28th October 2013

Weather:- Wind NW force 7
Not quite the storms of southern england, nevertheless more was expected on the sea than transpired. The best seen were 2 Arctic Skuas and 25 Gannets, also a Red-throated Diver, 6 Guillemots, 5 Great Crested Grebes, 4 Scoter and a Razorbill. Waders included 130 Turnstone and 93 Redshank. A Mute Swan was seen to fly over little eye (AEH).
Meanwhile back at West Kirby a very late Sandwich Tern was found on the West Kirby lake pontoons. It was seen to be colour ringed and showed antenna for some sort of tracking system.
Enquiries have now revealed it was ringed in the Netherlands and printed here below for those that are interested (especially ringers) is an e-mail from the ringers in Holland.

Thank you very much for reporting your sighting of White N3N. Thank you for also sending that picture of the bird and its tag. This is a data-logger powered by a solar-panel. 

W-N3N was caught on the nest during the 2013 breeding season and has been seen several times before you saw it at West Kirby. This bird is certainly following a course all of its own.  In July of this year it made a brief visit to the island of Texel in the north of the Netherlands, then to Wales and now, five days after the last sighting it flew at least 300 miles north, maybe helped a little by the storm?. We hope to find out more about the routes and timing of these movements if it returns to a colony with its datalogger intact.

W-N3N (NLA ...1583878), >2cy, nest, 28 May 2013, de Scheelhoekeilanden, near Stellendam, Zuid-Holland, NL (51.48.46 N / 04.04.20 E), CR placed.

W-N3N, 2 July 2013, de Petten, Den Hoorn, Noord-Holland, the Netherlands (53.00.42 N / 04.45.20 E), photographed, CR read by Bob Loos & Pieter Duin

W-N3N, 7 October 2013, Nevern Estuary, Newport, Pembrokeshire, Wales (52.01.29 N / 04.50.38 W), colour-ring read by Sam Baxter

W-N3N, 25 October 2013, Burry Port Beach, Newport, Carmarthenshire, Wales (51.40.34 N / 04.15.29 W), photographed, colour-ring read by Adam Dare

W-N3N, 28 October 2013, West Kirby, Wirral, Cheshire, England (53.22.17 N / 03.11.27 W), photographed, colour-ring read by Colin Jones

In 2013 we have managed to place nearly 400 colour-rings on Sandwich Terns, 28 of those on breeding adults like N3N. We have used a three-digit code always starting with an "N". The N can be followed by two numbers (N86), two letters (NHN), one letter and one number (NV7) or a number and a letter (as with your bird N3N). In most cases the colour-ring has been placed on the right tarsus and the metal (NLA) ring on the left tarsus. In some cases these positions have been reversed, for example when a bird already wore a metal ring.

These Sandwich Terns have been ringed in two colonies in the southwest of the Netherlands by a joint research group composed of the Research Institute for Nature and Forest/INBO, Bureau Waardenburg and the Ringgroep Delta. Through these colour-ringed birds we hope to gain a better understanding of habitat use, dispersion of juveniles and adults, age of first breeding and recruitment to the various colonies in the southwest of the Netherlands and beyond.

This year there have already been sightings of "our" birds from the North of the Netherlands, Belgium, England, Scotland, Denmark and France.I will let you know if there are any new readings for this birds over the coming months.

Thank you again, also on behalf of the other members of the Tern-Team and the previous observers of W-N3N

all the best,

Pim Wolf

(DB (on the island),CJ (on the shore))         photo CJ