Preston and District Wildfowlers Association
Preston and District Wildfowlers Association
“Conservation is Our Aim”
Project Penelope
On PDWA marshes the wigeon flight in to feed as dusk deepens, they feed all night and in the morning leave to roost on the river. We are fortunate to have good stocks of wigeon throughout the winter. Our involvement in WeBS counts often show a widgeon population of 5k to over 7k. When the opportunity to get involved with this project arose, we jumped at it. We are passionate about the conservation of the wildfowl that frequent our estuary and are keen to broaden the knowledge of where these wigeon go, and what can we do as part of an international effort to ensure that they thrive and survive for the future. Knowledge is the key so that we can continue to sustainably harvest this natural resource.
Project Penelope, launched during winter of 2021, sees collaboration between ringers, wildfowlers and scientists working on Eurasian Wigeon. The project, led by the Waterfowlers’ Network, links teams working in Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Britain, and Ireland working together to build upon previous work and improve our knowledge of annual migrations, site fidelity and survival.
Duck ringing in Britain and Ireland has quite a history and much of the BTO’s duck ringing totals comes from years of intensive trapping and ringing by the duck ringing network led by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT).
Numbers of ducks being ringed today are on the decline and with changes to our wintering duck populations, it is now more important than ever to be collecting data to help inform the demographic drivers of these population and distribution changes. These days on average around 2000 ducks are ringed annually, compared to 7000 in 1980s.
In Britain over 40 ringers, from the Highlands of Scotland to Kent in the south, are contributing to the study and our case, ringers and wildfowlers are coordinating and attending cannon-net catches for ringing. This project is a great example of two communities coming together for the further study of a species, building bridges, and working together.
PDWA have so far successfully rung over 100 widgeon and a similar number of shelduck. Further ringing is planned over the next few winters.
To date over 900 Wigeon have been colour-marked in Britain alone and re-sightings of these birds have been received not only in Britain but the Netherlands, Belarus (only the 11th ever record of a BTO ringed Wigeon found in the country) and Russia.