Ringed Plover from Iceland

Pia Haley found a dead Ringed Plover on the Uiskentuie Strand yesterday. There was no obvious sign how it had died. It was carrying a metal ring and three colour rings. The metal ring was issued by the Natural History Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland, and an e-mail to them was responded to in under an hour, which is pretty good service.
The bird, an adult female, had been caught on the nest on 28th May 2008, in Dýrafjörður, in the extreme north-west of Iceland.
Ringed Plovers from Iceland pass north in spring, and south in autumn, through western Scotland and Ireland, wintering as far south as Spain and west Africa. They thus fly much further than our locally breeding birds which either stay within Britain and Ireland or move no further than France. The Iceland birds are thus indulging in a phenomenon known as "leap-frog' migration.
Malcolm

A live Ringed Plover