Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.2009, Page 188

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RINGING RECOVERIES OF HOUSE SPARROW IN THE FAROE ISLANDS
DURING THE YEARS 1963-2007
50
40
_ 30
20
10
0
Figure 2. Time between ringing and recoveries of house sparrows ringed in the Faroe Islands as pulli (■■ bars)
(n=34), juveniles (■■ bars) (n=70) or adult ( bars) (n=67), respectively.
ó
5
S
S
S
Ring-recoveries (weeks)
after being ringed and secondly, 9.7 years
after being ringed. The second oldest house
sparrow was caught in Nólsoy, almost 8.6
years after being ringed as a nestling in the
same place in June 1986.
Only two recoveries were made outside
the village where they had been ringed. The
first one had flown from Vestmanna to Kald-
bak, which in a straight line, is a distance of
about 20 km. This bird was ringed as full-
grown in Vestmanna 217 days earlier, on the
3rd July 1969. The other one had flown
about 4.5 km overseas from Nólsoy, where it
was ringed at an age of one year on 7th June
1998 and found dead in Tórshavn 337 days
later.
The highest recovery-rate was found for
the Tórshavn study in 2002, when 59% of the
112 ringed birds were recovered. Also in
Sumba, the recovery-rates were high, 29% for
the sparrows ringed in 2004 and 17% and
26% of those ringed in 2002 and 2006. Of the
birds ringed on Nólsoy, the overall recovery
rates was 7%, varying between 0% and 15%,
being highest in 1987 (Table 1).
Discussion
The Faroe Islands is an archipelago with nar-
row fjords and straits separating the islands.
This makes the house sparrows fully capable
of reaching all parts of the archipelago by
means of flight. However, we find that the
Faroese house sparrow are extremely seden-
tary and of 2,167 house sparrows ringed,
only two birds were recovered outside the
villages where they had been ringed.
The low degree of dispersal for the
Faroese house sparrows found in the present
study is also in accordance with its dispersal
patterns of the islands, which indicate that