Another Blackbird Motus Hit

We have more exciting news from the Motus Wildlife Tracking Tower here at Spurn. Hot on the heels of Octobers Goldcrest and Novembers Blackbird, we had another remarkable ‘hit’ (tag detection) on 2nd December.

And amazingly it was another Blackbird, the second detection at Spurn from a group of birds tagged on 4th November on the Dutch island of Vlieland. Both stayed very close to their tagging location before moving directly to Spurn.

The crossing is approx 313km, and took just over 4 hours, meaning an incredible speed of c.77km/h! The wind this day was from the north east at Spurn, presumably assisting with the speed of the crossing, but there wasn’t a noticeable increase in thrush numbers on the 2nd Dec.

This bird has been tagged in a project run by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in The Netherlands where they have deployed ‘nanotags’ on many Blackbirds, Goldcrests, Skylarks and Starlings this autumn, as well as numerous Bats.

The research from this project will expand our knowledge and understanding of bird movements and staging habits (incl. age, sex and condition) on Dutch territory before the birds move onwards with their migration

For more information, visit motus.org