Thursday 11 March 2010

What's that smell!? And who does it belong to?!

Nipper (my dog) regularly greets the post in the mornings and leaves letters & parcels strewn across the living room floor. However today a package made it as far as his bed, where I found him guarding it! On retrieving the parcel and opening it, a very horrible smell followed us as we both made our way into the garden!

The parcel had been sent by a member of the public and in it was a leg & foot of a bird. As you can see above, the leg has a blue darvic ring - LLB, but according to the letter no metal ring was found. The finder is wanting to know where & when the bird was ringed. Well - I don't even know what species this will have come from. So any suggestions please leave a comment below. In the meantime I'll make some enquires!
! UPDATE !
Thanks to Lee Barber at the BTO for helping to unravel this mystery. The above ring & foot belonged to a Shag ringed on the Isle of May as a chick in 2009. Found dead on 28/02/2010 at Boulmer in Northumberland.

3 comments:

  1. No expert but blue darvic rings tend to be on mute swans and looking at the foot it could be from one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cheers Jonathan, We did look into whether it was a Mute Swan ring - but it was too small.

    Thanks

    Kane

    ReplyDelete
  3. a mail order shag fantastic

    ReplyDelete