Wayward Woodcock

Over the past month followers of the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust's woodcockwatch website www.woodcockwatch.com have been amazed at the impressive distance travelled by one of the 12 woodcock satellite tagged in the UK last winter. 'Monkey' tagged in Cornwall on March 21st finally arrived at his breeding destination north of Krasnoyarsk on May 15th.

 This location in Russia is at the same latitude as western Mongolia and 6200 km from his wintering ground in Cornwall.
This might have been thought of as an aboration as all the other woodcock have only travelled a couple of thousand kilometers. However last week The Woodcock Network received news from Tony Cross of a very exciting woodcock ring recovery which suggests that some of our woodcock do travel similar distances.

The woodcock ringed by Terence Lambert near Clywedog, Powys on March 9th 2011 was shot in Pervomayskiy Turkmenistan on April 26th 2012. This represents a journey of 4989 km, what is astonishing is that this is an area of desert to the north east of Tehran and east of the Caspian Sea, quite what this woodcock was doing there is anyones guess.