Chris Baker, who lives in Grasby, forwarded me a picture of a ringed Goldfinch that was visiting his garden feeder during early June 2009. From what I could see I felt fairly sure that it was a British ringed bird and sent the picture and relevant information off to the BTO - I am a BTO member. Below is the response from Thetford. I will put a picture in the 'common birds' album.
Roy *********************************************************************** Dear Roy,
Thanks very much for sending in the picture of the goldfinch: we're fairly sure that it's one of ours, ringed on 1st March 2005 (and recaptured on 23rd March 2005) as a first year female (i.e. hatched in 2004). We caught it at Great Tey, near Coggeshall in Essex, at an experimental winter feeding site for farmland birds and colour-ringed it with a white/red bicoloured ring above the metal on the left leg and two green rings on the right. Despite intensive observation and ringing during the next two winters, we never saw the bird again, but this isn't surprising because they are very mobile and probably use different wintering areas in different years. Interestingly, another bird ringed at the same site on the same day also went to Lincolnshire (Gosberton), being caught by ringer in April 2005, so perhaps this reflects the movements of a particular Lincs-breeding group....
Thanks again to you and your neighbour for this record - it really is very useful: the project aimed to find out where our local wintering birds go to breed and you have told us exactly that! Please send any other sightings of this or any other colour-ringed bird to us as well....it's all interesting stuff and pieces of the jigsaw telling us what birds are doing.
Best wishes,
Gavin
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Dr Gavin M. Siriwardena Head of Land-Use Research British Trust for Ornithology The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk IP24 2PU, UK
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