A few weeks ago we reported that we had started ringing some hospital birds before release, in order to try and find out what happens after we release them.
Bird ringing in the UK is co-ordinated by the British Trust for Ornithology and involves catching wild birds under licence and attaching a small lightweight metal ring to their legs. Each ring is inscribed with a unique alpha-numeric code which identifies that bird as an individual (a bit like our National Insurance Number). This means that if that bird is encountered again, we get an idea of it’s life history.
Many birds are ringed as chicks still in the nest, and we have supported the Thornham Owl Project for a number of years to enable this monitoring to continue. Ringing chicks in the nest allows ringers to determine exactly what age the birds are, as different species have different moult strategies, making it harder to age adult birds to an exact year.
Last week we received a call from a local vets to see if we could help with a Barn Owl they had received. The owl had been picked up from the side of a road, so we can assume that he’d been hit by a vehicle. Upon arrival with us, he was assessed for injuries and thankfully there were no obvious breaks so he was given some pain relief and time to recuperate. In the process of checking for injuries, we discovered that he had a metal ring on his leg, so once he was settled into one of our hospital aviaries, Jess submitted the ring number to the BTO via their website.
The digitalisation of ringing records results in much faster reports back, and she soon received a reply with the original ringing details for this bird. Turns out, he was ringed as a chick near Boxford on the 26th May 2012, making this bird almost 9 years old! This is by no means a record breaker - the oldest Barn Owl recorded in the UK was over 15 years old when it was last encountered.
In the wild, the average age of Barn Owls is only about 4 years old. Most birds perish in their first winter, struggling to hunt in bad weather and getting into territorial disputes with other birds. When the young leave their nest, they don’t usually travel very far, and this bird was picked up at Long Melford, which as the owl flies is only about 7 or 8 miles away from where it hatched.
This owl was a bit wobbly on his legs for a few days but has made good progress and we will hopefully be releasing him near where he was found soon.
For more information about Bird Ringing, please visit:
www.bto.org