Welcome to the Manx Ringing Group site

The Manx Ringing Group operates across the Isle of Man in the British Isles. It does not cover the Calf of Man, which is the responsibility of the Calf of Man Bird Observatory.

This site has been set up to hold details of the bird colour-ringing projects of the Manx Ringing Group. Some of these projects are also used by the Calf of Man Bird Observatory.

Colour Ringing Projects

The colour ringing of birds aims to allow the study of individuals without the need to recapture them in order to identify them. Colour rings can be read on the bird ‘in the field’ enabling the individuals to be identified and thus allow us to build a picture of what they do and where they go during their whole lifetime. This results in higher value datasets covering individual bird’s whole lives.

The Manx Ringing Group has several colour ringing projects.

• Our long-running Chough colour ringing project in partnership with the Manx Chough Project continued.

• Our ‘Large Gull’ project, covering Herring Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull and Great Black-backed Gull. This project aims to widen our knowledge of ‘Manx’ gulls during their lifetime as the vast majority of the recoveries of gulls which we receive are from birds found dead. We want to know what they do and where they go prior to that point in their life in order to gain as much data as possible on these species which are all decreasing in both their breeding and wintering populations in the British Isles as a whole. The project also includes the colonies of these three species on the Calf of Man– our thanks to the wardens at the bird observatory there for their help with this project. 

• We added Common Gull to our gull studies in 2013 as well as continuing to assist with the ‘North West’ Black-headed Gull study. Small numbers of both these species nest around the Point of Ayre gravel pits and landfill sites and we are looking to increase our knowledge on the movements of these small populations.

• Our Cormorant project, colour ringing the nestlings at the colonies at Maughold and the Point of Ayre gravel pits. 

• Little Tern and Arctic Tern projects were started in 2014. These projects aim to allow year on year comparison of the breeding population at the closely monitored colonies of these two species in the north of the island. The data gathered on Little Terns is shared with the national RSPB colour ringing project on the species.

• Wheatear was added to our list of species studies in 2014. In recent years, more Wheatears have been ringed on the Isle of Man & Calf of Man combined than anywhere else in the British Isles. This project is being run in partnership with the Calf of Man Bird Observatory. It is mainly a migration study aimed at trying to help identify the actual wintering and breeding grounds of the birds caught here. Wheatear is a species which migrates through the IOM from sub-Saharan Africa to as far away as Greenland. However, since the Calf of Man holds a good breeding population of this species then it is hoped that colour ringing them there will allow a more specialised, year-on-year study of the breeding population.

• Our other colour ringing project on Rock Pipit continued and we also continued to colour ring Twite as part of the ‘North West Twite Study’ group.
• Sightings of birds colour ringed on the Isle of Man should be emailed to manxrg[AT]gmail.com (replace [AT] by '@'), or by post to M Fitzpatrick 20 Nursery Gardens Bedford MK41 8DU.