The number of Avocets on the Dorset Wildlife Trust Brownsea lagoon is increasing weekly when I count them on my regular volunteering day. There were three hundred and seventy-seven present on 30 Sep. This will rise to over fifteen hundred later in the Winter. Many are just roosting on the lagoon, while others enjoy spreading out and feeding on this ideal feeding habitat. On this visit, I saw one of the closest Avocets had CR Rings on it and I managed to get some photos.
The ring details were a white KO on a dark blue flag above a yellow ring on the left leg and a yellow ring on the right leg. I was surprised that I couldn't see a metal ring. It was only when I went back again through the photos on the camera, that I found a photo showing the metal ring was next to its foot.
My next problem was trying to find the CR ringing scheme on the CR Birding website. I selected Avocet and I failed to locate any CR ringing schemes. I repeated this search for the other option of Pied Avocet. I entered as much data as I could and again I had no results with this search. At that point, I gave up searching and appealed to the Dorset Birders on the local email group. Fortunately, a couple of the ringers responded and one, Ed Betteridge, managed to find the CR ringing scheme. Apparently, I had tried to provide too much detail and I should only have provided a subset of data. I went back and tried it again for Pied Avocet and sure enough, providing only a subset of data resulted in identifying the CR ringing scheme.
I had expected that it would turn out to be a Dutch Avocet, as I assume many of our Avocets come from the UK East coast or Holland. So, I was surprised that this Avocet had been ringed in Lancashire. There was a PDF file confirming that I had found the correct ring details and a contact email for Ian Hartley. Ian has provided its ringing history:
- Ringed as a chick at Conder Green, Lancs on 12 Jun 26
- Seen Morecombe Pool, Leighton Moss on 10 & 11 Jul 26
- Back at Conder Green, Lancs on 16 & 17 Jul 26
- Seen on Brownsea Lagoon on 16, 19 & 30 Sep 26.
Having spent my working life testing software and hardware in the IT industry, it is immediately apparent that the CR Birding website needs some simple steps to improve its usability. The CR Ringing website has decided to adopt the new trendy, but less widely used, name of Pied Avocet. So why allow users to select the species as Avocet, when there are no ringing schemes for the name. Removing Avocet from the selectable menu should be a two minute job to stop users entering data which is doomed to fail.
Secondly, there needs to be some clear instructions to users to only provide a subset of information when searching for details of CR ringing schemes and warning them that providing too much information, may fail to provide any CR ringing scheme details. These two simple steps would make the website more usable. I'm sure the people behind the website know how to use it. However without these simple improvements some users, including me, will fail and give up reporting sightings. I've struggled with this website in the past and not bothered to even note CR details, let alone wrestle with this website to report Wader sightings. I can't believe I'm the only Birder who has failed to report CR details due to this website.