Peter Phillips
Well-known member
Peter,
IIRC there's an amount of ringing recoveries to show that the northern England population winter on either side of the North Sea - east coast of England and Holland. In fact I seem to remember there was one recovery of a bird on this south-easterly bearing that was ultimately found in Switzerland or Italy direction.
Not sure about Copeland but there was a bird ringed in Skye that was contolled/found in Donegal subsequently. This would represent a movement from a British island, rather than the British mainland, to Ireland of course!
Dave
Here it is. A quote from BTO's Migration Atlas
Twite
"Ring recovery data suggests that birds breeding elsewere (other than the Pennines) in Britain and Ireland are much more sedentary.....These have probably moved down hill to food rich areas such as coastal farmland....There is some evidence of interchange.... between southwest Scotland and Northern Ireland"
Regarding the Italian recovery.
"This is a most unusual recovery,however,as twite are only very occasionally reported in Italy, mainly in the northeast, and records usually involve birds of the nominate race."
I am assuming that the flock at Dundalk Bay are birds that have moved in from Scotland down through Northern Ireland and into Dundalk Bay.(As the very limited recovery map would seem to indicate).The Pennines birds seem to have a completely different migration strategy to the populations in Scotland and Ireland.
Are Twite still breeding in Northern Ireland?
Pennines birds marked in red.
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