Whenever we carry out a ringing demonstration, many people ask the question, "How long do birds live?". Obviously ringing and retrapping individual birds can help to answer this question and the BTO has records of "longevity records" on their website here.
At yesterday's ringing demonstration at Blackburn Meadows we retrapped quite a few Great Tits, and this morning I got an email telling me that one of the birds I handled yesterday had first been ringed, as an adult bird, on 24th August 2007, making it at least seven years old!
Looking at the BTO website, we can see that the oldest ever Great Tit was 13 years old when it was hit by a car and killed, so "my" bird still has a way to go.
Welcome to my blog all about my birdwatching, wild bird ringing activities and moth recording at Linacre Reservoirs, Derbyshire; in Great Britain and abroad.
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