The 5 birds still present at 18:00 hrs feeding on the island and shoreline in front of the club house, oblivious to people with dogs throwing stones into the water! Sorry Simon, neither Ian nor I have your mobile no. so unable to text you. The message was put out on the Rochdale text service.

Simon - there was still one at Audi today, Rob Adderley told me.

Hi Simon,
I will be at Watergrove about 17:00 hrs. If they are still about I will text Ian. Hopefully he will be able to pass any message onto you.

Steve

Might pop over to Watergrove tonight as my dad still not seen a bar wit in GM

An update on these would be lovely sometime today,

Thanks

Simon

Amazingly the 5 Barwits were still at Watergrove Sunday evening at 17:40 hrs. 4 of the birds must have flown to another part of the reservoir as only one was in view at 19:30 hrs. However all 5 birds were feeding on the west side of the resr at 18:00 hrs this evening Monday 30th April, and then were back on the island in front of the club house at 18:30 hrs. This is normally connected to the shoreline, so the high water levels have prevented people from walking out and disturbing the birds.

-- Edited by Steve Atkins at 19:42, 2007-04-30

I have uploaded 7 of Chris Johnson's (and one of Paul Hammond's) superb images of these birds onto the galleries on the main website, inlcuding great shots of the colour-ringed female

-- Edited by Ian McKerchar at 20:51, 2007-04-29

Also 3 Bar-wits at Piethorne today (info per David Winnard)

Doesnt beat my 26 in 1988 though

It would seem that these Godwits will have come from the Netherlands as the colour rings equate to a sequence used in a project there, the information for which is included below (Steve I have also emailed this to you and Chris Johnson). Interestingly the 'yellow ring' is not a ring but a colour 'flag' as can be seen in the photos (that will be on the galleries on the website), I have 2 off a Red-necked Stint (found in Hong Kong that migrated from Siberia to Australia) attached to my bins strap

Bernard Spaans, Department of Marine Ecology and Evolution, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ)
PO Box 59, 1790 AB Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands.
tel.: +(31)(0)222 369490 ; fax: +(31)(0)222 319674

e-mail: spaans@nioz.nl

note 1: used colours are white, red, yellow and blue.

note 2: there are always 2 rings on each tarsus and the position of the yellow flag is important and it can be on the left or right tibia or on the left or right tarsus, above, in between or below the 2 rings.

note 3: the metal ring is always ion the tibia, but this ring is not part of the cr-combination.

note 4: this NIOZ-project is in cooperation with VRS Castricum, VRS Franeker and VRS Calidris. By Feb. 06 some 1684 birds were ringed.

It was good to meet you Paul. Glad you saw the Barwits. Now you know how cold and wind swept it is at Watergrove. We don't take our winter coats off in Rochdale until June! It's not surprising that I'm still waiting for the first Blackcap of the year to come in here. 5 Barwits is in fact the highest count in GM since 1993 when there were 5 at Pennington as well as the Hollingworth Lake birds. Hopefully we can find out where the colour ringed bird came from.

Cheers Steve for the Barwits. Still there till 09.35 at least, still happily feeding. Wind Surfer heading up the lane as I was leaving though.

I found the 2 Bar-tailed Godwits at 18:30 hrs Sat, feeding on the recently exposed island in front of the club house. As I only had my bins with me I wasn't sure whether they were Black-tailed or Bar. Dave Winnard and Alan Nuttall arrived with a scope and whilst I was driving home to get my scope, confirmed the ID as bar-tailed. One summer plumage male + a female. Amazingly Chris Johnson found 5 birds at 7 a.m. today feeding on the shoreline in front of the clubhouse. Luckily they were still there when I arrived at 8 a.m. 3 males in breeding plumage and 2 females. 1 female had colour rings yellow/white/blue on left leg and red on right leg. Chris has taken some stunning photos which he'll be sending through later. The birds were still present at 08:50 but there is a high probability they will be disturbed by dog walkers or windsurfers. These are the first in the Rochdale borough since May 1993 when 6 flew over Hollingworth Lake.

2 Bar-tailed Godwits were at Watergrove Reservoir today apparently (info per David Winnard), a great record and more evidence of a nice little passage through the county today