In these days of May the migratory flow has grown, as usual, so the ringing activities have become more intense.
These are the days when flocks of birds fly over the island and enter our nets in great numbers, making us reach the classic record numbers of this period.
On Saturday the 6th of May we reached the highest number of birds ringed in a single day for the 2023 season, with a total of 1717 catches. In fact, this high figure enters the podium of the days with the most catches ever, ranking third after the day with 1956 birds ringed in 2016 and that with 1737 in 2011.
The following and preceding days were however intense with high peaks of 1200 birds per day or more constant catches of 800-900 birds per day.
The intense activity allowed us to break another type of record, since a succession of such demanding days led us to ring 6280 birds in just 6 days (from 2 to 7 May 2023), beating the past record of 5238 ringed birds between 9 and 14 May 2009.
According to the analyses carried out on the data of 18 years of ringing on the Island of Ponza, it can be stated that there is a temporal shift in the migratory flow at the stop-over sites in the Mediterranean. Indeed, the scientific article published three years ago (Maggini et al., 2020) shows that in the survey period the birds anticipated their passage of about 0.7-1 day per year and this seems to be due to the effects of climate change.
Finally, more than 300,000 birds have been ringed since 2002, the year in which CISCA started its activity!
Such success can be achieved only thanks to the great committment of volunteers and helpers, very precious for the scientific activities of Ponza's ringing station!
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