by Chris Heward, Wetlands Research Assistant

Late autumn can be one of Woodcock Watch’s ‘quiet seasons’. It is not that the woodcock are inactive at this time of year, in fact far from it, but the tags’ batteries struggle to remain charged and data transmission can be sporadic. There’s a number of potential explanations for this.

Thankfully, this year, Wensum’s tag has bucked this trend and has sent frequent updates from Northern Germany providing us with a little interest through the autumn doldrums.

Now, I am pleased to announce, a second tag has sprung back to life and it is one we are particularly interested to hear from - an old Woodcock Watch favourite, Olwen.

Olwen was tagged in West Wales in the March of 2013. Since then we have followed Olwen on three outward migrations to North-western Russia and three return migrations to the UK. This makes Olwen our longest-running tagged woodcock.

Olwen has earned a reputation as a wanderer, a behaviour that is not typically observed amongst woodcock. Normally woodcock tend to be faithful to the same breeding and wintering grounds year on year. And whilst this may be true of Olwen’s breeding site, having returned to the same woods in Russia each summer, s/he has constantly varied his/her wintering sites from one year to the next.

Olwen has not returned to Wales since early 2013 when s/he was tagged. Instead s/he spent the following winter (2013/14) at a site in East Yorkshire, north of Beverley. This changed again for his/her third winter (2014/15) as s/he chose a similar, but more southerly site in Lincolnshire.

Both of these sites in East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire seem odd choices for a woodcock as they are landscapes with little woodland and lots of arable farmland. During the winter, however, woodcock are not necessarily dependent on large blocks of woodland providing there is at least some small sheltered copse or belt to roost in.

A more important consideration is the acquisition of food. In winter, woodcock feed at night on open arable fields or pasture and it must be that Olwen has found a good supply of earthworms at each of these wintering sites.

Now winter 2015/16 is upon us and the latest data shows that Olwen is back in the UK. So has the wanderer changed wintering site for a third time? Well, apparently not. S/he is currently back at last year’s location in Lincolnshire.

One of the things that we are wondering now is: will s/he stay here all winter? It would be interesting to see whether cold weather in north-eastern England will push Olwen further west and, if so, would s/he remember that old pasture field in Wales where we caught her nearly three years ago? Woodcock do show some flexibility with regards to weather (the afore-mentioned Wensum being a case in point) so perhaps Olwen’s wanderings are the result of annual fluctuations in temperature.

Thanks go to Owen Williams of the Woodcock Ringing Network; a much-appreciated member of the Woodcock Watch family who caught and tagged Olwen back in 2013.

*’S/he’ and ‘his/her’ are used throughout as we are unsure of Olwen’s gender. Often we can separate the sexes based on bill length but some birds fall in an intermediate ‘grey area’ meaning that the sex cannot be determined. Olwen was one such individual.

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