2025 has been an excellent year for our ever-growing ringing team with new trainees joining us and two more ringers becoming licensed trainers.
This year we completed 272 ringing sessions across ten different sites. We took part in six projects :- RAS-Re-trapping adults for survival, CES-Constant Effort site, NRS-Nest record scheme, TSGP-Trans-Siberian genoscape project, Vector-Borne Radar project and the Darwin Tree of Life project, the whole team are immensely proud to be involved in these and look forward to participating again in 2026.
We re-established our site at the Thornwick Reedbed roost which provided us with the opportunity to catch hirundines, we caught a total of 734 birds at the roost of which 705 were newly ringed. The newly ringed highlights being:
| Swallow | 346 |
| Sand Martin | 200 |
| House Martin | 1 |
| Sedge Warbler | 35 |
| Reed Warbler | 16 |
| Cetti’s Warbler | 3 |
| Stonechat | 6 |
| Yellow Wagtail | 3 |
| Pied Wagtail | 2 |
We completed ten out of twelve CES (Constant Effort Site) sessions at Thornwick Bay which saw us catch a total of 284 birds of twenty one species with 181 being new birds.
Our annual Migweek event which sees the team running public ringing demos daily for nine days was a resounding success with us only cancelling one session due to high winds. Demos were held at South Landing and RSPB Bempton with a total of eleven public sessions. Over 450 members of the public attended sessions at South Landing.
Migweek also saw us enjoy a fabulous ‘ringers’ meal at the North Star to celebrate and honour our previous Ringer-in-chief Jim Morgan who was presented with a beautiful painting of Flamborough migrant birds.
Over the headland in 2025 we caught a total of 7180 birds with 5970 of these being new and 1210 retraps/controls-which included a French ringed Sedge Warbler caught at South Landing. This is just 92 new birds short of our record year in 2020 so a marvellous effort!
The highlights of newly ringed birds as follows:
| Chiffchaff | 255 |
| Whitethroat | 152 |
| Blackcap | 118 |
| Willow Warbler | 62 |
| Sedge Warbler | 47 |
| Lesser Whitethroat | 35 |
| Reed Warbler | 32 |
| Yellow-browed Warbler | 22 |
| Cetti’s Warbler | 4 |
| Barred Warbler | 2 |
| Goldcrest | 395 |
| Lesser Redpoll | 287 |
| Common Redpoll | 3 |
| Meadow Pipit | 32 |
| Tree Pipit | 2 |
| Redstart | 5 |
| Pied Flycatcher | 2 |
| Blackbird | 507 |
| Redwing | 435 |
| Song Thrush | 55 |
| Fieldfare | 4 |
| Ring Ouzel | 2 |
| Starling | 445 |
We have already begun our site maintenance and preparation for the upcoming year, with work being carried out to expand the Thornwick roost site and an imminent session to clear rides and manage habitat at our Thornwick CES site.
