ML164720171

Age and sex

Adult, Unknown sex - X

Observation details

It's a 22-year-old Black-winged Stilt according to its ring. On June 1, on our way to Taijiang Bird Ecological Center, my boys and I met two adult Black-winged Stilts and three small chicks. Surprisingly, we found one of the adults wore a small and gray ring on his leg after we went home and examined the photos. It seems uncommon to see such a ringed Black-winged Stilt, so I tried to find more information about it by asking one of my friends in Tainan Bird Society, Mr. Guo. He told me that a professor, Mr. Weng, in Kun Shan University once held a bird ringing project about the Black-winged Stilt. Thus, I tried to contact with Mr. Weng and sent him the photo I took. Few hours later, Mr. Weng replied. He said this ringed Black-winged Stilt was taken in Beimen, Tainan, in 1997 when it was 6 to 8 weeks old then, which means it is now 22 years old. Wow! That's really something cool. Mr. Weng also mentioned that his team had ringed about two thousand or so Black-winged Stilts from 1997 to 2004. In Taiwan, the longest living Black-winged Stilt was ringed by Tainan Bird Society in 1992 and was last spotted in Aogu Wetland in 2017. Averagely speaking, the life span of a Black-winged Stilt is 10.2 years while the maximum is about 20 years in the wild. There is also a 18-year-old Black-winged Stilt in a zoo in Korea. So, I guess we're really lucky to find the 22-year-old Black-winged Stilt, thanks to Mr.Weng's bird ringing project and his team.

Technical information

Model

DSC-RX10M4

Lens

8.8-220mm f/2.4-4.0

ISO

200

Focal length

220 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/4.0

Shutter speed

1/1250 sec

Dimensions

3648 pixels x 2736 pixels

Original file size

1.94 MB