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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dortmundbirder" data-source="post: 3391102" data-attributes="member: 86325">Mark, thank you very much for the details of the report. I find it very interesting and it seems, that there is some issue with the ringing of piping plovers. So it could be a ringing related issue with your bird as well.Andy, I think most ringers try to use as few rings as possible on a bird to make the study work. The larger the bird, the fewer rings necessary to get good results of the project. If you look at gulls geese or swans for example you will only find one coded color ring in addition to the normal metal ring, because it is very well readable. On a Piping Plover or even smaller birds, you will have trouble recognizing the individual bird even with good available photos. So it might be better not to colorring them at all in this case, because you wont get sufficient information anyway. We tried this once with bluethroats for population studies in a very frequented and much photographed area, They got a small Black on white color ringed code, which didnt work out too well. Partly because even on good photos the ring was often not readable and on the other hand because the photographers stopped photoing ringed birds <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />.This color combinations are often easy to see even from great distances and give much better results in a project imho.</blockquote>

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