Funded by AEWA and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Avian Demography Unit ran a waterbird ringing course in Ghana in October 2006. The two-week event was attended by 12 delegates from Cameroon, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Benin, Ghana and Nigeria.

The ringing course was conducted in the Centre for African Wetlands near Accra. After two days of teaching components, the participants headed off to the coast to the Densu Delta, a Ramsar wetland, to discover the practical aspects of waterbird ringing.

The daily pattern of activities focused on long ringing sessions in the evenings, lasting from late afternoon until midnight and sometimes beyond, followed by leisurely mornings and preparatory afternoons. A total of 195 waterbirds were caught and 182 were ringed. The remaining 13 birds were re-trapped. These re-trapped birds provided valuable feedback for the participants, demonstrating the value of bird ringing and the important role it plays in understanding bird migration. For example, one re-trapped tern had covered 4500 km along the West African Coastline within 27 days, corresponding to 170 km a day! The course was a follow-up in West Africa of an East African course held in Kenya in September 2004.

http://www.aviandemographyunit.org/