Recently I got a request from Glyn Young in Jersey to ask if any GuernseyGulls observers (particularly in nearby France) have seen any colour-ringed Red-billed Choughs as two of the re-introduced birds in Jersey have gone missing. Glyn sent the following request:-
"All of our choughs have been out flying free in Jersey for
over two weeks now. Six of them go back to the aviary as they’ve been trained to
almost every night. They are let out the following day again. Well, all except
two who chose to separate from the others almost immediately. For one, a male,
we picked up the first signal two days after release in the south of the Island.
Two days later it had disappeared. We never had a visual sighting of this bird
so don’t know the true status of it but it did seem to be moving. For the second
bird, a female, we have not picked up any signal since the first release. The
radio-tracking team have covered Jersey but not had any further contacts and
have even used a boat to look at the coast and a low flying plane.
It is possible of course that one or both birds made the
short crossing to France. We don’t see many records of birds in Brittany and
Normandy so we would not necessarily hear if a strange ringed chough was seen.
If you do hear of a sighting we would be very grateful for any information at
all. If you could circulate the request for sightings of ringed choughs we would
be extremely grateful too.
The birds we are looking for would be: Male Yellow (left
leg) and 2A06 (right leg) and Female Cerise (left leg) and 2A08 (right
leg). Both birds have radio transmitters.
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Red-billed Chough - Jersey (c) Romano da Costa
Any sightings can either be entered direct on the GuernseyGulls colour ring database http://birdrings.digimap.gg/ or sent direct to Glyn at Glyn.Young@durrell.org
Many thanks
Paul
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