Colourful birds flood Birmingham’s Urban Jungle

To kick off Emma Rosenfeld�s field work, Emma and teams of volunteers have been out in Shire Country Park and Sutton Park putting colour rings on twelve common garden species including blue tits, great tits robins and chaffinches (click here for full list of species). The primary aim of the project is to give an insight into how far birds move from urban green patches to other areas of the urban matrix.

The research is part of Open Air Laboratories (OPAL), which aims to encourage people to explore, study, enjoy and protect their local environment.

If you spot a colour-ringed bird, you can log the sighting through the project website, by e-mail or by post. The kind of information Emma needs includes:

• What species you have seen.
• The colour of ring.
• Where you have seen it, i.e. the name of the road or postcode if it�s in a garden, or the name of the place if it�s in a park or in a tree somewhere.
• When you saw it
• What the bird was doing? Was it eating from a feeder, was it singing? etc.
• As much other detail as possible.

For more details of this and other work being carried out by the OPAL West Midlands team please see the website.