The Lincolnshire Bird Club

Last night I mist netted my first ever Water Rail in the Market Rasen area at Walesby Moor. To cap that, it was an adult female with an Arnhem ring. There have only been 50 foreign ringed Water Rails controlled in the UK so it's quite unusual. An interesting point was that it was ringed above the knee - a timely reminder for ringers to thoroughly check both legs!

Good catch Stuart, must have given you some satisfaction,will be interesting to see when it was ringed. John.

Just to show the efficiency of the Arhnem Ringing Scheme, the BTO have still not received the original ringing details from them. Heh hoh - it's only two years!

The Forum reaches far and wide! I had an Email from a Dutch Ringer yesterday who had read the thread and had been provided with my Email address by Andrew (Thanks Andrew). I contacted him with the details and have received a prompt reply stating that it had been ringed at 2a.m. on 3/10/2007 at Meyendel near Den Hague. (Apparently a lot of Water Rail are ringed at night in Holland). The Forum beat the "Official" notification process hands down! Another pat on the back for the LBC Forum.

Well it was worth waiting for!!! Our Ringing Group Secretary got formal confirmation that the Water Rail was ringed as a first year bird on 3/10/2007 at Wassenaar, Zuid-Holland. It's only taken the Dutch Ringing Scheme 4.5 years to let the BTO know. The moral of this story is don't complain if the BTO take a couple of months to respond!!

Stuart,

I have found the Dutch (Arnhem) scheme pretty good for responses and have already got original ringing details back of a Dutch-ringed Blackbird and Dutch-ringed Lesser Redpoll controlled this year. For me, it's Belgium (Bruxelles) that seem to be the slow one..............still awaiting details of a Lesser Redpoll from January 2011 !

Alan

Alan,
If Bruxelles follows Arnhem's lead you've only got another 2 years to wait!!