How long do wild birds live? How old are the oldest birds?
This is largely a mystery unless birds are banded when they’re young and found again when they’re old.
In North America we know the average and longest age for “city” peregrines because they’re banded as nestlings and frequently found when they die but for most species it is rare indeed to find a banded bird, especially an old one. That’s why the discovery of this whimbrel in the U.K. Shetland Islands was so astonishing.
Whimbrels are costal shorebirds about the size of oystercatchers. They breed on the northern tundra in Europe, Asia and North America and travel nearly worldwide. In recent years they’ve been declining at their breeding sites in the Sheltand Islands so ornithologists began a study of the Shetland Island whimbrels this past summer.
When they captured this bird at Fetlar they were in for a surprise. His bands indicate he is 25 years old, the oldest known whimbrel!
Click here to read his story on the BBC website.
(photo by Dr. Murray Grant, linked from the BBC News article. Click on the photo to read the article.)
That is really great!!
Excellent, thanks for sharing! A week or two ago a read a similar article on the BBC website; the UK’s oldest known arctic tern was sighted, it was over 30 years old! I did some investigation and found out that an arctic tern banded in the US was also recently resighted, confirming its age as over 34!