Migration news!

This winter, a team of dedicated WWT staff and volunteers spent many hours sitting in soggy, cold fields on the Ouse Washes in Norfolk, waiting to catch some Bewick’s swans under a cannon-fired net.

The aim was to fit specially designed light-weight GPS transmitters to white neck collars.

The next question you might naturally ask is ‘why’?! The aim of this study, funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), is to provide detailed information on the migration routes taken by Bewick’s swans moving across the sea between Britain and the European continent in relation to off-shore windfarms that are scheduled for development off the coast of East Anglia. We hope that the transmitters will also provide valuable additional information on the swans’ migration phenology (i.e. duration of stay at staging areas) and distribution in their arctic breeding range.

Patience paid off. During three attempts involving several long days, a total of 18 Bewick’s were successfully caught and eight of these birds were fitted with transmitters. Since then, we have been glued to our screens, watching the swans make their way across Europe. And we are very happy to report that they are making very good progress! Six of the swans have stopped off in Denmark en route with two of those going via the Netherlands. Five have brushed against the southern end of Sweden and four have reached Estonia!
We are especially pleased to see BEWI 09 making good progress, a rather special swan that has been named Hope in memory of Jon Smith, our fantastic reserve warden at Welney who very sadly passed away last year. Jon was instrumental in organising the first ever cannon-net of Bewick’s in the UK back in 2010 and I’m sure would have been thrilled to see his success continued today. Hope’s journey has so far seen her fly over the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Latvia and she is now making good progress across Estonia! Information from her transmitter shows that she is a bit of an island hopper, stopping off on the Swedish island of Gotland and spending time on the Estonian island of Kihnu. The swans are currently facing sub-zero temperatures across the Baltic and so may well spend a little more time there waiting for conditions to improve before embarking on their journey across Russia to their breeding grounds. More news to follow...
Eileen Rees, Larry Griffin, Kane Brides & Julia Newth

We would like to thank DECC for funding this important project and for the valuable help of Brian Bailey, Maurice Durham, Robin Ward and the staff at WWT Welney for making these catches possible.

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