Bird Ringing for Science and Conservation

Outstanding individuals

Ringing birds individually allows us to follow even the most exceptional personal fates.

The oldest wild bird ever recorded could be a Manx Shearwater captured on a little island off north Wales. The venerable bird was first captured and ringed by ornithologists in May 1957, when it was fullgrown, hence between four and six years old. It had been caught in 1961, 1978 and 2002, when a warden of the Bardsey Island Bird Observatory caught the seabird again. The shearwater‘s possible age of 52 years could make it the record holder. Until now, the world‘s oldest ringed bird was a US albatross estimated to be over 50.

One of the longest journeys ever recorded is from a Common Tern ringed on 27 June 2003 as a nestling in Hälsingland in central Sweden and found dead on 1 December 2003 on Stewart Island in New Zealand. If we assume a normal route from Sweden to South Africa and then to New Zealand, the tern might have covered 25,000 kilometres. Measured as straight line distances, the tern’s journey is “only” 17,508 km.

The rate of migration is quite different from that attained in flights for short distances. The fastest journey is from a ringed European Barn Swallow Hirundo rustica that flew in 27 days from Umhlange, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa, to Whitley Bay, United Kingdom.

A Black-headed Gull was ringed as a fledgling on 29 June 1996 in Hämeenkyrö county, Pirkanmaa, Finland. The metal ring was sighted with a telescope on the 3 and 7 January 2000 in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. The bird was back again to its wintering quarters in Texas on 30 November 2000.

	The old Manx Shearwater must have flown at least eight million kilometres during its long life.			Common Terns migrate between the two hemispheres and, by this, experience both northern summer and austral summer.