Colour-ringed Lapwing

In Chris’s last post from LCyD, there is a photo of a colour-ringed Lapwing. This Lapwing (White LX) was ringed on the 12th April 2023 just north of Llanbadarn Fynydd, by the mid wales ringing group. It’s the first sighting of this individual since it was ringed.

We started colour-ringing Lapwings in the winter of 2017 to try and understand where the mid Wales population was disappearing too. Despite there being some good sized flocks of Lapwings around the Welshpool area in the winter months, finding them during the breeding season in mid wales can be very tricky. The idea behind colour-ringing is so that we can identify individuals in the field, and build up pictures of where the spend their time - if they stay local, or travel long distances etc. Although this individual hasn’t moved very far, it’s still very valuable information. Other sightings of ‘our’ Lapwings have come from: Staffordshire, Kent, Cheshire and the Netherlands.

Anyone can report sightings of colour-ringed birds, and these sightings really help us build up more information of bird’s movements, their age etc. Colour rings can either be a combination of different colours, a coloured ring with letters and/or numbers, or even a combination of both colours and a ring with letters/numbers.