Moving Marsh Harrier - one birds journey
A Marsh Harrier was sighted in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales on the 4th of April this year. The bird had green wing tags with the letters A, D on the tags.
Many thanks to Elwyn Davies for obtaining the following information on the wing tagged Marsh Harrier seen in the Marloes Mere area.
The bird tagged "AD" was ringed and tagged at the Hawk and Owl trust reserve at Sculthorpe Moor, in Norfolk, in East Anglia, over 300 hundred miles from Pembrokeshire, on 10.06.2011.
It was then seen at Holme, on the Norfolk coast, after fledging, then down to the Isle of Sheppey in Kent on 31.10.2011. It disappeared for the winter (Europe??), and re-appeared in Gwent, south Wales, in September 2012, moving across the Severn Estuary to the Somerset Levels, England in November. Again it dropped off the radar for the winter, re-surfacing on Blakeney Point, back in Norfolk, in February this year. To be found in Pembrokeshire this April, where next?
An amazing journey by one bird, who would have guesssed that a Marsh Harrier ringed in Norfolk would undertake such a journey?
If you see any wing tagged or colour ringed birds please report the sightings and more amazing detail can be learned about the journeys of our wild birds.