My First 'Ringing Recovery' ....!

  I am bouncing off the fucking walls here! I'm absolutely ecstatic! Which is a bit fucking sick, really. Considering the death of a bird has caused all this!

  But, there's the point, see? The bird died naturally. Nothing anyone did caused it. Nothing anyone could have did would have prevented it.

  It's what we Did Do though that has caused me such mind bending satisfaction and excitement. We Ringed that little fukka! In fact, I did. 15 - 6 - 11. Top of the stairs in Noel's old farm house.

  Swallow, ring # L122911 was hatched on, or within a day or so of 3 - 6 - 11. One of three out of the four eggs laid in that nest to have hatched.

   Right there, see? Because I'm already a BTO Nest Recorder, we know this isn't looking like a boom year for Swallow clutches.

 My averages are down from more like five eggs and five young fledging. This year it's more like three or four eggs. What gives? 

 I don't know. But, it'll be down to Thousands of people, like me, recording nests and ringing birds that we'll find out.

 And, once the numbers have been sent in and crunched and we do find out? That's when ye'll read, in the news papers, that some bird is in decline, globally, due to a change in some environmental factor, somewhere in the world.

  They don't just snatch that sort of shit out of the ether, ye know. I record a clutch of eggs, or ring some birds today? Few years down the line, what I did might be helping guide a Government on its next strategy. No shit!

 And, this evening, I got my first real, live taste of it all coming together. 

 I met Noel ~ as I stood, staring out over one of his fields. Drooling. Because I know there are birds nesting in the far hedge. He produced a fucking Ring from his pocket!!!

  L122911. He said he took it from the right leg of a young swallow he'd found outside the old place. It had evidently flown into a window pane and broken its neck.

 I've come home. Checked my records. I can now tell him chapter and verse on that poor birds short life history. What's more; Next year, who knows?

 We may get a report of one of this birds siblings having been caught and released in Africa. Then I could even capture that same bird, back here in Eire. Record its nesting and ring its young :-)

  In case this all sounds like much ado about nothing, to you? Think; Ever had a child ask ye how long a Robin lives? Is the Robin at ye bird table this Xmass the one that was there last year? What happened with the baby Robins in the garden, last summer?

 Ask Google for the answers. They'll be there. Thanks to people Nest Recording and Bird Ringing. And people like Noel, just taking the trouble to look at a dead birds legs .....