I have received an email confirmation regarding the Great Skua sighting off Sagres, on Monday. These are the first report/recovery details of a Fair Isle-ringed Great Skua in Portugal. Hello Nigel Once again, thanks for the sighting and for the link to your blog – looks like a good pelagic (I’ve still never seen Wilson’s Petrel). 2A93 (metal ring number MA42288) was ringed by me (with my daughters helping me if I recall the day correctly) on 5th August 2017, at Hoini on Fair Isle. This is a small sub-colony, so it’s good to know that one of the youngsters from here survived. The sighting is a particularly interesting one as, according to the BTO (https://app.bto.org/ring_content/countyrec/resultsall/recGBFIall.htm), we have no previous recoveries of our birds from Portugal, although it is not surprising that our Bonxies are spending times there as there are several records from the Spanish coast. Most previous ringing recoveries are of birds found dead in the winter, so the current darvic-ringing project is proving very interesting in providing us with sightings of live birds – especially immature birds such as 2A93. The project started in 2017, so last year we had our first live records of birds in their first-summer (2CY), with individuals seen off the coasts of Spain and Ireland, and this year we have had a chick from 2017 seen off the coast of Brittany, so we’re starting to build a picture of what the Fair Isle population gets up to when it’s not here. Is it ok to use your image on our social media channels please? Many thanks again Best wishes David David Parnaby Warden Fair Isle Bird Observatory Fair Isle, Shetland, ZE2 9JU e-mail: [email protected] Comments are closed.
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