Dunlin with SCAN

Last Saturday I managed a few hours off from travelling, or house renovations, to spend time canon netting waders with SCAN in Bangor harbour. It was great to see some faces I hadn't seen for quite awhile - including Ros, fresh back from New Zealand.

I detoured on the way to check out a few sites on behalf of Steve for Sundays session so arrived after all the hard work has been done as the team were getting briefed. Within a very short time the nets were fired and we began extracting and processing a good mixed catch of mainly Dunlin, a few Redshank and a few Oystercatchers.

With a large catch and a large team we were split into two processing teams with age, wing length, bill length, total head / bill length and weight being taken for the Dunlin and an extra biometric - tarsus length - for the Redshank. This enable  the birds to be assigned to race and helps our understanding of the origin of these waders using the N Wales coastline in winter. Highlight was a Swedish controlled Dunlin.

Rachel, Amelia & Dorian hard at work processing Dunlin.