Ringed Grey Wagtail (1 Viewer)

This Grey Wagtail has been feeding in the same area since January at least. It's close to a much-used public footpath and reasonably tolerant of people passing, but it's not easy to get any closer than this (photo is full-frame shot) once you start to concentrate on it! No chance of erecting a hide (which I don't have anyway).

The two shots of the ring in the photo have been enhanced as best as I can get them and the resolution has been interpolated up to get them to a viewable size. The right-hand ring photo is an enlargement from the photo it's posted onto and the left one is from a similar distance and is the continuation of the ring towards the left as we view it. It looks like a reversed 'S' but I'm not sure that it's a 'D' immediately afterwards (could be a T or I followed by another digit). The 448 in the next shot looks OK and I wish all the other digits showed up as well.

Presumably, although the bird is over-wintering, it won't be long before it moves on and I'll try to get some more shots if possible but I'm hoping for a long shot that someone will recognise it and say 'Ha, that's my ring!'

Camera is Olympus EM1 with 'silent shutter mode' and lens is the Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm zoom at maximum length at F7.1 (I wonder what the new Olympus 300mm F4 lens at £2199 would have made of it!?)

Location, is 'The Outwoods', Burbage, Leicestershire in the general area of 'Burbage Common and Woods.'

Adey Hi,

Send those images to [email protected] they might be able to help.

Cheers

If that is 448, it isn't a British ring. On BTO rings, the ring number is under the other information (where to send details) I tried turning the photo upside down, but the focus isn't great to read any of the other details.

More and closer focus pics might help......

Ken and Jon, thanks for having a look at this. Yes, I thought the layout of the digits wasn't right for a British ring, so I'm not sure whether the BTO can help. But I'll probably email the shot to them anyway in case they recognise the possible origin of the ring.

Closer approach isn't possible, so anyone with a high quality lens longer than mine might get something better. My lens has a similar field of view to a 'full-frame' 600mm lens and the sensor on my camera must have quite a high-density pixel per inch count but the ring probably only covers about 35-40 pixels of the original shot. I only got these shots whilst it was resting temporarily - when feeding it's constantly moving, making it difficult to get it without some part of the ring being hidden by a blade of grass, etc.

If any local photographer wants to try (or indeed any birder wanting to attempt to read it through their scope then I'll give details of where to find it. It's very close to the footpath between the Burbage Wood and Sheepy Wood on the site as detailed above and dead easy to find.