West Midland Bird Club

Disappointment is always a bitter pill to swallow, especially when your initial expectations are very high. All ringers look forward to receiving ringing recoveries for birds they have ringed, and I am no exception. Several weeks ago I received two recovery forms from the B.T.O. and my expectations were high after a cursory glance showed that one was a distance and the other a longevity record. The distance record was for a Mute Swan which I ringed as a male cygnet in Tamworth, Staffordshire on the 3rd of August 1993. It had been found dead between Coventry and Didcot, 101 kilometres from its place of ringing, on the 20th of May 1996. A good record except that on reading the remarks more carefully I saw that it had been found in the hopper of a coal train. Could it be that the bird hit wires in Tamworth, dropped into the truck and was carried, courtesy of British Rail to its final destination? We'll never know - what a disappointment.

The longevity record was for a Snipe I ringed as an adult bird at Doxey in Stafford on the 6th of November 1976. The finding date was the 15th of April 1996, also at Stafford - twenty years after ringing. Then I read the remarks more carefully. Only the ring had been found - by someone using a metal detector. Maybe the bird died in 1977? We can safely say that it died between the 6th of November 1976 and the 15th of April 1996 and that's another great disappointment.

But it's not all like that, for example, a Black headed Gull was seen at Westport Lake near Stoke-on-Trent on the 2nd of November 1995 - no doubt about it, the bird was wearing the ring at the time. The initial ringing details showed that the bird had been ringed as a nestling on the 18th of June 1994 in Lithuania. It had travelled 1,857 kilometres to Stoke-on-Trent and that puts the previous two records firmly in context.

A.E. Coleman