The 24th of february I observed my first 2 spoonbills this season on the muddy-flat near Hee on our island Terschelling (The Netherlands). Both birds were just arrived and they made a short stop to rest out. After half an hour they flew rather quick eastward. Probably they have still a long way to go before they reached their breeding area.

About this observation I looked back to the early eighties. I was just setteld on the this island and I heard about a small colony (ca. 20 pairs) of spoonbills breeding on the “Second Dunes” on the reserve “The Boschplaat” on the east part of our island. In this area spoonbills are breeding on the floor and we decided to start to ring some young birds. We used a metal ring from our birdcenter Arnhem and a unique colourring-combination. When the chickens are 4-5 weeks old we entered the colony with a group of 8 persons and we circle a small cluster of youngs to catch them and to ring them.

Discovery of the Wadden islands

In that time the population of spoonbills increased. In the past there where only spoonbills breeding on the island of Texel but nowadays on all islands in the Waddensee area are colony’s of spoonbills. Even the islands of Germany and in north Jutland (Denmark) are discovered by spoonbills.

Wadden, Noord-Holland en Zeeland

Yearly we try to ring about 600 young spoonbills in the Netherlands not only from the colony’s in the Waddensea but also from colony’s on the mainland; about 25-30 young birds on each location.

Ring combinations and their limits

In the past we used a lot of different colourring-combinaties. Starting with colourrings withs bars till colourrings with engraved letters or numbers. During a couple of years we used also a socalled flagring in combination with 4 other colourrings and a metal ring. In the Netherlands we started with a yellow flagring and later a black flagring. In Germany we used a dark-green flagring and later a lime-coloured flagring. But sometimes a colourring disapeared or the colour of some rings changed so that identification was hardly impossible. Nowadays we use a white colour with 4 engraved inscriptions (letters or numbers) and always starting with a N reading top down. The white colourring fixed on the lefttibia and a metal ring on the righttibia. Each system of colourring using have its advantages or its disadvantages. We will evaluate this system within a couple of years.

In Germany they were also interested in ringing young spoonbills and to date this has largely been done with color ring combinations from the Working Group Spoonbill where for Germany a dark green and later a lime-colored flag-ring was chosen. But even these combinations ran out. Moreover, there was sometimes loss of ring and also the plastic rings sometimes discolored making identification very difficult. That is why a few years ago we switched to the use of white color rings with 4 inscriptions of letters and/or numbers, always starting with an N and read from top to bottom. This color ring was until now applied to the left tibia, on the right tibia a metal ring of the Vogeltrekstation Arnhem was attached. How it will be observed, we should evaluate in a few years. Every color-ring system has its advantages and disadvantages. More about this later.