Further to my sighting at Boultham Mere in 2008 of a juvenile Cormorant with a plastic ring with "F" on, I have been sent the following information.
thank you for the information on this bird. This indeed is one of ours and, as Stef has already suggested, it has lost its second coloured ring. This is very disappointing, since it is already the third report of our ringed cormorant with one ring missing, and we already had one report of a dead cormorant (identified according to the metal ring), which had no plastic rings at all, when it was supposed to have two. It is now obvious that half-sized plastic rings are much weaker than the full-sized ones, so the birds seem to be able to get rid of them. Now we realise that we should have glued the rings, but its too late now - all the rings have already been used.
Now about the bird in question. It could be one of 54 birds ringed with one of the plastic rings with black letter "F" on white background. All of these birds were ringed in 2008. 23 of them were ringed as young in the nests at the Juodkrante cormorant colony (holding some 3000 pairs) on the Curonian Spit (55°31'16"N, 21°06'41"E) between 2008-05-18 and 2008-06-01. The remaining ones were 29 first-year birds (most likely recent fledglings from the same colony) and 2 adults caught by a cannon net on 2008-06-25 some 250 meters west of the colony on the Curonian Lagoon shore (55°31'13"N, 21°06'54"E). I am afraid this is the best I can do from this one ring. But still it is extremely exciting to have an observation of our bird in the UK - definitely first among our ringed cormorants, but I also suspect first for any Lithuanian ringed cormorant!
Once again, thanks a lot for the information.
Cheers, Mindaugas
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