Welsh woodcock arrives in Russia

The latest on the 12 satellite tagged Woodcock is that three are now in Russia, including Rebecca tagged by myself and Tony Cross at the Crychan.

Having spent several weeks in east Poland she is now about 150 km west of Moscow near a town called Rzhev. As Woodcock are largely nocturnal and spend their days resting in dark areas of cover, the batteries on the tags are not getting a good charge from the solar array.

Although we are getting poor location signals when birds are resting up, when they migrate we get good fixes. Its interesting to note that the two birds in Norway are giving a better signal, probably due to birch and alder not coming into leaf yet that far north. Andrew Hoodless has only been posting the best location data on the www.woodcockwatch.com website map,  but further analysis of the poorer grade data might still reveal more relavent information on migration.

Aderyn, the other Welsh tagged woodock is still in Poland, but may well move on soon. Our contacts in St Petersburg tell us that the snow has yet to clear there and that their first roding Woodcock was only seen just over a week ago.