Swans and stuff...

I spent a busy few days with Sean, mainly trying to colour ring all the juvenile Mute Swans that are on the island. We managed to catch 1 of the 2 in Ramsey, all 6 at Ballasalla House and 1 of the 3 at Billown Mansion.

Ringing the Swans at Ballasalla House

We also colour ringed the adult female at Billown Mansion and recorded 18 of our colour ringed Mute Swans around various sites, some of which were starting to pair up on their nesting territories.

We have now colour ringed 44 Mute Swans on the island over the last 14 months which equates to the vast majority of the island's population. We should hopefully be able to identify all the known breeding pairs on the island this year and start to see if the local juveniles still wander to England, Wales and Ireland as the results from the previous colour ringing by Dave in the 1990's showed.
Our Mute Swan colour rings are Blue with white lettering with a code of "letter, number, number". We are always grateful for any reports of any ringed/colour ringed birds and a full history of the birds movements is always supplied to anyone who sends us a record.


In addition to the Swan work over the last few days, we also managed to catch and colour ring a Herring Gull at Port Erin, record 2 of our colour ringed Herring Gulls at Strandhall and record 4 of our colour ringed Rock Pipits at Niarbyl.

We even managed to get a bit of birding in seeing some nice stuff such as a pair of Scaup, a 'flock' of 5 Gadwall,  Little Egret, 2 Little Grebe, Purple Sandpiper and Whooper Swan.

It was also good to meet Craig Brookes, a ringer from Lancashire, who was over on the island for an interview - good luck Craig!