Some Rehabillitation Work…….

I met Mike Bailey (previously from Chew Valley Ringing Station in North West Somerset) at Brent Lodge Wildlife Hospital in Sidlesham to ring 17 Mallards who are due for release in the next week.

They were each fitted with a BTO metal ring . Each ring has a unique number which can be read with binoculars or a scope and we hope to have some field recoveries from members of the public in the local area (or further afield).

All the 17 Mallards ringed today were abandoned earlier in the year for various reasons and brought in by members of the public.

According to the BTO some wintering individuals join our resident birds, they come from France, Netherlands, east through the Baltic States nad on into Southern Finland and Russia- it will be fascinating to see if any of our birds make it that far.

Although there are 61k pairs in the uk these gentle ducks are Amber listed as our winter popultaion was down 33% between 1996/97- 2021/22). The UK breeding population has risen to 136% (1967-2022).

The typical life expectancy is 3 years with breeding typically at 1 year BUT the maximum age from a ringed bird is 20 years, 5 months, 17 days (set in 1986).

Mike is a very experienced ringer and was there to oversee me ringing as I have little experience with ducks. I have ringed one Shoveler, one Teal and one Wigeon with Pete Potts in Hampshire around 12 years ago.

Mike taught me how to age and assign a gender to the birds (though a few were left indeterminate) they can be tricky to “sex” at this age.

Sam holding a first year Mallard having just been ringed.

Showing the speculum used to help age the Mallard.

We will be returning in 2 weeks to start ringing some more Mallards and hopefully colour ringing some gulls as part of the “National colour ring project for orphaned and rehabilitated gulls”, run by Simon Allen (British Wildlife Rehabilitation Council) and Mark Grantham (BTO).