About the project

We have consulted with the British Trust for Ornithology, who actively encourage the monitoring of Red List species such as the House Sparrow, and this project had been registered with them as a Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) scheme, using ringing and colour-ringing birds to enable them to be individually identified by bird ringers, birdwatchers, or members of the public.The birds are captured (under licence) and are fitted with a BTO metal ring on their right leg, and with a colour ring on the left leg. The colour ring has a code (the rings are Black, with White lettering, and the code is 2 digits either numbers or letters) that can be easily read using binoculars. Anybody seeing a House Sparrow with a colour ring can contact us at shetlandsparrows@gmail.com. We need to know the code on the ring, and the date and place you saw it. Many thanks for your help!

Thanks to the support of the following:

Shetland Ringing Group for supplying the metal rings for this project

The Shetland Wildlife Fund for covering the cost of buying the colour rings

Plantiecrub Garden Centre and Shop (www.plantiecrub.co.uk) for supplying bird feeders and wild bird seed

Shetland Walking and Wildlife (www.shetlandwalkingandwildlife.co.uk) for allowing Graham time to put his surveying and bird ringing skills to good use

Wednesday 24 July 2013

RAS first year going well so far

Well, I'm about half way through the breeding season and catching/ringing effort for the first year of my House Sparrow RAS (Retrapping Adults for Survival) here in Skeld, Shetland.

So far, 43 birds have been colour-ringed, and there are now lots of juveniles out and about here.

The advantages of colour-ringing are already becoming evident, with 47 resightings so far.

The other great news is that it are also very large numbers of unringed birds still here in Skeld. An hour watching the feeders in the garden may reveal say 10 colour-ringed birds, and at any one time another 20-30 unringed birds, so there could easily be 150+ more birds to catch/ring. And more and more juveniles are appearing every day, so it looks like a really healthy population!

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