Some unringed and some unread...

Counts along the coastline of all the islands reveal the areas most and least favoured by Oystercatchers; besides I do my best to check all the legs of all the birds seen, looking for “my own” individually marked birds or for those coming from elsewhere.



Luckily the birds can be seen close-up even in smaller or larger clubs here – while at the Waddensea they are really rather far away even for the telescope user. Not many “strangers” here. So far the birds with Dutch rings were only seen on Devichya Luda island (called “ostrov Golyi” on the navigation map), and last year birds with BTO metal rings were also recorded on Kibrinskaya Northern island and on Bolshoy Lomnishny island. All the rest are locally ringed.Some of the rings become really untraceable – like the bird with a white-coloured ring on the photo.



Actually all the rings made as red-with-white code by Ecotone Polish company already lost the upper red layer and are extremely hard (if at all possible) to read. I thus continue to regret that I was not using only the very endurable Canadian Protouch company colour rings in the former years... And I can only assume that the white-ring bird on the photo is the same “former red A10” (read then in the good light in 2007) seen there last year. A10 “formerly red” was ringed on 7 July 2003 on Devichya Luda island, and seen in a flock of non-breeders in 2007 on Gorely island in the same spot where an “unread former red” was observed in 2008.