Tony Taylor has organised the bird ringing on Lundy for the Lundy Field Society since 1979 and was the LFS bird recorder from 1980 to 2007. He visited Lundy in the early 70s as part of his study of Common Guillemots for the University of Newcastle. He made the first detailed surveys of Manx Shearwaters on Lundy, which was one of the factors which led to the RSPB-led Seabird Recovery Project on Lundy. His recent work has included a study of the Wheatears that breed on Lundy.

Tony was one of the people who inspired me to continue my Guillemot studies on Lundy.

Articles about Tony's work on Lundy can be found by searching for his name in the Lundy Field Society bibliography:

http://www.lundy.org.uk/index.php/resources/lundy-bibliography

Tony writes:

"My father had been into natural history from childhood, and used to point out flocks of Fieldfares and Redwings flying over W London in autumn and winter when I was a child. He knew their calls. It was only recently that I made the connection between those flocks and his WW2 POW experiences in Germany. He was in the camp that the book ‘Birds in a Cage’ is about, where inspiring research into breeding Redstarts, autumn migrants etc was carried out by a group of prisoners, and important ideas were developed re bird observatories and conservation in Britain. (I have a large bird book that, amazingly, he received there from his parents, via the Red Cross - and managed to bring back, too. It has official German stamps of approval in it, but also an extremely faint pencil map on a blank page, showing N Europe, that I only noticed recently.)

As a teenager I stayed on Skokholm several times, helping with ringing of migrants and Manx Shearwater chicks. Later that prompted the question ‘why doesn’t Lundy have similar shearwater numbers?’.

On Lundy in the 1970s, I was given ringing training by Nick Dymond and Mick Rogers (warden and assistant respectively in 1973, when they were running the Bird Observatory), then ringed with Mick when he later worked in the Tavern. I started ringing shearwaters on Lundy in 1975 with Ian Black, who worked there as a ranger. The whole Lundy community was extremely welcoming, and the likes of the Gade and Ogilvy families were important in that. I also met Ann Keith (now Taylor) on Lundy in 1975, when she came to cook for one of Bob Britton’s LFS bird courses. So Lundy came to hold many happy memories for us, and we and our sons have been returning ever since."

 

Articles about Tony's work on Lundy can be found by searching for his name in the Lundy Field Society bibliography:

http://www.lundy.org.uk/index.php/resources/lundy-bibliography

Tony Taylor.
Goldcrests on Lundy: Analysis of Ringing Data, 1990 to 2018. Journal of the Lundy Field Society, 123--136. View online.

Yen Yi Tan, Antony Taylor and Julia Schroeder.
Migration Strategy in the Chaffinch, Fringilla coelebsJournal of the Lundy Field Society, 137--162. View online.

Tony Taylor. 2019 Northern Wheatears on Lundy: the impact of rat eradication. British Birds112, 231-236

Abstract Data on the breeding population of Northern Wheatears Oenanthe oenanthe on Lundy, Devon, are presented, including recent surveys of the whole island and a Retrapping Adults for Survival (RAS) project. The results suggest a marked increase in breeding Wheatears since the successful rat eradication project on the island, in 2003/04. Potential reasons for these results are discussed.

https://britishbirds.co.uk/article/wheatears-on-lundy-the-impact-of-rat-eradication/

Tony Taylor.
Bird Ringing on Lundy in 2018. 86--90.

Helen Booker, Tony Taylor, Andrea Ayres, Dean Woodfin Jones, Susannah Bolton and Mark Bolton.
Lundy Storm Petrel Survey, July 2018. 91--94. 

Tony Taylor.
Bird Ringing on Lundy in 2017. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society, 66--69. View online

Tony Taylor.
Bird Ringing on Lundy in 2016. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society, 63--66. View online

Helen Booker and Tony Taylor.
Manx Shearwater Nestboxes. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society, 101--102. View online.

Tony Taylor.
Bird Ringing in 2015. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society, 58--61. View online.

Tony Taylor. 2015 Lundy's Breeding Wheatears in 2014. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society64, 92--97.

This paper gives the results of the 2014 RAS work. The colour-ringed population also allowed us to estimate the total number of Wheatears breeding on Lundy. Further observations are recorded, where these extend or modify the general information given in Taylor (2014), on Wheatear breeding biology on the Island. View online

Tony Taylor.
Storm Petrel: First Confirmed Breeding Record for Lundy and Devon. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society64, 66--68. View online.

Tony Taylor. 2014 Lundy's Wheatear Population in 2013. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society63, 80--84. 

During a visit to Lundy at the end of May 2012, 34 Wheatears were caught and ringed in five days, using traps baited with mealworms. In view of this success, it was decided that Lundy would make a good RAS study site: it has a comparatively large, dense population of Wheatears and is a well-defined area in which individuals should be easy to relocate, even if they change their precise breeding sites between years. (Studies elsewhere suggest that first-time breeders sometimes set up territories away from their natal area, but that established breeders very rarely move significant distances.) View online.

Helen Booker, David Price and Tony Taylor.
Manx shearwater breeding success on Lundy 2007. Journal of the Lundy Field Society1, 47--56. View online.

A. M. Taylor.
Manx Shearwaters on Lundy: further ringing studies and observations on breeding status. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society40, 31--33. View online.

A. M. Taylor.
Manx Shearwaters on Lundy: ringing information and other observations. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society36, 23--24. View online.

A. M. Taylor.
Bird ringing in 1979. Annual Report of the Lundy Field Society30, 14--16. View online.

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