging the coastline, until reaching potential breeding grounds much further north. Well done Kev for spotting this one!!