On 27/01/21 we spotted a colour-ringed Avocet off the sea-wall at Maiden Dock. The tide was very low which meant that this bird and its companions were quite close to the shore, so it was possible to get an ID shot of its rings. These turned out to be YWx/GB (GB as in Green/blue not Great Britain!)
I asked on Hampshire Birding Group Facebook page and Nick
Goldsmith kindly sent me a link to a French site where he had found the bird’s
records.
It seems to have been first ringed (and recorded) on 08/06/17 in The Breugny, near Mesquer in Brittany. It then moved down the road to Batz-sur-Mer, thence over to Normandy Marsh on 12/02/17. It seems to have stayed with us until 27/06/18, then moved to Titchfield Haven (26/06/18), back to France (Sene 21/04/19), then back to us again this year (27/01/21).
I posted the sighting on the Brittany Avocet recording
site. There are gaps, of course, but 4 years of records shows how important
ringing can be in tracing the movement of some birds.
CR