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Marsh Warbler trapped and ringed at a private undisclosed site Staffordshire.

No further sign after release.

It was great to present our Jack Snipe Tagging Project at yesterday's @UC_Sparsholt Research Conference & for third year BSc students to present their own dissertation research. We'll have further updates in the near future, so please keep a look out for new posts.

We'll be at the West Midland Bird Club Open Day tomorrow with a display and presentation on our Jack Snipe Tagging Project. We look forward to seeing you there.
@btobirds.bsky.social

We are excited to welcome you all to our Open Day TOMORROW! 🥳

Here is the full programme of events happening throughout the day.

There will also be an activity for children to take part in on the West Lawn.

We fitted tags funded by University College Sparsholt to 5 Jack Snipe in Hampshire, extending our research project's scope. The aims are to reveal where birds roost & feed, show if they exhibit site fidelity & identify migration routes & stopover sites. BBC feature youtu.be/tkHy-5EdM-o

Last winter, we fitted tags to 10 Jack Snipe in Staffordshire to track their movements & we recently recaught one that migrated to Latvia - we believe this is the first tracked migration of a UK Jack Snipe youtu.be/tkHy-5EdM-o @btobirds.bsky.social

Our Hampshire team has been searching for suitable dayroosts to monitor. It looks like one they found recently may be just the ticket: in a quick visit with a thermal imager, they found 12 Jack Snipe. We'll be joining them to start a systematic survey programme.

One interesting dimension to our Jack Snipe tagging project is that the data are revealing that birds regularly use a matrix of dayroost & night feeding sites all within c10km radius. We've already found 2 dayroosts we were previously unaware of, so we'll now be monitoring these.

Last winter, with Natural England funding, we fitted GPS tags to 10 Jack Snipe in the Midlands Heathland Heartland project area in Staffordshire & West Midlands. One bird has just been recaught: its migration took it to Germany, Poland & Latvia before returning to Staffordshire.

Thermal imaging cameras have been an essential piece of kit in our Jack Snipe surveys. However, we plan to monitor the birds' return to their usual roosting areas as the water subsides by conducting a systematic survey of the site with a thermal imaging drone. How are others monitoring their sites?

Our other dayroost site is larger, but again we've seen fewer birds, though we saw 26 on our last visit. The main roost area consists of grasses & sedges, but has flooded recently. Jack Snipe have moved 5-25m to clearer areas amongst Heather. Has anyone seen anything similar?

The 24/25 winter census of Jack Snipe at our longstanding Staffordshire dayroost site has seen disappointingly low single figure numbers - we've counted up to 50 birds/visit some years. Are these low numbers a local phenomenon or part of a wider pattern? @btobirds.bsky.social @waderstudy.bsky.social