Bee and I finished a bit earlier yesterday to go to our Sand Martin site in the evening to set nets for a morning catch. We have been ringing at this site since 2008 so nearly 20 years and have gathered some great data from this site over the years.

We arrived on site at 0345am (which meant a very very early start!) to open the nets to catch the birds coming out of the nest holes first thing. It was a really successful session catching 87 new birds and 9 retraps.

Most retraps were from 2024 but we caught a much older bird which was a retrap from July 2019! Not far off the maximum age from a ringed bird on the BTO factsheet page. A really great record to get and it just shows how site faithful these birds are! Many of the birds were adult with only a few juveniles so we’re hoping when we fit in our next session in 2 weeks time, that there will be more juveniles on the move. Overall, a great first session and thank you to everyone for their help!

Extracting some birds from the nets

Juvenile Sand Martin showing the juvenile rufous-buff tips on the tertials and covert feathers

An adult wing with uniform brown feathers without rufous tips on body or wing

Sand Martin Team

Releasing one of the Sand Martin