A bit of Icelandic colour

Back to the local stuff today, and things were on the move. Well, sort of. It hardly felt spring like temperature wise, but a few Whitethroats were back in and Swallows were heading steadily west in dribs and drabs. Little else though in the cold.

15 out of the 368 Iceland Black-tailed Godwits today

But the highlight of the day was an influx of migratory Icelandic Black-tailed Godwits at Crossness - 368 of them in total. There's a wintering flock at this site, but the sight of 6 colour-ringed individuals, suggested that a fair few of these were new birds heading north as I'd not had any of these birds previously. Using these excellent links - here and here - I managed to figure out a couple were ringed in Iceland, one orange-flagged bird in France and the others are presumably from the UK.

Two of today's colour-ringed Blackwits - Peter Potts responded quickly, and the bird on the right was ringed on the Axe Estuary, Seaton, Devon on 5th March 2011 and then seen at Cliffe, Kent, on 29th October 2011 before my sighting today.

I also had a couple of Yellow-legged Gulls, one at Crossness and a couple in flooded fields at Crayford. Also, on the barges outside my flat at Rotherhithe, was a North Thames Gull Group ringed Herring Gull.